236 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I02 



of the Diocese of Guatemala, where they make the best indigo in 

 all the Indies ; it is also largely raised in the Diocese of Nicaragua. 

 As has been stated, the plant looks like clover, but it ordinarily grows 

 as high as a man or taller. The flower is blue and the seeds resemble 

 those of the radish or turnip. 



674. They usually begin working it late in July, before the seeds 

 ripen, and the operation lasts late into September, and even later if 

 the crop is very large ; that applies also to the wild plant, which 

 grows in the fields without cultivation. There is another sort of 

 indigo they call zacamile, which they sow after burning over the 

 fields, without hoeing or cultivating, just scattering great quantities 

 of seed on them ; they begin working this after finishing the other, 

 about All Saints, and it lasts till about Christmas, according to the 

 yield. 



675. For the manufacture of indigo dye they have large stone 

 basins in their laboratories like wine presses ; they throw into them 

 200, 300, or 400 loads of this jiquilite plant, according to the capacity; 

 and when the basin is full of the jiquilite plant, the establishment 

 being generally beside a stream or watercourse or irrigation ditch, 

 they fill the basin with water and put some timbers or weights on top, 

 so as to cover the plants entirely with water, as they do with flax 

 or hemp, and they leave it to soak 24 hours, more or less, according 

 as the water is hard or soft. When it seems to those who are pre- 

 paring the dye that the right and proper moment has arrived, they 

 pull out its bung from the basin so that all that water may come 

 out and run into another deeper basin next to the steeping basin. 

 This has a wheel in it, run either by water or horse power, which 

 keeps beating up the water ; this movement of the wheel raises great 

 quantities of foam, yellow with blue glints. When it seems to those 

 who are preparing the dye that things have reached the right point, 

 with the foam breaking up and taking on color, they stop beating it 

 with the wheel, so as not to overdo it ; the water quiets down, the 

 dye settles, and they pull out another bung in this wheel basin where 

 the dye is forming ; the water runs off and the dye is left on the 

 bottom like cream. They take it out and put it into sheets of coarse 

 linen cloth strainers, or melinge, as they call them, and keep it there 

 till the water has all drained off. Then they make bricks of it and 

 put them on planks in the sun to cure and dry, and after 4 or 6 days 

 of sunning, it comes out dry and pure, and they pack it in sacks, 

 pouches, or boxes. The dye is not all of even quality, as a result 

 of not catching the right moment ; some overstep it, others fall short. 

 This is the way in which indigo is prepared and manufactured. 



