WHEAT. 325 



cities of less severity are not uncommon, and are CHAP.XXV 



especially felt in the mining districts, where the vast ^ 



numbers of mules employed in the process of amalgam- scarcity. 

 ation annually consume an enormous quantity of maize. 



Numerous varieties of food are derived from this varieties of 

 plant. The ear is eaten raw or boiled. The grain when food, 

 beaten affords a nutritive bread called arepa, and the 

 meal is employed in making soups or gruels, which are 

 mixed with sugar, honey, and sometimes even pounded 

 potatoes. Many kinds of drink are also prepared from 

 it, some resembling beer, othei's cider. In the valley of 

 Tolucca the stalks are squeezfed between C3'linders, and 

 from the fermented juice a spiritous liquor, called pulque 

 de maids, is procured. 



In favourable years Mexico yields a much larger Excess of 

 quantity than is necessary for its own consumption ; rroductioa. 

 but as this grain affords less nutritive substance in pro- 

 portion to its bulk than the corn of Europe, and as the 

 roads are generally difficult, obstacles are presented to its 

 transportation, which, however, will diminish when the 

 country is more improved. 



We come now to the cereal plants which have been 

 conveyed from the Old to the New Continent. A negro plants. 

 slave of Cortes found among the rice, which served to 

 maintain the Spanish army, three or four particles of 

 wheat, which were sown, we may suppose, before the 

 year 1530. A Spanish lady, Maria d'Escobar, carried a wheat, 

 few grains to Lima, and their produce was distributed 

 for three years among the new colonists, each receiving 

 twenty or thirty seeds. At Quito the first European 

 corn was sown near the convent of St Francis by Father 

 Jose Rixi, a native of Flanders ; and the monks still 

 show, as a precious relic, the earthen vessel in which 

 the original wheat came from Europe. " Why," asks 

 our author, " have not men preserved every where the 

 names of those who, in place of ravaging the earth, have 

 enriched it with plants useful to the human race 1" 



The temperate region appears most favourable to the 

 cultivation of the cerealia, or nutritive grasses known to 

 u 



