Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/355

 is colorless. An analysis of aguamiel by the celebrated Boussingault gave glucose, sugar, and water as the principal ingredients. Like the vine, the maguey yields the best liquor, independent of the climate, in volcanic or siliceous soil.

Pulque is the product of the fermentation of aguamiel, is an alcoholic, mucilaginous liquid, holding in suspension white corpuscles, which give it its color, and has an odor sui generis, a taste peculiarly its own, more or less sugary, depending upon its strength, and contains about six per cent of alcohol.

An exhaustive scientific description of the product of the maguey is given by Señor José C. Segura, in the Revista Cientifica Mexicana (Tom. I. Num. 6), to which authority I am indebted for the foregoing facts.

The Mexican's opinion of the national beverage is expressed in the following lines:—

 Sabe que es pulque,— Licor divino.? Lo beben los angeles En vez de vino."

Know ye not pulque,— That liquor divine? Angels in heaven Prefer it to wine.

To return to the city and the markets. They are scattered all over the city, preferring to crouch under the shadow of a church or cathedral, and are not confined to the sale of fruits and flowers, but contain everything else known to man. Prominent, on the road to the canal, is the meat market. One knows its vicinage by the troops of dogs that haunt it, and by the greasy and bloody men that stand around its doors. Through the streets he will see passing horses and mules, with peaked frameworks over their backs hung with hooks, upon which are quarters of beef; sometimes these are covered with a cloth, sometimes not. The sight causes a shudder to run through the frame of a stranger, whether the ugly hooks are bare or adorned with their ghastly burdens. Worse than this, brutes of men in leather jackets bear huge hampers of refuse