Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/90



HE indigenous product of Yucatan is hemp; or, to begin the subject correctly, and with a due regard for botanical nomenclature and local appellation, this so-called "Sisal hemp" is not hemp at all, but henequen, the Agave Sisalensis. It has a true fibre, possessing such excellent qualities that the demand for it is greater than the supply. The chief excellence of the plant is, that it requires little soil to grow upon, and springs up everywhere from crevices in the great coral ledges that constitute the surface of the peninsula.

A great proportion of this territory is covered with dense scrub, composed of stunted trees and bushes matted together with thorny vines; beneath this scrub is the rock that even the vegetable mould of centuries but thinly covers, owing to the annual fires that run over the country. A portion of this scrub is cleared,—that is, the bushes and trees are cut down and left to dry for a season,—and the next year, if the previous one has been dry, fire is put to this clearing and the ground opened by the laborers, who dig holes in the rocky soil and set out the plants. Each clearing is divided into mecates, of about twenty-four metres square, and the plants are set out about eight feet apart each way, giving from eighty to one hundred plants to each mecate. The land is kept clean till the plants are well grown and they arrive at maturity, or at a point for profitable cutting, in from five to seven years, when the larger leaves are four or five feet in length. Each plant yields from twenty to thirty leaves annually, for a period of from twelve to fifteen, eighteen, or twenty years; about a third more in the rainy than in the dry season of the year. It is said to require from six