The country was well suited for agriculture and grazing, but the population--a very queer mixture of races--was indolent, and more given to keeping holidays and festivals than to honest labor.

Most of them were unintelligent; those who were intelligent made their living out of those who weren't, a method of subsistence satisfactory to the individual, but adding little to the aggregate of national wealth.

Only two classes made fortunes of any size, Government officials and bar-keepers, and even in their case the wealth was not great, looked at by an English or American standard.
Production was slack, invention at a standstill, and taxation heavy.

I suppose the President's talents were more adapted to founding a state in the shock and turmoil of war, than to the dull details of administration; and although he was nominally assisted by a cabinet of three ministers and an assembly comprising twenty-five members, it was on his shoulders that the real work of government fell.

On him, therefore, the moral responsibility must also rest--a burden the President bore with a cheerfulness and equanimity almost amounting to unconsciousness.
I first set foot in Aureataland in March, 1880, when I was landed on the beach by a boat from the steamer, at the capital town of Whittingham.