228 



HISTORY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



more and more into the practice of raising it ; 

 and the face of tlie country shows from time to 

 time that the culture of tliat grain goes on visi- 

 Wy augmenting. 



" The inducements are tlie many different 

 ways in which it may be prepared so as to afford 

 a wholesome and pleasing nourishment to men 

 and other animals. Firet, the family can begin 

 to make use of it before the time of full harvest ; 

 for the tender green ears, stripped of their 

 leaves, and roasted by a quick fire till the grain 

 is brown, and eaten with a little salt or butter, 

 are a delicacy. Secondly, when the grain is riper 

 and Iiardcr, the ears, boiled in thcirleaves and eaten 

 with butter,are alsogoodand agreeable food. The 

 tender green grains dried may be kept all the 

 j'car, and mixed with green haricots (kidney 

 beans), also dried, make at any time a pleasing 

 dish, being first soaked some hours in water, and 

 then boiled. When the grain is ripe and hard 

 there are .ilso several ways of using it. One is 

 to soak it all night in a lessive or lye, and then 

 pound it in a large wooden mortar with a wooden 

 pestle ; the skin of each grain is by that means 

 skinned off, and the farinaceous part left whole, 

 ■which being boiled swells into a white soft pulp, 

 and eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar, 

 is delicious. The dry grain is also sometimes 

 ground loosely, so as to be broken into pieces of 

 the size of rice, and being winnowed to separate 

 the bran, it is then boiled and eaten with turkeys 

 or other fowls, as rice. Ground into a finer 

 meal, they make of it by boiling a hasty pud- 

 ding or bouilli, to be eaten with milk, or with 

 butter and sugar; this resembles what the Ital- 

 ians call polenta. They make of the same meal, 

 with water and salt, a hasty cake, which being 

 stuck against a hoe or other flat iron, is placed 

 erect before the fire, and so baked to be used as 

 bread. Broth is also agreeably thickened with 

 the same meal. They also parch it in this man- 

 ner. An iron pot is filled with sand, and set on 

 the fire till the sand is very hot. Two or three 

 pounds of the gi-ain are then thrown in, and well 

 mixed with the sand by stirring. Each grain 

 bursts and throws out a white substance of twice 

 its bigness. The sand is separated by a wire 

 sieve, and returned into the pot to be again 

 heated and repeat the operation with fresh grain. 

 That which is parched is pounded to a powder 

 in mortars. This being sifted will keep long 

 for use. An Indian will travel far and subsist 

 long on a small bag of it, taking only six or eight 

 ounces of it per day mixed with water. The 

 flour of maize, mixed with that of wheat, makes 

 excellent bread, sweeter and more agreeable than 

 that of wheat alone. To feed horses, it is good 

 to soak the grain twelve hours, they mash it 

 easier with their teeth, and it yields them more 

 nourishment. The leaves stripped off the stalks 

 after the grain is ripe, tied up in bundles when 



dry, arc excellent forage for horses, cows, &c. 

 The stalks, pressed like sugar-cane, yield a sweet 

 juice, which being fermented and distilled jields 

 an excellent spirit; boiled without fermentation, it 

 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 

 their sweet juice extracted in the mouth by 

 chewing tliem. 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 

 acquaints us tliat the Mexican Indians, previous 

 to the conquest of their country, were accus- 

 tomed 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 consistence 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 re- 

 cites a letter written by Cortez, who in describ- 

 ing to the Emperor Charles V. the various pro- 

 ductions in both a natural and manufactured 

 state which he found in the new country, as- 

 serts, 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 people 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 sac- 

 charine matter ; but crystallized sugar, properly 

 so called, is a different preparation, and, from 

 our present knowledge, it is difficult to believe 

 that any such substance could have been so pre- 

 pared. 



The Indians, at the period above alluded to, 

 evinced considei'able skill in the preparation of 

 fermented liquors, which is by no means lost 

 by the Mexicans of the present day. " A che- 

 mist," says Humboldt, " would have some diffi- 

 culty in preparing the innumerable variety of 

 spirituous, acid, or saccharine beverages which 

 the Indians display a peculiar address in making, 

 by infusing the grain of maize, in which the 

 saccharine matter begins to dcvelope itself by 

 germination. These beverages, generally known 

 by the name of chicha, have some of them a re- 

 semblance to beer, and others to cyder." The 

 spirituous liquor c&WeA pulque de mahis or tlamiili, 

 which is prepared from juice expressed from the 

 stalk of the maize, forms, in some parts of the 

 republic, a very important article of commerce. 



SiTARiA iTALLicA — Italian Millet, (fig. a.) 

 Millet, is a species of grass, which in certain 

 countries where the soil is light and arid, is culti- 

 vated in place of corn. The seed is extremely 

 small but this is made up by the number borne 



