springs, besides the sea water drink the juice of the sugar-cane. The most part of civilized nations draw their drinks from the same plants which constitute the basis of their nourishment, and of which the roots or seeds contain the sugary principle united with the amylaceous substance. Rice in southern and eastern Asia, in Africa the igname root with a few arums, and in the north of Europe cerealia, furnish fermented liquors. There are few nations who cultivate certain plants merely with a view to prepare beverages from them. The old continent affords us no instance of vine plantations but to the west of the Indus. In the better days of Greece this cultivation was even confined to the countries situated between the Oxus and Euphrates, to Asia Minor and western Europe. On the rest of the globe nature produces species of wild vitis; but nowhere else did man endeavour to collect them round him to ameliorate them by cultivation. But in the new continent we have the example of a people who not only extracted liquors from the amylaceous and sugary substance of the maize, the manioc, and bananas, or from the pulp of several species of mimosa, but who cultivated expressly a plant of the family of the ananas, to convert its juice into a spirituous liquor. On the interior table-land, in the intendancy of Puebla,and in that of Mexico, we run over vast extents of country, where the eye reposes only on fields planted with pittes or maguey. This plant, of a coriaceous and prickly leaf, which with the cactus opuntia has become wild since the sixteenth century throughout all the south of Europe, the Canary Islands, and the coast of Africa, gives a particular character to the Mexican landscape. What a contrast of vegetable forms between a field of grain, a plantation of agave, and a groupe of bananas, of which the glossy leaves are constantly of a tender and delicate green! Under every zone, man, by multiplying certain vegetable productions, modifies at will the aspect of the country under cultivation. In the Spanish colonies there are several species of maguey which deserve a careful examination, and of which several, on account of the division of their corolla, the length of their stamina, and the form of their stigmata, appear to belong to different genus! The maguey or metl cultivated in Mexico are numerous varieties of the agave Americana, which has become so common in our gardens, with yellow fasciculated and straight leaves, and stamina twice as long as the pinking of the corolla. We must not confound this metl with the agave cubensis* of Jacquin (floribus ex albo virentibus, longe paniculatis, pendulis, staminibus corolla du *In the provinces of Caraccas and Cumana the agave cubensis (a. odorata Persoon) is called maguey de Cocuy. I have seen stocks (hampes) loaded with flowers from 12 to 14 metres in height (from 38 to 45 English feet). At Caraccas the agave Americana is called maguey de Cocuiza. plo brevioribus), called by M. Lamarck a. Mexicana, and which has been believed by some botanists, for what reason I know not, the principal object of the Mexican cultivation. * The plantations of the maguey de pulque extend as far as the Aztec language. The people of the Otomite, Totonac, and Mistec race, are not addicted to the octli, which the Spaniards call pulque. On the central plain we hardly find the maguey cultivated to the north of Salamanca. The finest cultivations which I have had occasion to see are in the valley of Toluca and on the plains of Cholula. The agaves are there planted in rows at a distance of 15 decimetres from one another. The plants only begin to yield the juice which goes by the name of honey, on account of the sugary principle with which it abounds, when the hampe is on the point of its development. It is on this account of the greatest importance for the cultivator to know exactly the period of effiorescence. Its proximity is announced by the direction of the radical leaves, which are observed by the Indians with much attention. These leaves, which are till then inclined towards the earth, rise all of a sudden; and they endeavour to form a junction to cover the hampe which is on the point of formation. The bundle of central leaves (el co * 58 inches. Trans. razon) becomes at the same time of a clearer green, and lengthens perceptibly. I have been informed by the Indians that it is difficult to be deceived in these signs, but that there are others of no less importance which cannot be precisely described, because they have merely a reference to the carriage of the plant. The cultivator goes daily through his agave plantations to mark those plants which approach efflorescence. If he has any doubt, he applies to the experts of the village, old Indians, who, from long experience, have a judgment or rather tact more securely to be relied on. Near Cholula, and between Toluca and Cacanumacan, a maguey of eight years old gives already signs of the development of its hampe. They then begin to collect the juice, of which the pulque is made. They cut the corazon, or bundle of central leaves, and enlarge insensibly the wound, and cover it with lateral leaves, which they raise up by drawing them close, and tying them to the extremities. In this wound the vessels appear to deposit all the juice which would have formed the colossal hampe loaded with flowers. This is a true vegetable spring, which keeps running for two or three months, and from which the Indian draws three or four times a day. We may judge of the quickness or slowness of the mo tion of the juice by the quantity of honey extracted from the maguey at different times of the day. A foot commonly yields, in twenty-four hours, four cubic decimetres, or 200 cubic inches*, equal to eight quartillos. Of this total quantity they obtain three quartillos at sun-rise, two at mid-day, and three at six in the evening. A very vigorous plant sometimes yields 15 quartillos, or 375 cubic inches† per day, for from four to five months, which amounts to the enormous volume of more than 1100 cubic decimetres. This abundance of juice produced by a maguey of scarcely a metre and a half in height || is so much the more astonishing, as the agave plantations are in the most arid grounds, and frequently on banks of rocks hardly covered with vegetable earth. The value of a maguey plant near its efflorescence is at Pachuca five piastres §, or 25 francs. In a barren soil the Indian calculates the produce of each maguey at 150 bottles, and the value of the pulque furnished in a day at from 10 to 12 sols. The produce is unequal, like that of the vine, which varies very much in its quantity of grapes. I have already mentioned the case of an Indian woman of Cholula who bequeathed to her children maguey plantations valued at 70 or 80 thousand piastres. The cultivation of the agave has real advantages * 242 cubic inches English. Trans. +454 cubic inches. Trans. 67,130 cubic inches. 4 feet. Trans. Trans. § 5 piastres 1. 2s. 4d. Trans. |