There are about eighty Indians attached to this estate. Their wages is one dollar per month and a sack of corn, which contains about two bushels, worth here from thirty-seven and a half to fifty cents per sack; but the amount of wages varies in different parts of the country. In some sections laborers are employed by the job—so much for cutting down wood, the work being measured out; so much for planting an acre; and in the same way for taking in the crops, &c., the prices of which are regulated by custom; but they are all under as abject bondage at present as if they had been born slaves. Their wages, low as they are—owing to the few wants of these people—more than cover their necessary expenses; but the taxes, and the feasts of the church, absorb all the surplus. I have known an Indian to expend his month’s pay, and all he was possessed of besides, in the purchase of candles and trinkets for a single festival day; the former to burn before, and the latter to decorate, his tutelar saint. They are permitted to build their huts on the lands of the estate without cost. Among those I visited, the best were miserable enough; consisting merely of poles driven perpendicularly into the ground, to support a thatched roof. Although plenty of soil is allowed them, they cultivate nothing for themselves Everything around them indicates indolence and squalid poverty. In my rambles in the neighborhood of the hacienda, I discovered, at about the distance of a mile, a sonata, situated in a dell of the most romantic appearance; the sides, rising to the height of a hundred feet, are circular, and are formed of broken and cragged rocks, overgrown with trees, bushes, and vines. The water is about ten fathoms deep, clear and good; and always remains without fluctuation except once or twice a year, in seasons of heavy rains or extreme drought. There appears to be but one place at the margin where the water is accessible. A part of a stone wall is here perceptible, and also steps beneath the surface. Less romantic places than this have made more than one chapter in the mythology of the ancient Greeks.