You do not see the great contrasts of wealth so marked in Mexico City. The whole town has an air of prosperity, and it is not an air merely--it is a fact. During the past twenty years the group of large henequen growers--about a score--have divided among themselves as a result of this "green gold," no less than 800,000,000 Mexican dollars. And this vast sum has percolated through the whole place. Merida is a Monte Carlo for extravagance and extortion. There is no social standard but £ s. d. A man is or is not great socially in proportion to his banking account. Nowhere in the world probably is money so absolutely God as here. We shall show later what moral effect this fact has had upon the citizens, and through them upon the whole of so-called civilised Yucatan. Corruption and venality are rampant. Few races have stamina enough to resist the corroding influences of sudden wealth. The silver mines of Mexico proved the knell of Spanish imperial greatness. Lord Beaconsfield said once, "Only a great man can stand power." In Yucatan wealth is power, the only power, and the Yucatecans stand it very badly. In this city of mushroom millionaires everything is naturally very dear. Food is practically all imported. We had been told that at our hotel it was impossible to get a square meal for less than five dollars (ten shillings). It was not quite so bad as that, but for half that sum it is true enough you could only get just such a snack as an honestly hungry Briton would regard as a wholly inadequate quick-lunch-talk-business-while-you-eat style of meal. Few of the Yucatecans eat out of their own houses, and thus restaurants--at any rate of the cleanly and better class--are few and far between. Those which do exist are literally dens of robbers. The traveller in Yucatan--as indeed in all Mexico--has to learn what to a Briton, accustomed to more or less trust his fellow-man, is a very unpleasant lesson, namely that you can trust no one. The only safety on ordering a meal is to first drive a bargain. You must know down to the smallest roll or condiment what your repast is going to cost you. No Merida hotels or restaurants ever attach prices to their menus. They know a trick worth two of that. Each restaurateur is a gastronomic Procrustes who cuts his prices according to "the cut" of his customers. An article served at twenty-five centavos to one diner will at the next table boom to fifty at the discretion of the subtle waiter. It is very hard to always remember to do this unpleasant bargaining before you take your place at a table. But you are literally lost if you do not. On this glorious Sunday morning we were successfully caught in a place where they charged four shillings for three glasses of lemonade and three or four fly-blown cakes. The cakes you would get anywhere for a penny, and lemons could be bought in the street outside at six a penny.