24 MEXICAN RESOURCES. 



Coca (the Erythroxylon coca), a narcotic and stimulant plant, the leaves of which 

 are used by the natives of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. Its home is in the sultry val- 

 leys of the eastern slopes of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. The shrub bears a 

 foliage of lustrous green and white flowers ripening into small scarlet berries. 

 When the leaves are brittle enough to break upon being bent, they are stripped 

 from the plant, dried in the sun, and packed in sacks. Coca lessens the desire for 

 food, and bestows upon the person using it in moderate quantities great powers of 

 endurance. Especially is it valuable in the ascent of great elevations, preventing 

 the difficulty of respiration. The writer has used it with apparently good effect in 

 an ascent of Popocatapetl, in 1881, when he easily climbed to the peak of that 

 mighty volcano, experiencing but little uneasiness from the rarefaction of the atmos- 

 phere. No record exists of its first discovery, but it was in use in the temples of the 

 Incas, when Pizarro invaded Peru, and the priests chewed coca while performing 

 their rites. It is estimated that 30,000,000 pounds of the dried leaf are annually 

 consumed ; and it has been suggested that its use be more widely extended as a sub- 

 stitute for tea and coffee. There is no reason why coca should not be successfully 

 grown on the slopes of the Mexican mountains, where climate, altitude, and all the 

 conditions of growth can be found in perfection. 



The Coco-palm. — To the dweller in the coast country of Mexico, there is no more 

 valuable product, be it tree or vegetable, than the coco-palm, cocos mccifera. There 

 is always danger of confusion in speaking of three totally dissimilar products : the 

 cacao, coca, and cocoa. The true spelling of this word should be without the term- 

 inal letter, a. Coco: its Latin name is cocos, its Spanish, coco, and its French, also. 

 The late Charles Kingsley used this orthography, and there is little doubt that cocoa 

 is wrong, and a corruption of cacao, which is the name of the Theohroma cacao. In 

 order to avoid confusion, we shall speak of it by its correct appellation, coco. 



It is ever found growing by the sea, loving salt water and salt sea-breezes more 

 than the perfumed gales from out the mountain valleys. 



It may be seen drooping over a beach of golden sand, and forming a living barrier 

 between beach and cultivated land, or dotting the valleys, or standing up lone and 

 ragged upon a wind-swept promontory; but it is almost within sound of the surf- 

 beat of the waves. It may stray away towards the mountains, may climb a few hills, 

 and may shelter a little village of huts beneath the waving crowns of itself and 

 companions at some distance from the sea; but in its luxuriance and beauty and 

 profusion it is only found near the coast. Other palms replace it in the mountains ; 

 other palms wander far away, and revel in shade and moisture and cool breezes ; but 

 this palm, as if ever mindful of the restless waves that bore its parent nut to these 

 shores, delights to keep them company. And the coco loves man, delighting in the 

 proximity of habitations and cultivated fields. Do you meet with a negro hut, alone 

 or with others clustered about it, no matter how humble, dilapidated, obscure, 

 above if droops the feathery crown of a palm, its leaves caressing it, its nuts hang- 

 ing in abundance ready to drop at the will of the owner. 



Broad valleys stretch along the shore, extending far back into the hills, one wav- 

 ing sea of yellow cane, with no object to relieve the billowy plain but the coco-palm 

 and its more aspiring brother, the towering palmiste. About the sugar-house and 

 the dwelling of the owner and the overseer, it is scattered in picturesque groups. 

 The coco is to the tropics what the pine is to the North, the elm to New England, the 

 magnolia to the South. 



