progress of population in New Spain. The frightful dearth of 1784 was the consequence of a strong frost, which was felt at an epoqua when it was least to be expected in the torrid zone, the 28th August, and at the inconsiderable height of 1800 metres above the level of the ocean.

*

Of all the gramina cultivated by man none is so unequal in its produce. This produce varies in the same field according to the changes of humidity and the mean temperature of the year, from 40 to 200 or 300 for one. If the harvest is good, the colonist makes his fortune more rapidly with maize than with wheat; and we may say,that this cultivation participates in both the advantages and disadvantages of the vine. The price of maize varies from two livres ten sous to 25 livres the fanega. The mean price is five livres in the interior of the country; but it is increased so much by the carriage, that during my stay in the intendancy of Guanaxuato, the fanega cost at Salamanca 9, at Queretaro 12, and at San Luis Potosi 22 livres. In a country where there are no magazines, and where the natives merely live from hand to mouth, the people suffer terribly whenever the maize remains for any length of time at two piastres or ten livres the fanega. The natives then feed on unripe fruit, on cactus berries, and on roots. This insufficient food occa

*5904 feet. Trans.

sions diseases among them; and it is observed that famines are usually accompanied with a great mortality among the children.

In warm and very humid regions the maize will yield from two to three harvests annually; but generally only one is taken. It is sown from the middle of June till near the end of August. Among the numerous varieties of this gramen there is one of which the ear ripens two months after the grain has been sown. This precious variety is well known in Hungary, and M. Parmentier has endeavoured to introduce the cultivation of it into France. The Mexicans who inhabit the shores of the South Sea give the preference to another, which Oviedo* affirms he saw in his time, in the province of Nicaragua, and which is reaped in between thirty and forty days. I remember also to have observed it near Tomependa, on the banks of the river of the Amazons; but all these varieties of maize of which the vegetation is so rapid appear to be of a less farinaceous grain, and almost as small as the zea caragua of Chili.

The utility which the Americans draw from maize is too well known for my dwelling on it. The use of rice is not more various in China and the East Indies. The ear is eaten boiled or roasted. The grain when beat yields a nutritive

* Lib. VII. c. 1. p. 103.

ix.

. IX

bread (arepa) though not fermented and ill baked, on account of the small quantity of gluten mixed with the amylaceous fecula. The meal is employed like gruel in the boullies, which the Mexicans call atolli, in which they mix sugar, honey; and sometimes even ground potatoes. The botanist Hernandez * describes sixteen species of atollis which were made in his time.

A chemist would have some difficulty in preparing the innumerable variety of spirituous, acid, or sugary beverages, which the Indians display a particular address in making, by infusing the grain of maize, in which the sugary matter begins to develope itself by germination. These beverages, generally known by the name of chicha, have some of them a resemblance to beer and others to cider. Under the monastic government of the Incas it was not permitted in Peru to manufacture intoxicating liquors, especially those which are called Vinapu and Sorat. The Mexican despots were less interested in the public and private morals; and drunkenness was very common among the Indians of the times of the Aztec dynasty. But the Europeans have multiplied the enjoyments of the lower people by the introduction of the sugar-cane. At present in every elevation the Indian has his particular drinks.

* Lib. VII. c. 40. p. 244.

+ Garcilasso, lib. VIII. c. 9. (Tom. I. p. 277.) Acosta, lib. IV. c. 16. P. 238.

The plains in the vicinity of the coast furnish him with spirit from the sugar-cane, (guarapo, or aguardiente de caña), and the chicha de manioc. The chicha de mais abounds on the declivity of the Cordilleras. The central table-land is the country of the Mexican vines, the agave plantations, which supply the favourite drink of the natives, the pulque de maguey. The Indian in easy circumstances adds to these productions of the American soil a liquor still dearer and rarer, grape brandy (aguardiente de Castilla), partly furnished by European commerce, and partly distilled in the country. Such are the numerous resources of a people who love intoxicating liquors to excess.

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Mexicans and Peruvians pressed out the juice of the maize-stalk to make sugar from it. They not only concentrated this juice by evaporation; they knew also to prepare the rough sugar by cooling the thickened syrup. Cortez, describing to the Emperor Charles V. all the commodities sold in the great market of Tlatelolco, on his entry into Tenochtitlan, expressly names the Mexican sugar. "There is sold," says he, "honey of bees and wax, honey from the stalks of maize, which are as sweet as sugar-cane, and honey from a shrub called by the people maguey. The natives make sugar of these plants, and this sugar they also sell." The stalk of all the gramina contains sugary matter, especially near the knots,

The quantity of the sugar that maize can furnish in the temperate zone appears, however, to be very inconsiderable; but under the tropics its fistulous stalk is so sugary that I have frequently seen the Indians sucking it as the sugar-cane is sucked by the negros. In the valley of Toluca the stalk of the maize is squeezed between cylinders, and then is prepared from its fermented juice a spirituous liquor, called pulque de mahis, or tlaolli, a liquor which becomes a very important object of commerce.

From the statistical tables drawn up in the intendancy of Guadalaxara, of which the population is more than half a million of inhabitants, it appears extremely probable that, communibus annis, the actual produce of maize in all New Spain amounts to more than 17 millions of fanegas, or more than 800 millions of kilogrammes* of weight. This grain will keep in Mexico, in the temperate climates, for three years, and in the valley of Toluca and all the levels of which the mean temperature is below 14 centigrade degrees†, for five or six years, especially if the dry stalk is not cut before the ripe grain has been somewhat struck with the frost.

In good years the kingdom of New Spain. produces much more maize than it can consume.

* 1765 millions of pounds avoirdupoise. Trans.

† 57° of Fahren.

VOL. II.

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