whom labor was considered as degrading. When the Spaniards lost a monopoly of these employments, and sank to the level of the native races, their numbers rapidly declined. The slight foreign immigration above mentioned is not one of laborers, for labor is considered an unbecoming employment at Mexico for white men, but an immigration of tradesmen and shop-keepers, who add nothing to the material wealth of the country.
Of the Mexican Negro race I never knew but two, and one of them held the post of captain in the army, and the other was the naked alcalde, mentioned in a former chapter, who was discharging the functions of "Judge of First Instance." The reasons assigned for the disappearance of this race from Mexico after so large an importation of slaves as that which took place in the last century is the incongeniality of the climate of Mexico, particularly of the table-lands, to the negro constitution. At the breaking out of the Mexican revolution, almost the only negro slaves in the country were in the department of Vera Cruz. The sugar-planters of the hot country of the interior, finding it impossible to carry on their estates by the use of negro slaves, attempted to reduce the mortality among their working people by raising up a race of those disgusting-looking beings called Zambos, a cross of negroes and Indians; but it was attended with the usual ill success that has followed every attempt to cross or intermingle different and distinct races of men, animals, or even plants.
INTERMIXTURE OF RACES.
The advantages arising from transplanting the human race, as well as vegetables and plants, are manifestly great. But transplanting should never be confounded with intermixing races, whether they be human, or of the lower animals, or of plants. When God, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to choose out a family that he destined to continue for thousands of years, He transplanted it into a