Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1882 — The Wealthiest Man in Mexico. [ARTICLE]

The Wealthiest Man in Mexico.

From Nuevo Laredo, on the Rio Grande, to the Solado River the ride is devoid of interest, and during it the best thing to do is to reclihe comfortably in one of the airy coaches and sleep. Southwest of the Solado, a table-land some 3,500 feet high may be seen. The sides are rocky and almost perpendicular, the top level and covered here and there with forests of timber. The tableland, or mesa, as it is styled by the Mexicans, has a surface area of 400,000 acres. It is owned by Patricio Milmo, an Irishman married m a Mexican family, the wealthiest man in Mexico, worth, I am informed, something more than $10,000,000. Milmo’s mesa has a reputation all over the country. A part of it is cultivated for corn, grapes, sugar cane and maguey. Milmo’s residence is on the summit—a handsome stone structure, very large arid ornamented by cornices and pillars imported from France and the United States. The interior is like a palace, and so rich with gold and silver and precious stones that the eye is dazzled with their splendor. Milmo is President of the bank of Mexico, an institution with power and privileges in this country as great as are the Bank of England’s in Britain. His father-in-law, Santiago Yidarri, yvas executed for supplying money to revolutionists, and lie himself narrowly escaped a similar death, though he was connected in a monetary sense with the opposing forces. Since then brigands have captured him several times, and compelled him to pay from SIO,OOO to $25,000 ransom. These adventures taught him precaution, and he has turned the mesa into a sort of citadel, accessible by only a narrow path, obstructed by an iron gate of enormous proportions. He has distilleries and several factories, in which goods are manufactured for his own use, on the mesa, and intends to retire to his mansion whenever another insurrection is imminent. It is said that when he came to Mexico he did not have a dollar, and got his start in business from his father-in-law. —Mexico Letter.

In this section of the country, when the wind blows the leaves of the trees rustle, but out West when the breath of public scorn strikes a rascal ho leaves immediately after he is “rustled.” —New York Commercial Advertiser.