Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/85

 Rh rivals stand out in all their proportions. He is lower, not because of actual inferiority, but because he is farther down this orange of earth. They are all of nearly equal height.

Here, too, we get not only our last look at Orizaba, but our first at a filthy habit of man. Old folks and children thrust into your noses, and would fain into your mouths, the villainous drink of the country—pulqui. It is the people's chief beverage. It tastes like sour and bad-smelling buttermilk, is white like that, but thin. They crowd around the cars with it, selling a pint measure for three cents. I tasted it, and was satisfied. It is only not so villainous a drink as lager, and London porter, and Bavarian beer, and French vinegar-wine, and Albany ale. It is hard to tell which of these is "stinkingest of the stinking kind."

How abominable are the tastes which an appetite for strong drink creates! The nastiest things human beings take into their mouths are their favorite intoxicants. If administered as medicines, they would never taste them, except under maternal and uxorial constraint. And yet the guzzlers of England, Germany, America, and Mexico pour down huge draughts of sour or bitter stuff, all for the drunk feeling that follows.

The pulqui is a white liquor found in the maguey, a species of the cactus. It grows eight years uselessly as a drink. That year it becomes yet more useless by depositing in its centre a bowl of this juice. If picked then, all right, or all wrong, rather. Just as this central bulb is beginning to swell with its coming juices, it is scooped out, and a hole big enough to hold a pail is made in the bottom of the middle of the plant. Into this cavity for three or four months the juice exudes, and is taken out by the pailful daily. If the plant is left alone, this bulb shoots into a stalk ten to twelve feet high, with a blossom. It is this blossom which is exhibited in our States as the century-plant a seven to ten years', and not a hundred years', blossom. Then it comes to seed and naught.

The chief traffic of the road is in carrying this stuff to Puebla and Mexico. It lies at the station in pig-skins and barrels, the pigs looking more hoggish than ever, as they lie on their backs