156 INDIGENOUS PLANTS. 



The New Mexicans use but little wine at 

 meals, and that exclusively of tlie produce of 

 the Paso del Norte. 



But to return to the productions of the soil 

 Cotton is cultivated to no extent, although it 

 has always been considered as indigenous to 

 the country ; while the ancient manufactiues 

 of the aborigines prove it to have been especi- 

 ally so in this province. Flax is entirely neg- 

 lected, and yet a plant resembling in every 

 respect that of the liniim usitatissimum, is to be 

 found in great abundance in many of the 

 mountain valleys. The potato [la papa), al- 

 though not cultivated in this country till ver}^ 

 lately, is unquestionably an indigenous plant, 

 being still found in a state of nature in many 

 of tlie mountain valleys — ^though of small size, 

 seldom larger than filberts: whence it ap- 

 pears that tills luxury had not its exclusive 

 origin in South America, as is the current 

 opinion of the jpresent day. Universal as the 

 use of tobacco is among these people, there is 

 very httle of it grown, and that chiefly of a 

 light and weak species, called by the natives 

 punche, which is also mdigenous, and still to 

 be met with growing wild 

 What has in a great measure contribiTted 

 discourage people from attendinji to the ci 



ni some 



vation of the tobacco plant, is the monopoly 

 of this indispensable by the federal govern- 

 ment ; for although the tobacco laws are not 

 enforced in New Mexico (there being no 

 EstanquiUo, or pubUc store-house), yet the 

 people cannot carry it anywhere else in the 



