(artocarpus incisa), of which I have seen considerable plantations in Spanish Guayana, would vegetate vigorously on the humid and warm coasts of Tabasco, Tustla, and San Blas. It is very improbable that this cultivation will ever supersede among the natives that of bananas, which, on the same extent of ground, furnish more nutritive substance. It is true that the artocarpus, for eight months in the year, is continually loaded with fruits, and that three trees are sufficient to nourish an adult individual*. But an arpent, or demi hectare of ground, can only contain from 35 to 40 bread-fruit trees,t; for when they are planted too near one another, and when their roots meet, they do not bear so great a quantity of fruit.

The extreme slowness of the passage from the Philippine Islands and Mariana to Acapulco, and the necessity in which the Manilla galeons are under of ascending to higher latitudes to get the north-west winds, render the introduction of vegetables from oriental Asia extremely difficult. Hence, on the western coast of Mexico we find no plant of China or the Philippine Islands, except the triphasia aurantiola (limonia trifoliata), an elegant shrub, of which the fruits are dressed, and which, according to Loureiro, is identical

* Georg Forster vom Brodbaume, 1784, s. xxiii.

+ See what has been already said on the comparative produce of banana, wheat, and potatoes, in a preceding part of this chapter.

with the citrus trifoliata, or karatats-banna of Kämpfer. As to the orange and citron trees, which in the south of Europe support, without any bad consequences, a cold for five or six days below 0*, they are now cultivated throughout all New Spain, even on the central table-land. It has frequently been discussed, if these trees existed in the Spanish colonies before the discovery of America, or if they were introduced by the Europeans from the Canary Islands, the island of St. Thomas, or the coast of Africa. It is certain that there is an orange-tree, of a small and bitter fruit, and a very prickly citron, yielding a green, round fruit, with a singularly oily bark, which is frequently hardly of the size of a large nut, growing wild in the island of Cuba and on the coast of Terra Firma. But notwithstanding all my researches, I could never discover a single individual in the interior of the forests of Guayana, between the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the frontiers of Brazil. Perhaps the small green citron (limoncito verde) was anciently cultivated by the natives; and perhaps it has only grown wild when the population, and consequently the extent of cultivated territory, were most considerable. I am inclined to believe that only the citron-tree, with large yellow fruit (limon sutil), and the sweet orange, were introduced by the Portuguese and Spaniards. We only saw them on the banks of the

* 32° of Fahrenheit. Trans.

† Oviedo, lib. viii. c. 1.

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Orinoco, where the Jesuits had established their missions. The orange, on the discovery of America, had only existed for a few centuries even in Europe. If there had been any ancient communication between the new continent and the islands of the South Sea, the true citrus aurantium might have arrived in Peru or Mexico by the way of the west; for this tree was found by M. Forster in the Hebrides islands, where it was seen by Quiros long before him*.

The great analogy between the climate of the table-land of New Spain and that of Italy, Greece,

and the south of France, ought to invite the Mexicans to the cultivation of the olive. This cultivation was successfully attempted at the beginning of the conquest, but the government, from an unjust policy, far from favouring, endeavoured rather indirectly to frustrate it. As far as I know there exists no formal prohibition; but the colonists have never ventured on a branch of national industry which would have immediately excited the jealousy of the mother country. The court of Madrid has always seen with an unfavourable eye

* Planta esculenta Insularum australium, p. 35. The common orange of the South Sea is the citrus decumana. The garcinia mangostana, of which the innumerable varieties are cultivated with so much care in the East Indies and in the Archipelago of the Asiatic Seas, is very much diffused within these ten years in the West India islands. It did not exist, however, in my time in Mexico.

the cultivation of the olive and the mulberry, hemp, flax, and the vine, in the new continent: and if the commerce of wines and indigenous oils has been tolerated in Peru and Chili, it is only because those colonies, situated beyond Cape Horn, are frequently ill provisioned from Europe, and the effect of vexatious measures is dreaded in provinces so remote. A system of the most odious prohibitions has been obstinately followed in all the colonies of which the coast is washed by the Atlantic Ocean. During my stay at Mexico the viceroy received orders from the court to pull up the vines (arancar las cepas) in the northern provinces of Mexico, because the merchants of Cadiz complained of a diminution in the consumption of Spanish wines. Happily this order, like many others given by the ministers, was never executed. It was judged that, notwithstanding the extreme patience of the Mexican people, it might be dangerous to drive them to despair by laying waste their properties and forcing them to purchase from the monopolists of Europe what the bounty of nature produces on the Mexican soil.

The olive-tree is very rare in all New Spain; and there exists but a single olive plantation, the beautiful one of the Archbishop of Mexico, situated two leagues south-east from the capital. This olivar del Arzobispo annually produces 200 arrobas (nearly 2500 kilogrammes *) of an oil of a

* 5,500 lb. avoird. Trans,

very good quality. We have already spoken of the olive cultivated by the missionaries of New California, especially near the village of San Diego. The Mexican, when at complete liberty in the cultivation of his soil, will in time dispense with the oil, wine, hemp, and flax of Europe. The Andalusian olive introduced by Cortez sometimes suffers from the cold of the central table-land; for although the frosts are not strong, they are frequent and of long duration. It might be useful to plant the Corsican olive in Mexico, which is more than any other calculated to resist the severity of the climate.

In terminating the list of alimentary plants, we shall give a rapid survey of the plants which furnish beverages to the Mexicans. We shall see that in this point of view the history of the Aztec agriculture presents us with a trait so much the more curious, as we find nothing analogous among a great number of nations much more advanced in civilization than the ancient inhabitants of Anahuac.

There hardly exists a tribe of savages on the face of the earth who cannot prepare some kind of beverage from the vegetable kingdom. The miserable hordes who wander in the forests of Guayana make as agreeable emulsions from the different palm-tree fruits as the barley water prepared in Europe. The inhabitants of Easter Island, exiled on a mass of arid rocks without