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.