Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/93

Rh

Indigo was cultivated and used by the Mexicans previous to the conquest. The plant was known by them under the name of Xiuhquilipitzahuac, and the particles from which the dye stuff was made, as Mohuitli or Tlacohuilli. At the close of the seventeenth century the production of this article had already greatly decreased. The chief part of it, required for dyeing the cotton cloths which are generally used for home consumption by the Indians and lower classes of Mestizos, has been brought from Guatemala. It is found in Yucatan, Chiapas and about Tehuantepec in the state of Oajaca, and grows wild in some very warm localities in Tabasco. In this last named region there is every reason to believe that it may be profitably cultivated, inasmuch as the indigo plantations of San Salvador, in the neighborhood of Guatemala have been known to produce one million eight hundred thousand pounds of the article, valued at two millions of dollars.

The production of, according to the Memoria Sobre el Estado de la Agricultura y Industria, of Don Lucas Alaman in 1843, is gradually augmenting in the republic. Attempts have also been made to cultivate and. The first of which has been successfully raised by Mariano Aillou in the neighborhood of Tenancingo, and the latter, in the southern districts of the state of Michoacan, where it grows even spontaneously and is known under the name of guinary. The product is very large, the extent of territory covered by it very great,—and the thousands of pounds annually raised in that district, are made up into garments whose quality is highly approved throughout the republic.

In consequence of the high price of imported goods, owing to restrictive tariffs as well as to the costliness of transportation a number of intelligent persons began some years ago to establish factories for cottons and woollens. The stimulus of domestic factories it was supposed would naturally increase the culture of the raw materials, and, accordingly, the national industry was aided from the beginning by prohibitions or excessive duties, which either excluded the foreign raw material altogether, or fostered the contraband introduction of cotton twist and woollen thread.

Cotton was among the indigenous products of Mexico at the time of the conquest; and the early adventurers not only found it to constitute the common vesture of the masses of the people, but also