But every nation loves to intoxicate itself, and the Mexican boasts of the most nauseous invention for the purpose among the discoveries of man. Pulque, the national beverage, is the juice of the Agave Americana, fermented. The original process by which the fermentation is produced is one which we shall not venture to detail; but the liquor obtained from the section of the plant is drawn up by a rude syphon, and poured into dressed ox-hides. The taste is mawkish, and the smell is noisome. Yet, to the Mexican, it is nectar and ambrosia together. Pulque is to him meat, drink, and clothing, for without it the world has no pleasures. The most remarkable circumstance is, that it is without strength. Thus it wants the charm of brandy, which may madden, but which at least warms; or aquafortis, which the Pole and the Russ are said to drink as a qualifier of their excesses in train oil; but the Mexican would rather die, or even fight, than dispense with his pulque; and if Santa Anna had but put his warriors on short allowance of the national liquor before his last battle, and promised them double allowance after it, he would probably have been, at this moment, on the Mexican throne.
The Agave, called by the natives Maguey, is certainly an extraordinary instance of succulency, and an unrivalled acquisition to a thirsty population. A single plant of the Agave has been known to supply one hundred and fifty gallons of this sap. In good land it grows to an enormous size, the centre stem often thirty feet high, and twelve or fifteen inches in diameter at the bottom. When the plant is in flower, which occurs from seven to fifteen years old, the centre stem is cut off at the bottom, and the juice is collected.
Humbolt says, that a single plant will yield four hundred and fifty-two cubic inches of liquor in twenty-four hours, for four or five months, which would give upwards of four hundred gallons. How curious are the distributions of nature! All this profuse efflux of mawkish fluid would be thrown away in any other country. But nature has given the Mexican a palate for its enjoyment, and to him the draught is rapture.
Mexico is the land for the lovers of pumice-stone. The whole road from Vera Cruz to the capital is covered with remnants of lava. Every plain seems to have been burnt up by eruptions a thousand years old, or, according to the time-table of the geologist, from ten to ten thousand millions of years ago. With the mountain tops all on fire, and the plains waving with an inundation of flame, Mexico must have been a splendid, though rather an inconvenient residence, in the “olden time.”