phora mangle), which forms a true delta between the rivers Alvarado, San Juan, and Goasacualco.

The Mexicans now possess all the gardenstuffs and fruit-trees of Europe. It is not easy to indicate which of the former existed in the new continent before the arrival of the Spaniards, The same uncertainty prevails among botanists as to the species of turnips, salads, and cabbage cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. We know with certainty that the Americans were always acquainted with onions (in Mexican xonacatl), haricots (in Mexican, ayacotli, in the Peruvian or Quichua language purutu), gourds, (in Peruvian capallu), and several varieties of cicer. Cortez speaking of the eatables which were daily sold in the market of the ancient Tenochtitlan, expressly -says, that every kind of garden-stuff (legume) was to be found there, particularly onions, leeks, garlic, garden and water-cresses (mastuerzo y berro), borrage, sorrel, and artichokes (cardo y tagarninas). It appears that no species of cabbage or turnip (brassica et raphanus) was cultivated in America, although the indigenous are very fond of dressed herbs. They mixed together all sorts of

* Lorenzana, p. 103; Garcilasso, p. 278 and 336; Acosta, p. 245, Onions were unknown in Peru, and the chochos of America were not the garavanzos (cicer arietinum). I know not whether the famous frisolitos of Vera Cruz, which have become an object of exportation, descend from a phaseolus of Spain, or whether they are a variety of the Mexican ayacotli.

leaves, and even flowers, and they called this dish iraca. It appears that the Mexicans had originally no pease; and this fact is so much the more remarkable, as our pisum sativum is believed to grow wild on the north-west coast of America*.

In general, if we consider the garden-stuffs of the Aztecs, and the great number of farinaceous roots cultivated in Mexico and Peru, we see that America was by no means so poor in alimentary plants as has been advanced by some learned men from a false spirit of system, who were only acquainted with the new world through the works of Herrera and Solis. The degree of civilization of a people has no relation with the variety of productions which are the objects of its agriculture or gardening. This variety is greater or less as the communications between remote regions have been more or less frequent, or as nations separated from the rest of the human race in very distant periods have been in a situation of greater or less insulation. We must not be astonished at not finding among the Mexicans of the 16th century the vegetable stores now contained in our gardens. The Greeks and Romans even neither knew spinach nor cauliflowers, nor scorzoneras, nor

* In the Queen Charlotte Islands, and in Norfolk or Tchinkitané Bay.-Voyage de Marchand, tom. i. p. 226 and 360. Were these pease not sown there by some European navigator? We know that cabbages have lately become wild in New Zealand.

artichokes, nor a great number of other kitchen vegetables.

The central table-land of New Spain produces in the greatest abundance cherries, prunes, peaches, apricots, figs, grapes, melons, apples, and pears. In the environs of Mexico, the villages of San Augustin de las Cuevas and Tacubaya, the famous garden of the convent of Carmelites, at San Angel, and that of the family of Fagoaga, at Tanepantla, yield in the months of June, July, and August, an immense quantity of fruit, for the most part of an exquisite taste, although the trees are in general very ill taken care of. The traveller is astonished to see in Mexico, Peru, and New Grenada, the tables of the wealthy inhabitants loaded at once with the fruits of temperate Europe, ananas*, different species of passiflora and tacsonia, sapotes, mameis, goyavas, anonas, chilimoyas, and other valuable productions of the torrid zone. This variety of fruits is to be found in almost all the country from Guatimala to New California. In studying the history of the conquest, we admire the extraordinary rapidity with which the Spani

*The Spaniards, in their first navigations, were in the custom of embarking ananas, which, when the passage was short, were eaten in Spain. They were presented to Charles the Fifth, who thought the fruit very beautiful, but would not taste them. We found the anana growing wild, and of the most exquisite flavour, at the foot of the great mountain of Duida, on the banks of the Alto Orinoco. The seed does not always miscarry. In 1594 the ananas was cultivated in China, where it had come from Peru.-Kircher China illustrata, p. 188.

ards of the 16th century spread the cultivation of the European vegetables along the ridge of the Cordilleras, from one extremity of the continent to the other. The ecclesiastics, and especially the religious missionaries, contributed greatly to the rapidity of this progress. The gardens of the convents and of the secular priests were so many nurseries, from which the recently imported vegetables were diffused over the country. The conquistadores even, all of whom we ought by no means to regard as warlike barbarians, addicted themselves in their old age to a rural life. These simple men, surrounded by Indians, of whose language they were ignorant, cultivated in preference, as if to console them in their solitude, the plants which recalled to them the plains of Estramadura and the Castilles. The epoqua at which an European fruit ripened for the first time was distinguished by a family festival. It is impossible to read without being warmly affected what is related by the inca Garcilasso as to the manner of living of these first colonists. He relates, with an exquisite naiveté, how his father, the valorous Andres de la Vega, collected together all his old companions in arms to share with him three asparaguses, the first which ever grew on the table-land of Cuzco.

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, Mexico and the Cordilleras of South America produced several fruits, which bear great analogy to those of the temperate climates of the old continent. The

physiognomy of vegetables bears always a great mutual resemblance where the temperature and humidity are the same. The mountainous part of South America has a cherry (padus capuli), nut, apple, mulberry, strawberry, rubus, and gooseberry, which are peculiar to it, and which will be made known by M. Bonpland and myself in the botanical part of our travels. Cortez relates that he saw, on his arrival at Mexico, besides the indigenous cherries, which are very acid, prunes, ciruelas. He adds, that they entirely resemble those of Spain. I doubt the existence of these Mexican prunes, although the Abbe Clavigero also mentions them. Perhaps the first Spaniards took the fruit of the spondias, which is a drupa ovoide, for European prunes.

Although the western coast of New Spain be washed by the Great Ocean, and although Mendaña, Gaetano, Quiros, and other Spanish navigators were the first who visited the islands situated between America and Asia, the most useful productions of these countries, the bread-fruit, the flax of New Zealand (phormium tenax), and the sugar-cane of Otaheite, remained unknown to the inhabitants of Mexico. These vegetables, after travelling round the globe, will reach them gradually from the West India islands. They were left by Captain Bligh at Jamaica, and they have propagated rapidly in the island of Cuba, Trinidad, and on the coast of Caraccas. The bread-fruit

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