There is one advantage we shall derive from the war: we shall become better acquainted with our southern neighbor, and she will become better acquainted with us. Even in a geographical point of view, in spite of all the writers, from Humboldt down to the latest, and in spite of all the map makers, the American public, is very imperfectly acquainted with Mexico. In nothing is this more remarkable than in the extent of surface, distance of places, and in the amount of population, of which we have no adequate conception. The ignorance of the Mexicans respecting the United States is, of course, still greater. When Santa Anna invaded Texas he actually spoke of marching to Washington in case our Government interfered! We have very little idea of the distance from the Rio Grande to the capital of Mexico; but the thousands who have marched over it in various directions, and the numerous publications giving accounts of military expeditions, will render the country more familiar to our people than it could be in the usual course of things, in fifty years. In our imaginations, it has been a region of romance, associated with gold and silver, with a climate and beauty of an earthly paradise. Our soldiers and volunteers will return with very different impressions; taken as a whole, it is vastly inferior to the United States, in natural wealth, in fertility of soil, in climate, and in everything calculated to minister to human happiness. That incessant craving for the delights of the land of Montezuma, will be effectually cured, and with it, that wild spirit of conquest, which has prevailed until now, in the southern and western portions of the confederacy. It will be effectually cured, and nothing else would have cured it. We shall rest satisfied that our own is, incomparably, a finer country, and, in fact, one of the most favored portions of the Globe. We have no _tierras calientes_, where the vegetable growth is, indeed, most luxuriant, but man looses all his energy, and becomes little better than a vegetable. Their _tierras templadas_, or temperate lands, in general, are barren rocks or dry plains, which cannot be cultivated without irrigation. And when we look at the population, their want of well ordered government, the barbarous ignorance and indolence of the masses, their religious, or rather superstitious bigotry, their robberies and assassinations in cold blood, where is the American who would not prefer his own country? We have, no doubt, many things among us to deplore and to amend; but what are these in comparison to the state of things continually presented in those countries which are said to be “blessed of God and cursed of man?” I do not assent to the first part of this expression, for, I believe, there is no portion of the