230 MAIZE BEER. 



LIB. iv. should drinke after, they would swell as when the} 7 eate 

 wheat. Mays is the Indians bread, the which they commonly 

 eate boiled in the graine hote, and they call it Moti, 1 as the 

 Chinese and Japanese eate their rice sodden with the hote 

 water. Sometimes they eate it baked. There is some Mays 

 round and bigge, as that of Lucanas, which the Spaniards 

 eate roasted as a delicate meat, and it hath a better 

 taste then toasted beans. There is another kinde of 

 eating it more pleasant, which is, to grinde the Mays, and 

 to make small cakes of the flower, the which they put in the 

 fire, and then bring them hote to the table. In some places 

 they call them Arepas. They make also round bowles of 

 this paste, and so trimme them that they continue long, 

 eating it as a dainty dish. 



The Indians also make a certaine kinde of paste of this flour 

 mixt with sugar, a kind of biscuits which they call melindres. 

 This Mays serves the Indians, not only for bread, but also 

 for wine : for they do make their drinke thereof, wherewith 

 they are sooner drunke than with wine of grapes. They 

 make this wine of Mays in diverse sortes and maners, call 

 ing it in Peru Aqua, 2 and by the most common name of the 

 Indies Chicha. And the strongest is made like unto beere; 

 steeping the graine vntill it begins to sprout. After, they 

 boyle it in such sort, that it growes so strong, as a little 

 overthrowes a man. In Peru they call this Sora. 3 Its use 

 is forbidden by the Law, for the great inconveniences that 

 grow thereby, making men drunke. But this Lawe is ill 

 observed, for that they vse it still ; yea they spend whole 

 rim., lib. dayes and nights in carousing. Pliny reporteth that this 

 maner of beverage of graine stieped, and after sodden, 

 wherewith they were made drunke, was in old time vsed in 

 Spaine, France, and other Provinces, as at this day in 



1 l\hitti, boiled maize. 



2 Acca fermented liquor, in Quicliua. 



3 *Sora is not a Quicliua word. See G. (k la Vega, i, p. 277. 



