wares that were made three centuries ago; and there is no improvement in their manufacture.  This people, who rose in three centuries from the condition of wandering savages to a height of civilization that has no equal in history—­considering the shortness of the time in which it grew up—­have remained, since the Conquest, without making one step in advance.  They hardly understand any reason for what they do, except that their ancestors did things so—­they therefore must be right.  They make their unglazed pottery, and carry it five and twenty miles to market on their heads, just as they used to do when there were no beasts of burden in the country.  The same with their fruits and vegetables, which they have brought great distances, up the most difficult mountain-paths, at a ruinous sacrifice of time and trouble, considering what a miserable sum they will get for them after all, and how much even of this will be spent in brandy.  By working on a hacienda they would get double what their labour produces in this way, but they do not understand this kind of reasoning.  They cultivate their little patches of maize, by putting a sharp stick into the ground, and dropping the seed into the hole.  They carry pots of water to irrigate their ground with, instead of digging trenches.  This is the more curious, as at the time of the Conquest irrigation was much practised by the Aztecs in the plains, and remains of water-canals still exist, showing that they had carried the art to great perfection.  They bring logs of wood over the mountains by harnessing horses or mules to them, and dragging them with immense labour over the rough ground.  The idea of wheels or rollers has either not occurred to them, or is considered as a pernicious novelty.

It is very striking to see how, while Europeans are bringing the newest machinery and the most advanced arts into the country, there is scarcely any symptom of improvement among the people, who still hold firmly to the wisdom of their ancestors.  An American author, Mayer, quotes a story of a certain people in Italy, as an illustration of the feeling of the Indians in Mexico respecting improvements.  In this district, he says that the peasants loaded their panniers with vegetables on one side, and balanced the opposite pannier by filling it with stones; and when a traveller pointed out the advantage to be gained by loading both panniers with vegetables, he was answered that their forefathers from time immemorial had so carried their produce to market, that they were wise and good men, and that a stranger showed very little understanding or decency who interfered in the established customs of a country.  I need hardly say that the Indians are utterly ignorant; and this of course accounts to a great extent for their obstinate conservatism.