Note 222 — Chapter V · AZTEC AGRICULTURE—MECHANICAL ARTS—MERCHANTS—DOMESTIC MANNERS

[Ober (Travels in Mexico) gives a very full account of the uses to which the maguey is put. On the maguey plantations the plants have an average value of five dollars. “A long train departs every day from the stations on the plains of Apam, loaded exclusively with pulque, from the carriage of which the railroad derives a revenue of above $1000 a day,” p. 345. The pulque “tastes like stale buttermilk and has an odor at times like that of putrid meat.” It is wholesome and refreshing. Mexicans ascribe to it the same beneficent properties which Scotsmen assign to their whiskey.—M.]