Liberty Advocate

A Mexican Cart.—I have several times spoken of Mexican carts—a more rude contrivance taken all in all, can scarcely be conceived. If in this country of locomotives, railroad cars, and well built stage coaches, the searcher after antiquarian relics and curiosities should, by any chance, meet with a Mexican cart, he would look upon it as the first, the original attempt of man to construct a wheel carriage.—Neither iron or steel, paint nor polish, spoke-shave nor plane, is used in its fabrication—but give a Mexican a sufficiency of brittle cotton wood and raw hide, and he has the materials; give him but one of his own clumsy and ill-contrived axes and an auger, and he has all the tools he wants wherewith to furnish a cart. Out of the first cutting of a cotton-wood, he hews an oblong block, through the centre of which he bores and burns a hole for the axletree; he next digs, you cannot say cuts, two pieces from the same tree forming them into segments of a circle, which he pins to the sides of the aforesaid oblong mass by means of long wooden pegs. The wheel is now finished. Should it not happen to be round, it is of little consequence—it is near enough that shape for all Mexican purposes. From the same wood he next cuts his axletree and the body of his cart, the latter fastened together by raw hide. Then comes the tongue, which is also dug from the same source whence came the wheels. and the vehicle is finished. When in motion the wheels stagger, wabble, and wander about, apparently in every direction but the right one, and as they slowly revolve upon their axletrees, the want of friendly grease is made painfully manifest by the most distressing groans and screeches—exeruciating noises which can be heard for miles. Should his journey be of but one or two days' duration, the driver only carries one or two extra axletrees, to guard against breakage; if he is to be absent a week, one-half of his load consists of those indispensables, else he never gets to his journey's end.—Santa Fe Expedition.