MAIZE. 113 



affords a pleasant syrup. In Mexico, fields are 

 sown with it thick, that multitudes of small stalks 

 may arise, which being cut from time to time, like 

 asparagus, are served in desserts, and thin sweet 

 juice extracted in the mouth by chewing them. The 

 meal wetted is excellent food for young chickens, and 

 the old grain for grown fowls.' * 



In addition to the many uses enumerated by 

 Franklin in the foregoing account, Humboldt ac- 

 quaints us that the Mexican Indians, previous to the 

 conquest of their country, were accustomed not only 

 to express the sweet juice from maize-stalks for the 

 purpose of fermenting it into an intoxicating liquor, 

 but that they boiled down this juice to the con- 

 sistence of syrup ; giving it likewise as his opinion 

 that they were able even to make sugar from this 

 inspissated juice. In confirmation of this opinion, 

 he recites a letter written by Cortez, who in de- 

 scribing to the Emperor Charles V, the various pro- 

 ductions in both a natural and manufactured state 

 which he found in the new country, asserts, that 

 among these were seen ' honey of bees and wax, 

 honey from the stalks of maize, which are as sweet as 

 sugar-cane, and honey from a shrub which the peo- 

 ple call maguey. The natives make sugar from 

 these plants, and this sugar they also sell.' There 

 is no question that the productions here enumerated 

 will yield saccharine matter ; but crystallize'd sugar, 

 properly so called, is a different preparation, and, from 

 oar present knowledge, it is difficult to believe that 

 any such substance could have been so prepared. 



The Indians, at the period above alluded to, 

 evinced considerable skill in the preparation of fer- 

 mented liquors, which is by no means lost by the 

 Mexicans of the present day. ' A chemist,' says 

 Humboldt, ' would have some difficulty in preparing 



Franklin'i Works, vol. ii, pp. 276-8, 4to dition, 1818. 

 VOL. XV. 10* 



