To this method of campaigning is due the disastrous state of the Territory, through a part of which we passed. The Mexican Government, presumably for economy's sake, sends the criminals from the Mexican gaols to fight the Indians. While we were in the islands a shipload of eighty of the worst specimens of half-bred Spanish gaol-birds passed on their way in a Government transport to Bravo's headquarters. Many of these men desert, and the forests around are infested thus with fellows who will murder you for a dollar. With these Mexican cut-throats come gangs of women, the most degraded and miserable manufactures of Mexican debauchery. The conditions of life in the barracks at Santa Cruz and Ascension Bay are such as literally defy description. The barracks are mere filthy sheds; the half-starved soldiers, their toes rotting off from jigger fleas, their skins foul with disease and vermin, and their miserable women companions, some dying of malaria or venereal disease, some far advanced in pregnancy, some mere girls not far in their 'teens, sleeping on sloping boarded benches all huddled together. There are no attempts at sanitary arrangements, and the details of the lives of these wretched men and women are really unfit for publication. Such men are not worthy of the name of troops; but they serve the Mexican purpose of hired slaughtermen in the Indian shambles which Mexico has created in Yucatan. Starvation and starvation alone will bring about the absolute subjection of the Indians of the east coast. The Federal Government has been lavish with its concessions; but they are not worth the printer's ink expended on their gazetting in the official newspapers of Mexico City. One land company has smashed, and La Compañía Colonisidora is living simply on credit. So large a sum as 400,000 dollars has, it is said, been advanced by the National Bank of Mexico to keep it going. The deduction from this is obvious. The Government, having made worthless concessions, must take steps to hoodwink the shareholders by squandering the revenues. As we have said, we have it on the authority of the officials on the spot that out of the 4,000 square miles of their concession, they were at the time of our visit working but 15 square miles, and there was little hope of materially increasing this profitable area. The "war" is now as far as possible restricted to the occasional "potting" of an Indian and the burning of his _milpas_ or maize-fields. In the extreme north-east, as we have stated in Chapter VII., the Indians have for the time being asserted their independence and are left in peace. The Mexican Government have no effective control of Eastern Yucatan, and they can never have save by a policy of merciless extermination unworthy of a Government which calls itself civilised.