THE CENTURY PLANT 



211 



are the basis of the pulque industry of Mexico — at once a large item 

 in its agricultural wealth, and one of the greatest curses to its peon 

 population, many of whom arc kept in poverty and sottishness 

 through it. 



A philosophical historian- notes that man has never remained con- 

 tent with water as a beverage, and that agriculture, affording a means 

 of obtaining abundant intoxicants as one possible and alluring substi- 

 tute, has borne the curse of drunkenness in all ages. The discoverers 

 of the new world found the cultivation of the maguey or nietl, and 

 the production of a fermented drink, ' octli ' or ' pulque/ from its sap, 



Fig. 4. The Dakk Green Giant. 



an established industry, which even then had worked its fatal course 

 with the Toltec race. 



The present traffic in pulque is large. Something over five million 

 barrels of it are used in the Mexican republic every year, of which 

 quantity about half is consumed in the capital city and much of the 

 remainder in Puebla and the other large cities of the central plateau. 

 Cheap as it is, for it sells for from one to three cents of Mexican money 

 for a large glass, its aggregate value amounts to several million dol- 

 lars gold, a year. Special trains are run into the City of Mexico every 

 morning for its delivery, as is clone with the milk supply of our own 

 cities. 



2 Payne, 'History of the New World,' 1: 401, 404. 



