STATISTICAL } XI. Intendancy of Durango. tinued with more courage than success. The Indians are concentrated towards the north in the Moqui, and the mountains of Nabajoa, where they have reconquered a considerable territory from the inhabitants of New Mexico. This state of things has produced the most fatal consequences, which will be felt for centuries, and which are every way deserving of examination. These wars, if they have not destroyed, have at least removed all hopes of bringing round these savage hordes to social life by gentle means. The spirit of vengeance and an inveterate hatred have raised an almost insurmountable barrier between the Indians and whites. Many tribes of Apaches, Moquis, and Yutas, who go by the denomination of Indians of Peace (Indios de Paz), are attached to the soil, live in huts collected together, and cultivate maize. They would have less objections, perhaps, to unite with the Spanish colonists, if they found Mexican Indians among them. The analogy of manners and habits, and the resemblance which exists, not in the sounds, but in the mechanism and general structure of the American languages, may become powerful bonds of union among people of the same origin. A wise legislation might be able, perhaps, to efface the recollection of those barbarous times, when a corporal STATISTICAL XI. Intendancy of Durango. ANALYSIS. J or serjeant in the Provincias internas went out to hunt down the Indians like so many wild beasts. It is probable that the copper-coloured individual would rather choose to live in a village inhabited by other individuals of his own race, than to mix with whites who would domineer over him with arrogance; but we have already seen in the sixth chapter that, unfortunately, there are almost no Indian peasantry of the Aztec race in New Biscay and New Mexico. In the former of these provinces there is not a single tributary individual, and all the inhabitants are either white or consider themselves to be so. All assume the right of putting the title of Don before their baptismal names,even such as those who in the French islands, through an aristocratic refinement, by which languages are enriched, go by the appellation of Petits blancs, or Messieurs passables. This struggle with the Indians, which has lasted for centuries, and the necessity in which the colo nist, living in some lonely farm, or travelling through arid deserts, finds himself of perpetually watching after his own safety, and defending his flock, his home, his wife, and his children against the incursions of wandering Indians; and, in short, that state of nature which subsists in the midst of the appearance of an ancient civilization, have all concurred to give to the character of the STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. XI. Intendancy of Durango. inhabitants of the north of New Spain an energy and temperament peculiar to themselves. To these causes we must no doubt add the nature of the climate, which is temperate, an eminently salubrious atmosphere, the necessity of labour in a soil by no means rich or fertile, and the total want of Indians and slaves who might be employed by the whites for the sake of giving themselves up securely to idleness and sloth. In the Provincias internas the developement of physical strength is favoured by a life of singular activity, which is for the most part passed on horseback, This way of life is essentially necessary from the care demanded by the numerous flocks of horned cattle which roam about almost wild in the savannas. To this strength of a healthy and robust body we must join great strength of mind, and a happy disposition of the intellectual faculties. Those who preside over seminaries of education in the city of Mexico have long observed that the young people who have most distinguished themselves fortheir rapid progress in the exact sciences, were for the most part natives of the most northern provinces of New Spain*. * The connexion between a sound mind and sound body, mens sana in corpore sano, has been often remarked; and those countries of which the climate and mode of life are most favourable to the physical powers of man give to his mental STATISTICAL}XI. Intendancy of Durango. The intendancy of Durango comprehends the northern extremity of the great table-land of powers, perhaps, an equal superiority. The people who breathe the keen air of Lebanon form a striking contrast to the half animated inhabitants of the plains of Syria. What a contrast also between the natives of Switzerland and those of the marshes of Holland! In Spain we see in like manner a keen and animated race in the mountains of Biscay and Catalonia; and in France it is not on the banks of the Seine, but in the mountains and vales of the Cevennes, of the inhabitants of which Marmontel draws so fine a picture in his Memoirs, where the national character appears to the greatest advantage. In Germany and Italy the natives of the hills and vales of Saxony and Tuscany equally outstrip the rest of their countrymen; and, perhaps, in our country it is not among the unhealthy occupation of the trading and manufacturing towns of the south where we are to seek for the most acute and intelligent population. Those who have examined attentively the different classes of inhabitants in this island have uniformly remarked, that the healthy inhabitants of the country are not more superior in bodily perfection than in mental qualities to the automaton inhabitants of our cities. The Greeks, of whom we know not from the remains which have come down to us, whether most to admire the beauty of their form or their mental endowments, were studious of every art by which the physical energies could be developed, and were more ambitious, perhaps, of being the first men than the first weavers in the world. Mental energy must always more or less depend on a sound and vigorous temperament; and though the most perfect man may not be the savage of Rousseau, we are not the more, however, to look for him in the enervated inhabitant of the cotton-mill or the drawing-room. Trans. STATISTICAL XI. Intendancy of Durango. Anahuac, which declines to the north-east towards the banks of the Rio Grande del Norte. The environs of the city of Durango are still, however, according to the barometrical measurement of Don Juan Jose d'Oteyza, more than 2000 metres* elevated above the level of the ocean. This great elevation appears to continue till towards Chihuahua; for it is the central chain of the Sierra Madre, which (as we have already indicated in the general physical view of the country †) near San Jose del Parral runs in a direction north-north-west towards the Sierra Verde and the Sierra de las Grullas, There are reckoned in la Nueva Biscaya one city or ciudad (Durango), six villas (Chihuahua, San Juan del Rio, Nombre de Dios, Papasquiaro, Saltillo, and Mapimi), 199 villages or pueblos, 75 parishes or paroquias, 152 farms or haciendas, 37 missions, and 400 cottages or ranchos. The most remarkable places are: Durango, or Guadiana, the residence of an intendant and a bishop, in the most southern part of New Biscay, at 170 leagues distance, in a straight line from the city of Mexico, and * 6561 feet. Trans. + Vol. I. p. 63. |