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Updated: May 25, 2025
Long, slender arms of the ocotillo encroached upon the road; broad, round leaves did likewise; fluted columns, fallen like timbers in a forest, lay along the narrow margins; the bayonet cactus and the bisnagi leaned threateningly; clusters of maguey, shadowed by the huge, looming saguaro, infringed upon the highway to Mezquital.
"Maguey rope, and that saddle was made in Mexico." "Mebby he wants water," suggested the saloon-keeper. "He's had it. Reins are wet where he drug 'em in the tank." "Wonder who them three fellas was?" "Don' know. From up north, by their rig. I'm wonderin' who the fourth fella was and where he is." "Why, he's out there, stiff'nin' on the sand. They's been a fight.
He took the incident as a good omen and went again to the hilltop. Under the maguey had sprung up slender stalks of white, bearing delicate gold flowers, and as these flowers waved in the wind a fine golden dust, as fine as powdered ashes, blew away toward the north. Padre Juan was mystified, but believed that great fortune attended upon him and his poor people.
These were perhaps the names of some tribes, into which the great Guaraonese nation was divided. The flour bears the name of yuruma: I have eaten it at the town of St. By interrupting the blossoming, nature is obliged to carry elsewhere the saccharine or amylaceous matter, which would accumulate in the flowers of the maguey and in the fruit of the Mauritia.
The strong distilled liquor made from the roots of the maguey plant is quite another article, and is more like Scotch whiskey in effect. If you rise from your couch early enough in the morning, you will see many Indian men and women coming in to market from the country, all bending under the weight of provisions, pottery, or some other home product.
It is evidence of the total ignorance in which the two nations remained of each other, that the Peruvians should have borrowed nothing of the hieroglyphical system of the Mexicans, and this, notwithstanding that the existence of the maguey plant agave, in South America might have furnished them with the very material used by the Aztecs for the construction of their maps.7
Its sap was variously prepared and served as milk, honey, vinegar, beer and brandy. From its tough fiber were made thread, rope, cloth, shoes and paper. The strong flower stalk was used in building houses and the broad leaves for covering them. The heart of the maguey is saccharine and rich in nutriment. It is prepared by roasting it in a mescal pit and, when done, tastes much like baked squash.
Well-cultivated fields stretch out as far as the eye can reach, with farm-houses scattered here and there, that strikingly remind the traveler of his northern home at this season of the year. The fences here are chiefly formed by rows of the maguey or century plant, growing at the side of a ditch.
This beverage is made from the roots of the maguey, a plant common to this region. The roots are bulbous, and are gathered in large quantities, and thrown into pits containing red-hot stones. These being filled, they are covered with grass or brush, over which blankets are spread.
We are now passing the borders of that famous Indian republic, of the high table-land, which shut out despotism by a lofty wall, and was so completely isolated in the times of Montezuma that its people could obtain no foreign products, not even cotton or salt; whose food was the maize which they cultivated, and the game which they caught upon the snow-capped mountains; whose clothing was made from the maguey, and from skins of animals taken in the chase; a people whose government was a council of elders, which was presided over by an hereditary chief; whose political institutions have been the study and admiration of the learned of many lands.
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