8 
[ Rep. No. 564 ] 
The Agave Americana is still called by travellers the American aloe; and 
Doctor Mease, with them, has been misled to suppose that this plant pro¬ 
duces the Sisal hemp, and the Pita a much finer material: but the Agave 
Americana is dedicated to a very ditferent production—the celebrated 
drink called ulque,’ derived from the sap of its stem; and hence Maguey 
de Pulque is its common name in Mexico. A direct tax on the consump¬ 
tion of this beverage forms an important item in the revenue of that coun¬ 
try. ‘The entry duties paid in the three cities of Mexico, Tolusa, and 
Puebla, amounted, in 1793, to the sum of 817,739 piastres.’ Humboldt 
was correct in aflirming of the Maguey de Pulque, ‘that its cultivation has 
real advantages over the cultivation of maize, grain, and potatoes; that it 
is neither aft'ected by drought lior hail, nor the excessive cold which pre¬ 
vails in winter on the higher cordilleras of Mexico ; that it grows in the 
most arid grounds, and frequently on banks of rocks hardly covered with 
vegetable earth; and that it is one of the most useful of all the productions 
with which nature has supplied the mountaineers of equinoctial America.’ 
But it is not true that the same plant produces the very fine, very strong, ' 
and very long fibres, known by the name of Pita, from which the most, ^ 
beautiful sewing thread is made; nor does it furnish those coarser fibres ■ 
for twine and cordage, resembling Manilla, but denominated Sisal hemp. 
If tropical hemp be an admissible term for the latter, the former may be 
honored with the distinction of tropical Jiax. The ixtla, whose ihin 
leaves afford thejoZ/n, grows wild in the shade of the fertile forests of Ta¬ 
basco. The Sosquil 6 Henequin, whose leaves yield the Sisal hemp, 
is cultivated in the sun of the steril plains of Yucatan : the stem of neither 
supplies the drink which constitutes the principal value of the Agave 
Americana ; nevertheless, a variety of the Maguey de Pulque does grow 
on the tropical shores of the Gulf of Mexico, from which the highland 
soldiers have occasionally extracted their favorite beverage. Some of the 
cultivated Magueys, brought from a plantation on the mountains to the 
garden of a gentleman in Campeachy, are there flourishing, notwithstand¬ 
ing the difference in climate, and have produced shoots, which were by 
me transmitted to New Orleans. Humboldt says that this plant has be¬ 
come wild since the sixteenth century throughout all the south of Europe, 
the Canary islands, and the coast of Africa; and this fact supports my de¬ 
cided opinion that all the valuable species of the same genus may be suc¬ 
cessfully cultivated in our Southern States. 
“ Two varieties of that species, which I take the liberty to christen 
Agave Sisalana, have long been cultivated in the vicinity of Merida, on an 
extensive scale. • Different quantities aud qualities of fibres are obtained 
from several kinds of ‘sosquil,’ which grow spontaneously through the 
whole peninsula of Yucatan; but the planters give the preference to the 
Sacqui and Yaxqui of the natives, or the whitish and greenish ‘ Henequen.’ 
The young plants are placed about twelve Spanish feet apart, and during \ 
the first two years some labor is employed to destroy the weeds between 
them. In the third yekr, the cutting of the lower rows of leaves is com¬ 
menced, and every four months this operation is repeated. Each robust 
plant will thus give about seventy-five leaves annually, from which are 
extracted about seven pounds and a half of fibres, and will continue yield¬ 
ing these crops from five to ten years in succession; it is, however, gen¬ 
erally cut down as soon as one of the shoots from its roots has grown suf¬ 
ficiently to supply its place: its other offspring are previously removed 
