VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL PRODUCTIONS. 
363 
nent crop would require, tlie profit would be sufficient 
even at forty cents per pound. The red, fresh mace does 
not bring so high a price as when old and golden-colored. 
Maiz. — Indian corn (Zea mays) grows well all over 
the republic, and forms the most important food of the 
Indian tribes. Yet the kinds cultivated are not of fine 
quality, although growing freely. The stalks are often 
a dozen feet high, and three ears are not uncommon. 
Three crops can be raised annually. The corn is always 
stored and transported in the husk. When the Spaniards 
first came among the Central Americans, they found the 
milpas of maiz carefully cultivated ; and as to-day the 
little cornfields are found all over the country cultivated 
precisely as the ancients were doing centuries ago, so the 
product is to-day prepared and eaten in the same old-time 
manner. Mr. Belt, 1 in his work on Nicaragua, — unfor¬ 
tunately too little known, — describes the preparation of 
maiz better than I have seen done elsewhere. He says : 
“ In Central America the bread made from the maiz is 
prepared at the present day exactly as it was in ancient 
Mexico. The grain is first of all boiled, along with 
wood-ashes or a little lime. The alkali loosens the outer 
skin of the grain, and this is rubbed off with the hands in 
running water ; a little of it at a time is placed upon a 
slightly concave stone, — called a metatle , from the Aztec 
metatl , — on which it is rubbed with another stone, 
shaped like a rolling-pin. A little water is thrown on it 
as it is bruised, and it is thus formed into paste. A ball 
of the paste is taken and flattened out between the hands 
into a cake about ten inches diameter and three six¬ 
teenths inch thick, which is baked on a slightly concave 
1 The Naturalist in Nicaragua, p. 56. 
