56 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Lerj, not to mention Torqucmada and others, who tell us that 

 the first Europeans who set foot on the New World saw, among 

 other wonders, a gigantic wheat with long stalks, and that this 

 wonderful wheat was the maize. The harvesting of it was 

 celebrated by the people with religious festivals. Sacrifices 

 were prepared with it: With it the Mexicans formed idols. It 

 constituted almost the only food for all the tribes in Mexico, in 

 Peru, in Brazil, at the Orinoco and the Antilles. It served for 

 money. A theft of seven ears the Mexican laws punished with 

 death. The Mexicans offered the first fruits of their corn to 

 their goddess Oentl ; they called its leaves Tonacayohua, or 

 " she who feeds us," and their maize feasts were annually held 

 in May, by the Incas and their followers, on an island in Lake 

 Titicaca. Garcilasso de la Vega, one of the earliest Peruvian 

 historians says, the palace gardens of the Incas were ornamented 

 with maize in gold and silver, with all the grains, stalks, spikes 

 and leaves ; and in one instance, in " the garden of gold and 

 silver," there was an entire corn field of considerable size, repre- 

 senting the maize in its erect and natural shape ; a proof no 

 less of the wealth of the Incas than of their veneration for this 

 important grain. At the old ruins of Copan and Central 

 America, are found paintings and statuary ornaments of maize. 

 At Cusco, the " Virgins of the Sun," priestesses, prepared of 

 maize the sacrificial cakes which they soaked in the blood of 

 the victims. The Indians of South America call hot and 

 boiled corn, which they eat, "mote," and the Creole Spaniards 

 there call their hot corn cakes " Arepas." 



The Indians atNemasket, (in Middleborough, Massachusetts,) 

 in 1621, regaled some of the Pilgrims with bread called 

 mazium, made of Indian corn. 



In Canada, while the Adirondacs hunted, the Five Nations or 

 Iroquois, made planting' of corn their business. The Lenni 

 Lennape, (or original people,) the grandfathers of the other 

 Indians, called maize " Lenchesquen," the original or native 

 grain. The natives of North America called it generally wia- 

 chim, while in some southern parts they called it mayse. 



It is a still more curious fact,^that immediately after its intro- 

 duction into Europe, it spread with great rapidity into every 

 country and province where the climate was thought to be 

 suited to it. Now if it had been known in Asia, if it had been 



