We have said that the Mexicans are an hospitable people, and this is eminently true of the upper class. As to the _peones_, they are, in the more remote districts, by no means of an untractable or surly character, although the lowest in the scale, and some of the Indian tribes, are excessively stupid and suspicious. The Mexicans of better class divide these people into _gente de razon_, or "rational" people, and _gente intratable_, or people with whom it is almost impossible to treat or to comprehend. These people vary much throughout the country, but as a rule they are unaggressive and harmless. Whilst thieving is generally ascribed as a strong vice of the Mexican lower class, this must not be rashly applied. The _peon_, or Indian, may take articles of small value which are left about, but he does not commit crime in order to rob; and the extraordinary outrages constantly perpetrated in the "Wild West" of the United States, in the shootings, "holding-up" of passenger trains, wrecking of express cars by dynamite, bank robbery, and the like exploits of the Anglo-American desperado, to steal, are unknown to the temperament of the Spanish-American. The latter are creatures of impulse, and lack the "nerve" for a well-planned murderous exploit of the above nature. Nor are they capable of the lynching, burnings of negroes, and race riots which characterise those parts of the United States which bound Mexico on the north, and once formed part of her territory. If, however, their crimes are smaller, so is their power of initiative, sustained effort, and the working for to-morrow characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-American peoples. Yet the police are much in evidence in Mexican travel. A _gendarme_ with sabre and revolver accompanies every car on the trains which cross the great plateau. Indeed, in former years robbery with violence was the chief "incident" of travel in Mexico. Footpads and armed _bandidos_ infested every highway and mountain road twenty years ago, and travel was impossible except with an armed escort. But this was before the work of President Diaz and his _rurales_. The conditions are now very different, and the traveller may journey almost anywhere, except in a few districts, without danger of molestation, with ordinary precautions such as the characteristic conditions of the country call for. In those places where the _peones_ are distrustful of the white foreigners it is generally due to the influence of these, who have ingrained their own bad habits and vices upon them. A gentleman, if he holds the demeanour covered by the designation, ever carries respect in Mexico.