THE TROPICAL ZONE. 197 



and pass on to the narrow belt of North America which lies 

 in this zone, which is a part of Mexico, we cannot help 

 pausing to gaze at a sight quite unlike anything we ever saw 

 before, which forms a very remarkable feature in the land- 

 scape. We see large tracts of land bristled all over witb 

 plantations of broad, stiff-leaved plants, which look, we think, 

 exceedingly like the Aloes we have seen in ornamental 

 gardens at home; but in this we are not quite right, for 

 these plants (though something like them in general cha- 

 racter) do not, like the Aloes, belong to the Lily tribe, but 

 to the kindred order of Amaryllids. In Mexico these plants, 

 which are a kind of Agave, go by the name of the Maguey 

 plant (Plate XI.) ; " unlike, indeed, to our fields of waving 

 corn are these straight-rowed, stiff-looking plantations;" 

 they grow on elevated table-lands at the height of some 

 7000 feet, on the very driest ground, which is scarcely co- 

 vered with mould, and in a climate very nearly approaching 

 to that of the South of Europe. 



The Maguey plants are considered of great value in Mexico 

 as valuable as the vine is to Europeans ; for not only a 

 kind of wine is made from the sap, but a strong brandy, 

 and the leaves supply the strongest hemp that is known. It 

 was from the fibres of these leaves that the paper was made 



