Here our horses were waiting for us; and an hour or two’s ride brought us to the great sugar-hacienda of Temisco, where we were to pass the night, for towns and inns are few and far between in Mexico when one leaves the more populous mountain-plateaus. So much the better, for my companion had provided himself with letters of introduction, and we had already seen something of hacienda life, and liked it.
As we approached Temisco, we saw upon the slopes, immense fields of sugar-cane, now grown into a dense mass, five or six feet high, most pleasant to look upon for the delicate green tint of the leaves that belongs to no other plant. The colour of our English turf is beautiful, and so are the tints of our English woods in spring, but our fields of grain have a dull and dingy green compared to the sugar-cane and the young Indian corn. In this beautiful valley we cannot charge the inhabitants with entirely neglecting the irrigation of the land. Indeed, the culture of the sugar-cane cannot be carried on without it, and the cost of the watercourses on the large estates has been very great. Unfortunately, even here agriculture is not flourishing. The small number of the white inhabitants, and the distracted state of the country make both life and property very insecure; and the brown people are becoming less and less disposed to labour on the plantations.
It is true that most of these channels were made in old times; little new is done now, and I could make a long list of estates that were once busy and prosperous, giving employment to thousands of the Indian inhabitants, and that are now over-grown with weeds and falling to ruin.
Entering the iron gate of the hacienda, we found ourselves in an immense courtyard, into which open all the principal buildings of the estate, the house of the proprietor, the church—which forms a necessary