Labor, as well as engines, will be required for this purpose, and it is quite improbable that the few indolent Indians in the neighborhood will be prevailed on to abandon their life of laziness for the toils of a sugar plantation. Besides this, the present production fully supplies the home market, and although the revenues and profits are extraordinarily tempting, it is doubtful whether the Mexicans are sufficiently enterprising in agriculture to adventure such enormous sums as are necessarily expended before a single cane is planted or a pound of sugar manufactured. As long as the
rate of interest is high, the roads bad, transportation costly and unchanged, and the condition of the country unsettled, these vast and valuable rural districts will, in all likelihood, remain untenanted and unwrought.
Baron Humboldt, whose analytical mind always strives to classify, systematize and tabularize his investigations, has endeavored to ascertain and limit the maximum height at which the cane may be cultivated; but it is probably true that all such attempts, are altogether visionary, in a