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Sisal hemp, which I found much like our yucca or "bear grass," is but little grown. Sugarcane is usually cultivated in large plantations, as in Louisiana, these plantations themselves called haciendas, and their owners hacienderos.
He must become skillful in paddling his boat. A sail too would be very helpful at times. He imagined how pleasant it would be sitting in the boat sailing along with a gentle wind. "When the wind is favorable," he thought, "I will only have to steer with my paddle." So he set about weaving a sail of his sisal fibre. To do this he had to make a much larger loom than he had yet used.
On the morning of the third day of our voyage we reached Sisal, and as soon as the captain would let us we went ashore, in a canoe that was like a flat wooden box. This said captain was a Catalan, and a surly fellow, and did not take the trouble to disguise the utter contempt he felt for our inquisitive ways, which he seemed quite to take pleasure in thwarting.
There are fine mission stations in all the healthy regions of the country, and great plantations of rubber, sisal, cotton, and corn abound. The white women and children, though rather pasty and washed out after at least two years' residence in the country, do not appear debilitated after their long tropical sojourn.
There is open feeding throughout the entire year, so there is no need of barns or hay. The local cattle industry makes possible the shipment of some $2,500,000 worth of hides and skins annually. Other lines of industry worthy of mention, but not possible of detailed description here, include sponges, tortoise shell, honey, wax, molasses, and henequen or sisal.
His palace in Mexico City, or on the sisal plains of Yucatan is reared on the stolen labour of a people whose bondage is based on a lie. The hacenade keeps the books and debits the slave with the cost of the lash that scourges him into the fields. Ireland is the English peon, the great peon of the British Empire.
Among our fellow-passengers were a company of fifth-rate comedians, going to Merida by way of Sisal. There was nothing interesting to us about them. Theatrical people and green-room slang vary but little over the whole civilized world. There were two or three Spanish and French tradesmen going back to Mexico.
Here and there are kola trees, cardamom bushes, aloe plants from which sisal is drawn, camphor and cinnamon shrubs, and probably every species of the parasitical family, depending like many human beings upon stronger relatives or neighbors for support. The orchid enclosure would arouse any collector's covetousness.
In November I sailed from New Orleans for Yucatan to visit at Merida a Mexican friend, who turned out to be the King of Yucatan, as he was popularly called, he being an immense landed proprietor and practically monopolist of the henequin industry. Henequin, or Sisal hemp, is the fibre of Agave Sisalensis, a plant very like the Agave Americana, from which pulque is extracted.
The coarser parts are used for cordage, which is very serviceable. When we were at Nassau, in the Island of New Providence, last year, we saw fields of sisal, which has in late years come into use as a substitute for common hemp and manila, and is said to resist the action of sea-water better than any other material.
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