THE CEREALIA. 15 



None of the cereal grasses, properly so called, were 

 found in cultivation among the Mexicans when their 

 country was first visited by Europeans. The founda- 

 tion of the wheat harvests at Mexico is said to haye 

 been three or four grains which a slave of Cortez dis- 

 covered in 1530 accidentally mixed with a quantity 

 of rice. The careful negro who preserved and made 

 so advantageous a use of the few grains which a 

 happy chance had thrown in his way, and which, in 

 the hands of a careless or thoughtless person, would, 

 with their future inestimable advantages, have been 

 lost to his country, has not been thought worthy 

 doubtless because he was a negro of having his 

 name preserved. The Spanish lady, Maria d'Escobar, 

 wife of Diego de Chaves, who first imparted the same 

 blessing to Peru, by conveying a few grains of wheat 

 to Lima, has been more fortunate. Her name, to- 

 gether with the means which she took for effecting 

 her object, by carefully distributing the produce of 

 successive harvests as seed among the farmers, have 

 been gratefully preserved in the records of history 

 The exact period when this cultivation was com- 

 menced in Peru is not, indeed, known ; but it appears 

 reasonable to believe that this event did not occur 

 until after the date assigned for the introduction of 

 wheat into Mexico, as, in the year 1547, wheat en 

 bread was hardly known in the important city of 

 Cuzco. The first grains of wheat which reached 

 Quito were conveyed thither by Father Josse Jlixi, 

 a Fleming, who sowed them near the monastery 

 of St Francis, where the monks still preserve and 

 show, as a precious relic, the rude earthen pot 

 wherein the seeds first reached their establishment. 

 The rice of Carolina is now the principal produce of 

 that portion of North America. Mr Ashby, an 

 English merchant, at the close of the seventeenth 

 century, sent a hundred weight from China to this 



