34 
In Mexico, the Maguey (Agave Americana) has been cultivated 
from time immemorial for the abundant sap, or aguamiel, which 
collects in the cavity made in the heart of the plant by the re- 
moval of the young central leaves and is then fermented into 
pulque, the national drink of Mexico. Pulque smells much like 
half turned buttermilk, but is ccoling, refreshing, nutritious and 
stimulating. It contains 3 to 4 per cent. of alcohol and is there- 
fore about as strong as beer. The historian Sahagun says that 
long before the conquest, the use and abuse of pulque were so 
general that one of the Aztec kings forbade the sale of it and 
punished drunkenness with death. The Mexican liquor, mescal, 
or vino mescal, manufactured by distillation from the baked, 
pounded and fermented heads of several species of Agave, was 
unknown to the Aztecs, who like other American aborigines were 
ignorant of distillation, an art introduced from Europe. They 
only knew the first part of the process, how to macerate and boil 
the baked heads in water and ferment the decoction, so as to ob- — 
tain a sort of “mescal beer’ which, however, does not appear to 
have been a popular beverage. 
The discovery, in some parts of Mexico, of crude stills con- 
structed of native material, has led some authors to think that dis- 
tillation may have been practiced on this continent before the 
coming of Columbus, but there is no ground for such belief in the 
accounts of the first explorers nor in the Indian traditions. 
Agave Americana does not grow naturally north of Mexico. 
Of our few native species of Agave, none produce the abundant 
sap necessary for the making of pulque, and they are mostly used 
for food purposes. The Indians of. Arizona and New Mexico, 
however, according to Col. Cremony, who lived several years 
among them before our Civil War, knew then how to prepare 
“mescal beer” from the heads of Agave Parryi and A. Palmert. 
According to Oviedo and Von Humboldt, maize was used in 
the religious rites of both Mexicans and Peruvians, and sugar pro- 
cured from it, as well as a vinous liquor called chicha, “ drunken- 
ness having already become frequent under the Aztec dynasty.” 
How much of this drunkenness is attributable to chicha and how — 
much to pulque would be difficult to determine. It is probable — 
enough that both Feed were _ important factors: in the: 
