ground. The idea of wheels or rollers has either not occurred to them, or is considered as a pernicious novelty.
It is very striking to see how, while Europeans are bringing the newest machinery and the most advanced arts into the country, there is scarcely any symptom of improvement among the people, who still hold firmly to the wisdom of their ancestors. An American author, Mayer, quotes a story of a certain people in Italy, as an illustration of the feeling of the Indians in Mexico respecting improvements. In this district, he says that the peasants loaded their panniers with vegetables on one side, and balanced the opposite pannier by filling it with stones; and when a traveller pointed out the advantage to be gained by loading both panniers with vegetables, he was answered that their forefathers from time immemorial had so carried their produce to market, that they were wise and good men, and that a stranger showed very little understanding or decency who interfered in the established customs of a country. I need hardly say that the Indians are utterly ignorant; and this of course accounts to a great extent for their obstinate conservatism.
There were several shops round the market-place at Grande, and the brandy-drinking was going on much as at Soquital. The shops in these small towns are general stores, like “the shop” in coal- and iron-districts in England. It is only in large towns that the different retail-trades are separated. One thing is very noticeable in these country stores, the certainty of finding a great stock of sardines in bright tin boxes. The idea of finding Sardines à l’huile in Indian villages seemed odd enough; but the fact is, that the difficulty of getting fish up from the coast is so great that these sardines are not much dearer than anything else, and they go a long way. Montezuma’s method of supplying his table with fresh fish from the gulf, by having relays of Indian porters to run up with it, is too expensive for general use, and there is no efficient substitute. It is in consequence of this scarcity of fish, that Church-fasts have never been very strictly kept in Mexico.