THE MILLIONAIRES OF YUCATAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8101, 29 August 1904, Page 3

THE MILLIONAIRES OF YUCATAN.

FOURTEEN MADE FROM HEJNEQUEN. fXcu' Orleans Timea-Democrai.) Theiv are forty millionaires in Merida. the capital of Yucatan. Every thousandth person has a million or more. Sisal hemp, or heivequen, has made Merida and its peoplo rich. All of iho streets and. passageways in the city are to be paved -with asphalt. One of th& brown-skinned millionaires must- pay £37,400 in taxes toward the expense. A railroad is to be built to Mexico City. The hemp-growers of Merida have contributed six million to the enterprise. This great sum of money was pledged within a week. Immense wealth has come to Yucatan in a few years. Henequen has always been grown. The insurrection of the Philip pines against Spain cut off a large part of the hemp supply of the' world. The war between Spain and the United Statesand the events which followed it practically destroyed the hemp industry in th? Philippine Islands. The world turned ekeuhsre in its Heed. The henequen of Yucatan shot iip in price. Men who grew it became opulent almost in a day. Their prosperity continues. The plutocrats of Yucatan go to Pari' when they travel. There they buy jewel--and gowns for their women, wine for themselves, and furniture for their houses. On of them never leaves home unless he and his wife wear £8000 in jewellery upon their persons. He has rare diamonds on his fingers ; she is made conspicuous by huge rubies in her ears and by beautiful chains about her n«ek. Ten, sometimes twenty, steamers a month, leave the coast of Yucatan wfth hemp for tho world outside. Practically all of them eail to ports in the United States — New York, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Portland and Mobile. The prosperity of Yucatan has caused all Mexico to talk, to -hope and to contrive. A hemp plautation was more profitable than a silver mine, and so men journeyed by wat«r and land far to the south. They sought to buy henequen plants to take them home and experiment. But th? hemp-growers would not ©ell. Here and there a few plants were obtained and born© away. But they withered and died. Thus arose the story that the plants had been" scalded in Yucatan by unscrupulous persons, who -wanted to show that henequen vowld not grow elsewhere in Mexico. By strategy, however a man in Victoria, hundreds of miles north of Merida, obtained a number of healthy plants. Now he haa 300,000 growing on Iris own land, and he says they are doing well. Nevertheless, Yucatan is the natural habitat of hentquen. The land upon which it is planted is underlaid with limestone, and is flat and only eighteen inches above the level of the sea. Some water and great heat «r© necessary in its cultivation. Whit© men, unaccustomed to the tropics, could not long survive where Iwnequen is grown. The hemp monopolists go to Morida to live, and Merida, rich, • arrogant, ostentatious, has yellow fever somewhere within its precincts ev«ry day in the year. It has insects that bite all night; insects that will deposit eggs beneath the nails of fing«re while on« sleeps, insects that hid* within the skin, insects that raise blisters like a bum. There are lizards in that country, too, and bugs big enough to be \hunted with guas. Therefore, monopoly in one part- of the world, at leasts has its perils and chastisements.