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book, that on account of its extreme dryness a considerable part of New Spain situated to the north of the tropic is not susceptible of a great population. Hence what a remarkable contrast between the physiognomy of two neighbouring countries, between Mexico and the United States of North America! In the latter the soil is one vast forest, intersected by a great number of rivers, which flow into spacious gulfs; while Mexico presents from east to west a wooded shore, and in its centre an enormous mass of colossal mountains, on the ridge of which stretch out plains destitute of wood, and so much the more arid, as the temperature of the ambient air is augmented by the reverberation of the solar rays. In the north of New Spain, as in Thibet, Persia, and all the mountainous regions, a part of the country will never be adapted for the cultivation of cerealia till a concentrated and highly civilized population shall have vanquished the obstacles opposed by nature to the progress of rural economy. But this aridity, we repeat it, is not general; and it is compensated for by the extreme fertility observable in the southern countries, even in that part of the provincias internas in the neighbourhood of rivers, in the basins of the Rio del Norte, the Gila, the Hiaqui, the Mayo, the Culiacan, the Rio del Rosario, the Rio de Conchos, the Rio de Santander, the Tigre, and the numerous torrents of the province of Texas.

In the most northern extremity of the kingdom, on the coast of New California, the produce of wheat is from 16 to 17 for 1, taking the mean term among the harvests of eighteen villages for two years. I believe that agriculturists will peruse with pleasure the detail of these harvests in a country situated under the same parallel as Algiers, Tunis, and Palestine, between the 32° 39 and 37° 48' of latitude.

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It appears that the most northern part of this coast is less favourable to the cultivation of wheat than that which extends from San Diego to San Miguel. However, in newly cultivated grounds the produce of the soil is more inequal than in lands which have been long under cultivation, though we observe in no part of New Spain that progressive diminution of fertility which is so distressing to new colonists wherever forests have been converted into arable land.

Those who have seriously reflected on the riches of the Mexican soil know that by means of a more careful cultivation, and without supposing any extraordinary labour in the irrigation of the soil, the portion of ground already under cultivation might furnish subsistence for a population eight or ten times more numerous. If the fertile plains of Atlixco, Cholula, and Puebla, do not produce very abundant harvests, the principal cause ought to be sought for in the want of consumers, and in the obstacles opposed by the inequality of the soil to the interior commerce of grain, especially to its carriage towards the Atlantic coast. We shall afterwards return to this interesting subject when we come to treat of the exportation from Vera Cruz.

What is actually the produce of the grain harvest in the whole of New Spain? We can conceive how difficult must be the resolution of this problem in a country where the government, since the

death of the Count de Revillagigedo, has been very unfavourable to statistical researches. In France, even the estimations of Quesnay, Lavoisier, and Arthur Young, vary from forty-five and fifty to seventy-five millions of septiers of 117 kilogrammes in weight*. I have no positive data as to the quantity of rye and oats reaped in Mexico, but I conceive myself enabled to calculate approximately the mean produce of wheat. The most sure estimate in Europe is the computed consumption of each individual. This method was successfully employed by MM. Lavoisier and Arnould; but it is a method which cannot be followed in the case of a population composed of very heterogeneous elements. The Indian and Mestizoe, the inhabitants of the country, are only fed on maize and manioc bread. The white Creoles who live in great cities consume much more wheaten bread than those who habitually live on their farms. The capital, which includes more than 33,000 Indians, requires annually 19 millions of kilogrammes of flour. This consumption is almost the same as that of the cities of Europe of an equal population; and if, according to this basis, we were to calculate the consumption of the whole kingdom of New Spain, we should attain to a result which would be five times too high.

* 11,620, 12,911, and 19,366 millions of pounds avoird. Trans.

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