Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/460

454 Italy. In the district of Tlatlauquitepec is raised the famous ramie, or vegetable silk, which has enriched and given a name to Asiatic India. This plant was with difficulty brought to France and acclimated in Provence, but without success as an industry. It was then brought to Louisiana in the United States, and, although acclimated, it was never successfully treated by mechanical means, notwithstanding American effort. The magistrate of the Supreme Court of Mexico, Licentiate Mariano Zavala, brought from Louisiana a small lot of ramie, which was planted and successfully developed in the village of San Angel; but his attention did not go beyond curiosity. One day he was visited by his friend, D. Manuel Ortega y Garcia, of the district of Tlatlauqui, and Zavala presented him with the plants, six in number, telling him the mode of cultivating them. Ortega y Garcia went to the little village and transplanted the plants with brilliant success. In two years his plantations contained forty thousand plants two and three meters in height, although the plant obtains no greater height than a meter and a half in Asia. Ortega knew that the treatment of ramie was impracticable by the mechanical means employed in Europe and America; therefore he studied chemical means for that purpose, and after much endeavor, he succeeded in separating the fiber and presenting to the Minister of the Interior fine skeins, dyed in three colors, three meters and a half in length, which are now displayed spread over statues in the salon of the Minister Riva Palacio and in the house of the venerable editor. Don Ygnacio Complido, who also received a gift of several skeins. The ramie propagates prodigiously in portions of our warm, moist climate, as in Cordoba, Tlatlauqui, Cuetzala, and Huachinango. When the plant is developed, the sprouts bearing four or five leaves are removed and planted a Spanish yard apart, with surety of the success of the new plantation. The ramie is little sensitive to changes in temperature, and it neither breeds nor nourishes worms or caterpillars; neither gives life to mildew or parasitic growth. Each plant produces from $1.75 to $2.25 worth of fiber, the cost of its cultivation amounting to six cents. Thus the profit is greater than from tobacco, coffee, cacao, or cotton: