486 PARRAS 
At the southern extremity of the town, is a large 
estate belonging at present to Don Arguire, called 
the ‘‘ Hacienda Arriba,” or the upper hacienda, to dis- 
tinguish it from the ‘‘ Hactendo Abajo,” or lower haci- 
enda, of Don Manuel de Ibarra, four miles distant. This 
is one of the most extensive and valuable estates in 
Coahuila. Its chief products are wine and wheat. The 
vineyards which surround it, extend twelve hundred 
varas (3240 feet) into the plain, while beyond these 
are extensive fields of wheat and maize. As it seldom 
rains here, the cultivation of the grape as well as of 
the cereals, depends wholly upon irrigation; yet there 
is no river to supply it. In the rear of this hacienda, 
about half a mile distant, the water oozes from numer- 
ous springs in the side of a hill; which unite at the 
base and forma small stream. This stream as it passes 
over the porous rocks, receives constant additions. As 
the descent is considerable, the whole of this water is 
controlled, and conveyed through a stone aqueduct, 
first to a flouring mill, and then to the vineyards, gar- 
dens, and fields of the hacienda arriba, furnishing an 
been known, like the Mexican Indians, totally to have abstained from 
water, beer, and wine, and to have drank no other liquor than the juice 
of the agave. Connoisseurs speak with enthusiasm of the pulque pre- 
pared in the village of Hocotitlan, to the north of Toluca, at the foot of 
a mountain almost as elevated as the Nevada of this name. They 
affirm that the excellent quality of this pulque does not alogether de- 
pend on the art with which the liquor is prepared, but also on a taste of 
the soil communicated to the juice, according to the fields in which the 
plant is cultivated. There are plantations of maguey near Hocotitlan 
(hactendas de pulque) which bring in annually more than forty thousand 
livres, or one thousand six hundred and sixty-six pounds sterling (about 
eight thousand dollars)—Alcedo. Humboldi’s New Spain. 
