Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/112

110. Throughout the length and breadth of this country, the slimy, yeasty, sorrowful stuff has an enthusiastic success.

With this common drink, which is to the Mexican what beer is to the German, or light wine to the Frenchman, the maguey furnishes two others, not unlike our brandy and whiskey, very intoxicating, but, thank goodness! very little used. We saw but two drunken men during our entire journey. It supplies the natives, besides, with a primitive needle and thread, by tearing off one of the sharp spikes and a long thread of fibre; it gives a species of hempen cloth from the coarser tissue, and of paper from the fine inner pulp; it provides a good thatch for houses; and the debris, dried, makes fuel in regions where wood is scarce. So that it fills every want, like a general utility man in a small theatre company, and brings its owner a good income besides. It is hard for one to see where the profit comes, when a glass of pulque can be sold so cheaply; but they say that each plant brings an average of about fifty dollars for its six or eight years of life, and its hundred square feet or so of ground room. New cuttings are immediately planted in the places of the exhausted crop, so that a regular rotation of harvests is insured.