Humboldt's History of New Spain.

[extract.]

" The condition of man is the most interesting object in every country; and we confess ourselves gratified by finding that in New Spain the number of slaves [negroes] is comparatively few, and the state of the Indians is less unhappy than we had been accustomed to suppose.

We extract with pleasure a passage from which it appears that the mines, though a considerable source of wealth, are not the only, or even the chief wealth of the province of Mexico.

"The Indian cultivator is poor, but he is free.

His state is even greatly preferable to that of the peasantry in a great part of the north of Europe.

There are neither corvees nor villanage in New- Spain; and the number of slaves is next to nothing.

Sugar is chiefly the produce of free hands.

There the principal objects of agriculture are not the productions to which European luxury has assigned a variable and arbitrary value, but cereal gramina, nutrive roots, and the agave, the vine of the Indians.-- The appearance of the country proclaims to the traveller, that the soil nourishes him who cultivates it, and that the true prosperity of the Mexican people neither depends on the accidents of foreign commerce, nor on the unruly politicks of Europe.

"Those who only know the interiour of the Spanish colonies, from the vague and uncertain notions hitherto published, will have some difficulty in believing that the principal sources of the Mexican riches are by no means the mines, but an agriculture which has been gradually ameliorating since the end of the last century -- Without reflecting on the immense extent of the country, and especially the great number of provinces which appear totally destitute of precious metals, we generally imagine that all the activity of the Mexican population is directed to the working of the mines.

Because the agriculture has made a very considerable progress in the capitania general of Caracas, in the kingdom of Guatimala, the island of Cuba, and wherever the mountains are accounted poor in mineral production, it has been inferred that it is to the working of the mines that we are to attribute the small care bestowed on the cultivation of the soil in other parts of the Spanish colonies.

This reasoning is just when applied to small portions of territory.

No doubt, in the provinces of Choco and Antioqua, and the coast of Barbacoas, the inhabitants are fonder of seeking for gold washed down in the brooks and ravines, than of cultivating a virgin and fertile soil; and in the beginning of the conquest, the Spaniards who abandoned the peninsula or Canary islands, to settle in Peru and Mexico, had no other view but the discovery of the precious metals.

Auri rabida sitis a cultura Hispanos divertit, says a writer of those times, Pedro Martyr, in his work on the discovery of Yutacan and the colonization of the Antilles.

"In Mexico, the best cultivated fields, those which recall to the mind of the traveller the beautiful plains of France, are those which extend from Salamanca towards Siloe, Guanaxuato, and the Villa de Leon and which surround the richest mines of the known world.

Wherever metallick seams have been discovered in the most uncultivated parts of the Cordilleras, on the insulated and desert tablelands, the working of mines far from impeding the cultivation of the soil, has been singularly favourable to it.

Travelling along the ridge of the Andes, or the mountainous part of Mexico, we every where see the most striking examples of the beneficial influence of the mines on agriculture.

Were it not for the establishments formed for the working of the mines, how many places would have remained desert?

How many districts uncultivated in the four intendancies of Guanaxuato, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, and Durango, between the parallels of 21 and 25 where the most considerable metallick wealth of New-Spain is to be found?

If the town is placed on the arid side, or the crest of the Cordilleras, the new colonists can only draw from a distance the means of their subsistence, and the maintenance of the great number of cattle employed in drawing off the water, and raising and amalgamating the mineral produce.

Want soon awakens industry.

The soil begins to be cultivated in the ravines and declivities of the neighbouring mountains, where ever the rock is covered with earth -- The high price of provision, from the competition of the purchasers indemnifies the cultivator for the privations to which he is exposed, from the hard life of the mountains.

Thus, from the hope of gain alone, and the motives of mutual interest, which are the most powerful bonds of society, and without any interference on the part of the government in colonization, a mine which, at first, appeared insulated in the midst of wild and desert mountains, becomes, in a short time, connected with the lands which have long been under cultivation."

"The valley in which the city of Mexico stands, is upwards of 6500 feet above the level of the sea.

It is of an oval form, encompassed on all sides by mountains.

It contains several lakes.

The largest is salt.

Formerly it surrounded the city, which was approached only by causeways, constructed in the water.

But, at present, the extent of this lake diminished, and the city is now on the land, some distance from the water's edge.

The circumference of the valley is 67 leagues.

"Mexico is undoubtedly one of the finest cities ever built by Europeans in either hemisphere.

With the exception of Petersburgh, Berlin, Philadelphia, and some quarters in Westminster, there does not exist a city of the same extent, which can be compared to the capital of New Spain, for the uniform level of the ground on which it stands, for the regularity and breadth of the streets, and the extent of the public places.

The architecture is generally of a very pure style, and there are even edifices of very beautiful structure.

The exterior of the houses is not loaded with ornaments.

"The Ballustrades and gates are all of Biscay iron, ornamented with bronze, and the houses, instead of roofs, have terraces like those in Italy, and other southern countries.

"Mexico has been very much embellished since the residence of the Abbe Chappe there in 1769 -- The edifice destined to the School of Mines, for which the richest individuals of the country furnished a sum of more than three millions of francks, would adorn the principal places of Paris or London.

Two great palaces [hotels] were recently constructed by Mexican artists, pupils of the academy of fine arts of the capital.

One of these palaces, in the quarter della Traspana, exhibited in the interior of a court a very beautiful oval peristyle of coupled columns.

The traveller justly admires a vast circumference, paved with porphyry flags, and enclosed with an iron railing, richly ornamented with bronze, containing an equestrian statue of king Charles the fourth, placed on a pedestal of Mexican marble, in the midst of the Plaza Major of Mexico, opposite the cathedral, and the viceroy's palace.

However, it must be agreed, that notwithstanding the progress of the arts, within these last thirty years, it is much less, from the grandeur and beauty of the monuments, than from the breadth and straitness of the streets, and much less from its edifices, than from its uniform regularity, its extent and position, that the capital of New Spain attracts the admiration of Europeans.

"Nothing can present a more rich and varied appearance, than the valley, when, in a fine summer morning, the sky without a cloud, and of that deep azure which is peculiar to the dry and rarefied air of high mountains, we transport ourselves to the top of one of the towers of the cathedral of Mexico, or ascend the hill of Chapoltepeck.

A beautiful vegetation surrounds this hill.

Old cypress trunks, of more than 15 and 16 metres in circumference, raise their naked heads above those of the shinus, which resemble in their appearance, the weeping willows of the east.

From the centre of this solitude, the summit of the porphyritical rock of Chapoltepeck, the eye sweeps over a vast plain of carefully cultivated fields, which extend to the very feet of the colossal mountains covered with perpetual snow.

The city appears as if washed by the waters of the lake of Tezeuco, whose basin, surrounded with villages and hamlets, brings to mind the most beautiful lakes of the mountains of Switzerland.

Large avenues of elms and poplars lead, in every direction, to the capital; and two acqueducts, constructed over arches of very great elevation, cross the plain, and exhibit an appearance equally agreeable and interesting.

The magnificent convent of Nuestra Sonora de Guadaloupe, appears joined to the mountains of Tepeyacack, among ravines, which shelter a few date and young yucca trees.

Towards the south, the whole tract between San Angel, Tacabaya, and San Augustin de las Cuevas, appears an immense garden of orange, peach, apple, cherry, and other European fruit trees.

This beautiful cultivation forms a singular contrast with the wild appearance of the naked mountains which enclose the valley, among which the famous volcanos of La Puebal, Popocatepelt, and Iztaccicichautl are the most distinguished.

The first of these forms an enormous cone, of which the crater, continually inflamed, and throwing up smoak and ashes, opens in the midst of eternal snows."