Under Spanish rule Mexico was prohibited from producing anything that the mother-country could supply.  This rule excluded the cultivation of the grape, olive and many other articles to which the soil and climate were well adapted.  The country was governed for “revenue only;” and tobacco, which cannot be raised in Spain, but is indigenous to Mexico, offered a fine instrumentality for securing this prime object of government.  The native population had been in the habit of using “the weed” from a period, back of any recorded history of this continent.  Bad habits—­if not restrained by law or public opinion—­spread more rapidly and universally than good ones, and the Spanish colonists adopted the use of tobacco almost as generally as the natives.  Spain, therefore, in order to secure the largest revenue from this source, prohibited the cultivation, except in specified localities—­and in these places farmed out the privilege at a very high price.  The tobacco when raised could only be sold to the government, and the price to the consumer was limited only by the avarice of the authorities, and the capacity of the people to pay.

All laws for the government of the country were enacted in Spain, and the officers for their execution were appointed by the Crown, and sent out to the New El Dorado.  The Mexicans had been brought up ignorant of how to legislate or how to rule.  When they gained their independence, after many years of war, it was the most natural thing in the world that they should adopt as their own the laws then in existence.  The only change was, that Mexico became her own executor of the laws and the recipient of the revenues.  The tobacco tax, yielding so large a revenue under the law as it stood, was one of the last, if not the very last, of the obnoxious imposts to be repealed.  Now, the citizens are allowed to cultivate any crops the soil will yield.  Tobacco is cheap, and every quality can be produced.  Its use is by no means so general as when I first visited the country.

Gradually the “Army of Occupation” assembled at Corpus Christi.  When it was all together it consisted of seven companies of the 2d regiment of dragoons, four companies of light artillery, five regiments of infantry —­the 3d, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th—­and one regiment of artillery acting as infantry—­not more than three thousand men in all.  General Zachary Taylor commanded the whole.  There were troops enough in one body to establish a drill and discipline sufficient to fit men and officers for all they were capable of in case of battle.  The rank and file were composed of men who had enlisted in time of peace, to serve for seven dollars a month, and were necessarily inferior as material to the average volunteers enlisted later in the war expressly to fight, and also to the volunteers in the war for the preservation of the Union.  The men engaged in the Mexican war were brave, and the officers of the regular army, from highest to lowest, were educated in their profession.  A more efficient army for its number and armament, I do not believe ever fought a battle than the one commanded by General Taylor in his first two engagements on Mexican—­or Texan soil.