The Indians may therefore be regarded as somewhat prepared by degradation for the system of _repartimientos_, which, as we have already seen in the historical part of this work, was instituted immediately after the conquest. The aborigines throughout Mexico have been devoted as a class to agricultural labors. Immediately after the conquest the Spaniards forced them to toil in the mines as well as in the fields; but as soon as a race of mixed blood was found to replace these original laborers in the bowels of the earth, the native Indian escaped to wilder districts where there were no mines, or where his services were required on the surface of the earth. Besides this, since the revolution, labor has been somewhat more free than before that epoch. The Indian, if not bound to the estate, by the slavery of debt, as we shall see hereafter, has the right to do what he pleases, and consequently he selects that labor which will give him support with least fatigue in a country whose soil is almost spontaneously productive. The Mexican Indian, may therefore be generally designated as an agriculturist. A few of them engage in the manufacture of certain elegant fabrics of wool and cotton; in some of the _imitative_ arts, in which they greatly excel; and in the formation of utensils for domestic use. In the field, the Indian executes all the labor,--sometimes in the midst of the great plantations of sugar, cotton, coffee, corn, tobacco, wheat, and barley--or, at others, in the midst of the beautiful gardens for which some parts of the republic are celebrated. In all these positions his labor is faithfully performed;--but he is the enemy of all changes in the modes or utensils of his work. He prefers the old system of drawing water for irrigation; the old system of rooting the earth with the Arab stake instead of the American plough; the old system of carrying offal, stones, or whatever is to be removed from his fields, in bags, instead of in barrows or carts; and the old system of bearing every burden, no matter how onerous, on his shoulders instead of a dray or a wagon. It offends him to speak of changes, which he regards as unrighteous innovations. His character, like that of the Chinese, is one of excessive tenacity for old customs. After three centuries of constant intercourse with strange races, he still segregates himself from the foreigner, and, nestling in his native village, keeps aloof from the Spaniard. He speaks his hereditary language; clings to his old habits; and,--according to the report of reliable travellers,--worships, occasionally in private, his ancestral idols. In the capital, garlands which have been secretly suspended on the images by Indians, are still sometimes found around the hideous Aztec divinities preserved in the court yard of the University. "You gave us three very good gods"--said an Indian once to a respectable Catholic curate,--"yet you might as well have left us a few of our own!"