Succeeding to a government that had been in the throes of revolution ever since the patriot-priest Hidalgo first proclaimed independence on the 16th of September, 1810, President Diaz at once restored peace to the country that has lasted for thirty years. Inheriting a bankrupt treasury from his predecessors, and a large foreign debt that had on several occasions brought about foreign intervention, he succeeded in placing the finances of the country in a prosperous condition and has accomplished more for Mexico than had been done in three centuries of Spanish rule. He organized the army along modern lines and established the _rurales_ which insured the safety of life and property. Railroads under the wise system of encouragement inaugurated by him have increased from three hundred and fifty miles to thirteen thousand five hundred miles; telegraph lines from four thousand five hundred miles to thirty-five thousand miles; the number of post-offices now number two thousand three hundred and fifty instead of seven hundred and twenty as it was in 1876. Imports and exports have doubled several times, and the annual balance sheet now shows a comfortable surplus instead of a deficit as in former days. All this has been done and old obligations met in spite of the serious loss in exchange due to the depreciation in silver, and the fact that the heavy foreign obligations had to be met in gold purchased with silver at a low and constantly varying valuation. [Illustration: A COMPANY OF _RURALES_] The life of Porfirio Diaz is fascinating. It savours of the days of knighthood and romance. We are reminded of those heroes of old around whom time has cast a glamour, for he has had adventures as exciting, escapes as miraculous and a life seemingly as charmed as any hero created by the masters of romance, and his life may well be termed “stranger than fiction.” One is naturally inclined to be rather eulogistic in his treatment of such a character. The present President of Mexico was born in the city of Oaxaca in an unimposing house on the Street of La Soledad, that is now used as a sugar factory, on the 15th of September, 1830, a day already celebrated in Mexican annals. His father, Captain José Faustini Diaz, was of Spanish descent and followed the occupation of innkeeper, but died when Porfirio was only three years of age. His maternal grandmother was a Mixteca Indian. The church and law were the only two occupations open to an ambitious youth in those days, and this young lad was intended for the former. He chose the law much to the disgust of his relatives but never followed that calling. The fighting blood in him impelled him to the sanguinary conflicts on the field rather than the bloodless battles in the courts between contending counsel.