Ethnic conditions--Spanish, Mestizos, Indians--Colour-line--Foreign element--The _peones_--Land tenure--The Spanish people--The native tribes--The Apaches--The Mexican constitution--Class distinctions-- Mexican upper class--Courtesy and hospitality--Quixotism of the Mexicans--Idealism and eloquence--General characteristics--Ideas of progress--American anomalies--_Haciendas_--Sport--Military distinctions--Comparison with Anglo-Saxons--Republicanism--Language-- Life in the cities--Warlike instincts--The women of Mexico--Mexican youths--Religious observance--Romantic Mexican damsels--The bull-fights. The Mexican people are divided for sociological or ethnological purposes into three divisions--the people of purely white European or Spanish descent, those of combined European and native races, and the pure-blooded Indians. The first have been technically termed _Criollas_, or Creoles, although the designation has, of recent years, been used in a different sense; the second _Mestizos_, or mixed race; whilst the third, the _Indios_, are the direct descendants of the peoples who occupied the country in pre-Hispanic times. The total population is estimated at fifteen million souls, or possibly slightly under. Of this, according to the census of 1900, the people of purely white descent numbered about 19 per cent.; the Mestizos, who may be looked upon as the typical Mexicans of to-day, 43 per cent.; whilst the remaining 38 per cent. were assigned as the proportion for the Indians. The figures and divisions cannot be looked upon, however, as arbitrary or exact. At the present time it is considered that the Mestizo class probably embraces more than half of the total, whilst the real proportion of people of absolutely pure white race is probably much less than described, possibly not more than 10 per cent., as the mixture permeates all classes.