THE CENTURY PLANT 215 



other cover is replaced, and he passes on. Sometimes he trudges home 

 with his burden as often as the pig-skin is filled; but on the larger 

 haciendas a burro, saddled with large bags of the same kind, awaits 

 him at one side of the field, and the work continues until at length 

 man and donkey go in with a full load. 



The fluid which collects in the hollowed trunk of a cut maguey 

 plant and is gathered in the manner described, is called ' agua miel,' 

 or honey-water, because of its sweetness : nine or ten per cent, of its 

 weight is sugar, and this furnishes the basis for the alcoholic fermenta- 

 tion which is the chief factor in its conversion into pulque. The agua 

 miel of the Apam district is thin, clear and colorless. It is of a rather 

 pleasant taste if dipped from the plant in a gourd and free from 

 drowned insects, but fact or fancy gives it various reminiscent flavors 

 under other circumstances. 



The fermentation practises in pulque making are still mostly 

 primitive. I have had a Mexican gentleman tell me that although 

 when the agua miel was gathered and fermented in a way to please 

 him he considered it a delicious drink, he would not think of touching 

 pulque as offered, for instance, at the railway station in Apam — where 

 the conversation occurred. The vats used are of ox-hide stretched on 

 frames, and they are usually three or four feet wide and nearly as 

 deep. Fermentation is begun by the introduction of a starter or 

 'mother of pulque' obtained by preliminary fermentation, and is 

 carried on without, or at most with little, artificial control of tempera- 

 ture, and under conditions of positive or negative cleanliness which 

 differ with the various haciendas. 



When marketed, the pulque is a white, decidedly viscous fluid con- 

 taining about eight per cent, of alcohol; fermentation has not been 

 solely alcoholic, however, and its flavor is in part due to changes 

 wrought by bacteria of several kinds which are introduced with the 

 starter in company with the yeast. Continuation of the action of these 

 collateral ferments causes the beverage to spoil in a day or two under 

 ordinary conditions. 



Familiar sights about Apam and in the capital are wagons loaded 

 with the large casks in which pulque is transported from the haciendas 

 to the railroad and again to the gaudily colored but often disreputable 

 and usually filthy shops where it is dispensed — from open barrels 

 into which glasses are plunged by hand with no greater care to prevent 

 contact with the human person than marks some of the earlier stages 

 in the conversion of grape juice into wine — and the patrons of which 

 are not prepossessing. 



Where the maguey, though capable of cultivation, yields a lesser 

 or inferior product, agua miel is often more appreciated in its unfer- 

 mented state. As hawked around the streets of Monterey, for instance, 

 in porous earthenware receptacles, it is a cool yellowish fluid, that I 



