Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1891-05-15
From It the Poems Brew Pulque,
Weave Ixtle. Make Paper and
Build Houses-Distilling
the National Beverage.

industrial uses. Indian women take the
prickly points of the spiky leaves and
make pins and needles of them. Their
husbands thatch their huts with the
dried leaves and also burn them as fuel
when fire is to be kindled. 1t is a
wonderful plant, growing in profusion
throughout the plateau and generally in
soil where nothing else will thrive. AT
Toluca it is ,heaf of broad green blades
from three to ten feet in height. While
it grows wild in every patch OF neglected
ground, it is cultivated on a large scale
both for pulque and ixtlc, and is one of
the most profitable crops. On the line
of the Mexican National from the capital
al the way to the border fields and
patches of magueycs are the most famil-
lar objects of the landscape; but it is in
these central highlands that the most
vigorous plants are seen. 1t is here, too,
that the best pulque is made.
The Indian race, with its inexhausti
bic resources of patience, is admirably
fitted to stand watch over this plant and
to milk it at the proper times and sea-
sons. There are certain signs Of matur-
ity which do not escape the practised
eve. When the stem suddenly shoots
I'D and the bending leaves are straight
and bristlng the time for blooming is at
hand. The stem is then cut off and the
he1rt of the plant is pierced with
sharp spoon, and a cavity several inches
deep is made, so as to allow the sap to
collect. At sunrise, noon and at sunset
the honey-watcr, as it is called, is
drawn off by means of long gourd, ono
end Of which is in the liquid and the
other in the Indians mouth. From the
gourd the sap is emptied into ear'hen
lars and thence carried into cellars,
where it is to be sermented. The milk
ing continues day after day until the
Juice dries up. Then the leaves are cut
of. washed and dressed, and the fibre
is sent to market as ixtle and exported
in enormous quantities. One Indian can
take charge of 300 magueyes a day dur
ing the milking season. The dressing
of the leaves furnishes employment for
thousands Of Indian women, since it is
largely done by hand, the strength Of the
fibre being impaired by machinery. The
most vigorous plants, when they have
reached maturity in the eighth year,
will yield from three to seven
quarts of liquid a day for a
period of four or five months. These
are magueyes planted on good ground
and watered during dry seasons. The
plants at their best will produce as many
as twenty-five pounds of ixtle.
If allowed to blossom the maguey will
exhaust itself and die; but if protected |
against premature suicide it bears a
Sundredfold Growing ordinarily in a
chin and sterile soil, it seems to have |
power to draw milk and honey out of the
rocks. For productive energy it is one
of the marvels Of the vegetable kingdom.
As pulque is the national drink, the
maguey is accounted by stern moralists
to be the blighting curse of the country.
This seems to be an ill-considered indict-
ment of benefcient nature, which has
clothed the valleys and hiIIsides OF the
Mexican tableland with the blue green
verdure Of the Agave Americana. In the
hot lands where pulque is not made there
are worse liquors brewed from the set
things of cane-sugar. These would have
been a substitute in the highlands for
pulque, if the magueys had bloomed in
Mexico as in northern greenhouses- once
in q generation or a century. Pulque
when unfermented is as harmless as new
cider, and much of what is drunk in
enormous quantities by the poems Is of
this kind. Then there is the fermented
pulque. which, while rich in alcohol, is
not so maddening an intoxicant as the
cheap brandy aud rum brewed in Mexico
as we'll as in other Spanish. American
countries.
The Toltec tradition is that the ruin
and dispersion of the race were caused by
the discovery that cheering and ine-
briating drink could be distilled from
the prickly maguey clumps. 1t was a
woman, naturally enough, who made the
first honeyed brew and tempted man to
taste and find out how happy and wise
he could be; and the King was well
pleased with his draught and straight
way married the fair brewer; and then
all the race drank pulque and went to
the bow-wows. This is the tradition,
and the moralists have drawn inspiration
from it to this day. They will have it
that pulque is the chief cause of the de-
gradation of the working classes of
Mexico They overlook the manifold {
uses made OF this wonderful plant in the :
great plateau tenantsd by the poorest
nonuIation OF ~yth-that it not only {