CHAP. X.] KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN. 23 greater than that of New Spain, amounts to nearly 230,000 quintals. The cultivation of the cocoa-tree (cacari or cacava quahuitl) had already made considerable progress in Mexico in the time of Montezuma ; and it was there where the Spaniards obtained a knowledge of that precious tree, which they afterwards transplanted into the Canary and Philippine Islands. The Mexicans prepared a beverage called by them chocolatl, in which a little maize flour, vanilla (tlilxochitl) and the fruit of a species of spice (mecaxochitl) were mixed with the cocoa (cacahuatl). * They could even reduce the chocolate to cakes, and this art, the instruments used in grinding the cocoa, as well as the word chocolatl, have been transferred from Mexico to Europe. This is so much the more astonishing, as the cultivation of the cocoa is now almost totally * Hernandez, lib. ii. c. 15; lib. iii. c. 46; lib. V. c. 13. In the time of Hernandez, they distinguished four varieties of cocoa, called quauhcahuatl, mecacahuatl, xochicucahuatl, and tlalcacahuatl. This last variety had a very small seed the tree which produced it bore an analogy undoubtedly to the cocoa, which we found growing wild on the banks of the Orinoco, to the east of the mouth of the Yao. The cocoa tree cultivated for centuries, has a larger, sweeter, and more oily seed. We must not confound with the Theobroma Cacao the T. bicolor, of which I have given a drawing in our Plantes equinoxiales (t. i. pl. xxx. a. et b. p. 104.) and which is peculiar to the Province of Choco. Weights & Measures neglected. With difficulty we can find a few In the Provinces of Venezuela and Maracaybo In the Kingdom of Quito, from the Port of 60,000 The value of these eleven millions and a * 110 lb. oird. Trans. 1 livres tournois.* In the Spanish Colonies, cho. colate is not considered an object of luxury, but of prime necessity. It is, in fact, a very healthy and nutritive aliment, and is of particular assistance to travellers. The chocolate prepared at Mexico is of a superior quality, because the commerce of Vera Cruz and Açapulco, brings into New Spain the famous cocoa of Soconusco, (Xoconochco) from the coast of Guatimala; the cocoa of Gualan from, the gulph of Honduras near Omoa; of Uritucu near St. Sebastian, in the province of Caracas; of Capiriqual in the province of New Barcelona; and of Esmeralda in the kingdom of Quito. In the time of the Aztec kings, cocoa seeds were made use of as money in the great market of Tlatelolco, as shells were in the Maldivian Islands. The cocoa of Soconusco, cultivated at the eastern extremity of the Mexican Empire, was used for chocolate, and the small seed called Tlalcacahuatl. The kinds of inferior quality were used for money. "Knowing," says Cortez in his first letter to the Emperor Charles the V., "that in the province of Malinaltebeque, there was gold in abundance, "I engaged the Lord Montezuma to esta blish there a farm for your Majesty. He "went to work with so much zeal, that in * 1,900,1527. sterling. Trans. Product of Labout воз Human food - in himer # POLITICAL ESSAY ON THE [BOOK IV. "less than two months, sixty fanegas of maize The use of vanilla passed from the Aztecs * Lorenzana, p. 91. § 26. Clavigero, i. p. 4; ii. p. 209; iv. p. 207. con ecerre ieter tified. CHAP. X.] ton contra in one tren KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN. vous disorders (la baynilla da pasmo). A few When we consider the excessive price at |