from the best evidence upon the subject, it has been so already with Mexico herself. Physiology also instructs us, as a general law, that animals are more daring and ferocious in high than in low latitudes; that as the cold climate makes it the more difficult of subsistence, it nerves the system to an energy commensurate to the want; that while the perpetual produce of the warm climate renders such energy unnecessary, it enervates the system and debases the mind. Nothing can be more true, and a knowledge of the people of the United States and Mexico is strikingly illustrative of the fact.2

Let the present condition of the former nation, whose population has increased from a unit of twenty millions, with her improved state of agriculture, with her hundred millions per annum of foreign exports, with her commerce upon every sea, with her vast strides in literature and science, with improvements in the art of war, which makes an era as important as the invention of gunpowder, compare with the latter nation, occupying the most favoured location upon the new continent, fronting upon both seas, with a climate adapted to vastly more extensive produce, with her hills and mountains filled to overflowing with the useful and precious metals, with [389] her population less in numbers and worse in condition than in the beginning, and we have a strong evidence of the truth of this remark.

When we look more closely into the individual habits of the people, the remark is still more convincing. The people of the first are of stouter frames and more enduring constitutions, and, upon an average, sleep only one third of their lives, while those of the latter, of smaller persons, whose constitutions and minds, from generations of slothfulness, have been enervated, for want of mental occupation sleep two thirds of theirs.

Let our experience follow them to the camp, where we have met, and contrast their habits with the people of the northern nation. Here we see the Mexican soldier wrapped in his blanket, and shivering in the sunshine, while the Texian, in his shirt sleeves and open collar, thinks the weather pleasant. We see their officers with a cumbrous cortège, and all the paraphernalia of the boudoir to invite sleep; while the Texian officer, with his saddle-blanket as a cover and his saddle for a pillow, indulges only when Nature can no longer resist. The Mexican officer looks upon his huge load of bedding as essential among the munitions of war as the Texian does upon his dry powder and well-placed double sights. That which is considered so essential to the one, is looked upon by the other as a womanish effeminacy which would be his disgrace. The former rises in the morning, and, with a piece [390] of sweet bread as large as one's thumb, drinks his half a gill of chocolate, which serves him until dinner, when the enormous quantity of red peppers he eats stimulates him into a siesta, which he looks upon as necessary to his existence, while the latter rises from his solitary