life to be but a series of miseries and abjections. The Indian women, even at the time of travail, do not cease from their wearisome tasks and, without thought for the being who stirs within them, occupy themselves in grinding maize and making tortillas, labors which cannot but prove hurtful to the act of giving birth. While the period of suckling has not passed, the child is fed with tortillas and fruits and other foods unsuited to its digestive powers, causing by such imprudence diarrhœas and other diseases, which carry the children to the grave or, as they grow, leaves them infirm and feeble. Smallpox, in consequence of the neglect of the parents and their indifference to vaccination, causes frightful ravages—the disease being most pernicious in the indigenous race.
Such statistics as I possess of the movement of population in the pueblo of Ixtacalco, while they indicate that the Civil Registry has not yet extended its dominion to that pueblo, corroborate the opinion that the decrease of the race is mainly due to infant mortality.