Page:Appleton's Guide to Mexico.djvu/142

114 these liquors, there are numerous others that the stranger rarely hears of except in the rural districts, such as charape, chicha, jobo, peyote, tecuin, tepache, tuba, etc.

Pulque is made principally in the States of Mexico, Hidalgo, and Tlaxcala. The center of population being in this part of Mexico, accounts for the immense cultivation of the maguey in these adjoining States.

Mescal comes for the most part from Jalisco, Sinaloa, Puebla, Hidalgo, and Michoacan. Aguardiente is made chiefly in the sugar-growing States of Vera Cruz, Morelos, Michoacan, Jalisco, Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Coahuila. Pulque is usually transported from the haciendas in sheep-skins; and mescal and aguardiente are carried in kegs.

The liquors above mentioned, however, are not the only ones which Mexico produces. The soil of the country is adapted to the culture of all kinds of grapes. Red and white wines are manufactured in comparatively small quantities, most of the native wines coming from the States of Chihuahua and Coahuila. But nearly all the wine consumed in Central Mexico is imported from France and Spain by merchants in Vera Cruz. Red wine is sold at from seventy-five cents to one dollar per quart bottle.

A limited amount of beer is also produced. It is made chiefly in the States of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Vera Cruz, Puebla, and the Federal District. Much St. Louis (Missouri) beer is imported, and sold at the high price of three reales per bottle in the northern part and four reales in the southern part of Mexico. The cocoanut-wine comes for the most part from Michoacan, Yucatan, and Campeche.

The following table, from Señor Busto's Estadística de la República Mexicana, shows the amount of wines and