THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLE-FOOT.
On the plains of Tlaxcala, Apam and Puebla, in the rich lava beds, and
on the desert which is so poor one can hardly raise a disturbance on it,
are millions of acres of land devoted to the culture of the maguey and
the preparation of one of the vilest drinks known to man.
The century plant, the agave, the aloe and the maguey are one and the
same. It is called century plant, because outside of the tropics it
might live a hundred years and never bloom, like our Louisiana
sugar-cane; but here in Mexico from six to fourteen years are sufficient
for its maturity, as it requires that much time to accumulate enough
vitality for its crowning effort in life--the propagation of seed. When
it has reached this stage it shoots up a central stalk a foot in
diameter and twenty feet high, crowned by a panicle of beautiful
greenish-yellow flowers, and then the plant dies down as completely as
any annual.
But the pulque farmer does not permit the plant to blossom. When it
shows indication of shooting up its central bud as large as a cabbage,
the same is cut out, leaving a cavity capable of holding four or five
quarts. Into this cavity the sap collects and is sold as _agua miel_ or
honey water. After twenty-four hours fermentation it becomes pulque, the
national drink of Mexico, for, of the 350,000 inhabitants of the
capital, 250,000 are pulque drinkers. A single plant can be milked five
months and in that time will produce one hundred and sixty gallons of
pulque. Each morning a small army of pulque gatherers will enter the
field with long calabashes or gourds, through which they suck up the
pulque on the siphon principle, and inject it into the pig-skin bottle
held on the back by a band around the forehead. This skin-bottle is the
same that is mentioned in the New Testament and is secured entire from
the animal, and with the ends at the hoof tied and loaded with pulque,
has the exact semblance of a hog on a man’s shoulder. The pulque must
reach market the same day it is gathered, as it becomes vinegar within
twenty-four hours, so special pulque trains run on all roads entering
the city.
Seventy five thousand gallons is the daily consumption in the City of
Mexico, and the railroads make a thousand dollars a day for carriage,
and the custom houses collect on each gallon as it enters the _garitas_
or city gates. When the sap first appears it is greenish in color and
sweet, hence its name of _agua miel_, or honey water. Carbonic acid soon
collects as fermentation advances, and then it is called pulque. Pulque
has the color of soapsuds, almost the consistency of molasses and a
compound taste not found in the dictionary nor listed in _Materia
Medica_. As to smell, it is a cross between a slaughter house and a
compost heap of decaying vegetables. Fermentation is so rapid it would
explode a cask in a few minutes, so the gatherers empty it from the
pigskins into tinnacals or ox hides strapped to a wooden frame. To
retard fermentation, it is poured into vats and a little milk and rennet
are added, which do not quite coagulate it, but give it the aromatic
odor of Limburger cheese. From these vats it is loaded on the trains and
hurried to the city where it is again transferred in pigskin to wagons
loaded with hogsheads with the bung open. In front of the retail
pulqueria, the wagon stops and the final unloading begins. A hogshead is
turned on its side at the rear of the wagon and the spigot is pulled,
and the ropy liquid is passed through a large funnel into a pigskin on
the ground, by passing through a leg. This pigskin holds as much as a
beer keg, and when full, the huge porter replaces the spigot, wraps a
string around the leg and shoulders the pig which looks natural enough
to squeal. The porter empties this into five or six huge casks which are
setting on the counter, where the dealers dole it out at a cent a glass
to the hundreds who push and fight for standing room until the last cask
is empty, and a similar scene will take place every day in the year.
Just opposite my window I watched a crowd for hours that had overflowed
the sidewalk struggling to get inside and they did not thin out till ten
barrels had been emptied, which means five hundred gallons. And the same
is true for every pulqueria in the city from the time the first train
load arrives till every cask is empty. Pulquerias have no written sign,
but over each door is a plaited awning of green maguey leaves which has
all the power that an electric lamp has to swarms of night insects. At
one cent a drink, even the paupers can get gloriously inflated, and it
takes half the police force to drag off those who find the streets too
narrow for their new style of perambulating.
The ordinary simon pure pulque is just liquid filth, no more, no less.
Private families remove the Limburger essence by means of a harmless
chemical and add sugar and orange juice, but the dealer at the pulque
joint knows better; he adds a quantity of marihuana to the cask, and
presto! he has the regulation Kentucky tangle-foot, warranted to kill at
forty rods. With one or two drinks of this, the Mexican’s eyes look two
ways at once, and he just spoils for a fight, and at once hunts some one
to disagree with him. He will walk up to a stranger and look him over in
a zigzag way and say: “_Viva Mejico_.” The other fellow was just out
hunting ducks himself, so he replies: “_Viva Espania_,” or “_Viva Cuba
Libre_,” and then their heads and feet change places, and when they come
to their senses they are lying on the soft side of a stone floor in the
“_husga_” and wondering “_Who struck Billy Patterson_.” After witnessing
the surging, seething mass of frenzied men and women with their savage
Indian nature all ablaze with pulque, no one longer wonders at the large
number of police he meets. The government is absolutely powerless to
stop the sale of drugged pulque, and the number of deaths annually from
pulque fights is incredible. In one year, the number of fights with
knives alone was over six thousand in the capital. I know of no more
dangerous animal than a Mexican loaded with pulque and marihuana, face
distorted and blood-shot eyes aflame, and a knife in his belt. Blood is
his glory and he loves a long knife which he can throw thirty feet with
the accuracy of a pistol bullet.
Outside the cities the duello is the code of honor and the long knife
the peacemaker. Among the cow boys and miners the friends of each tie
their left hands together and stick a bowie-knife in the ground by each
and walk off. The one that lives longest may cut the cords and come back
to camp. If neither returns the boys know that they crossed the Styx
together. Pulque is not the only drink made from the maguey, it is only
the swill of the great unwashed. For the more epicurean tastes the root
of the plant is roasted and distilled and from the product is a fiery
liquid, which for courtesy is called mescal, but in reality is molten
lava, and its nearest kin is another distillation called tequila, which
is almost pure alcohol. They are sold in saloons at three cents a drink,
and the American who attempts to wrestle with the monster takes a glass
of mescal and a glass of water and tries to swallow them both at the
same moment in order to keep the lining of his throat from scalding off
as the lava goes down. The native, to show his contempt for the method,
will look you in the eye and drink the fiery liquid without water. It
brings water to his eyes, and the clotted blood-shot spots appear almost
as rapidly as the shades of a chameleon on a rose bush. I saw a maniac
suffering with delirium tremens from mescal, and a more pitiable object
I have never seen. How he pleaded and begged for three cents, offering
his soul in exchange just for one more drink before he died. I went to
a restaurant and got him some soup and it had the effect of water upon a
hydrophobia victim and I can only liken him to a caged hyena.
The maguey must not be called a profligate because it gives birth to
five different intoxicating drinks; it serves other purposes as well.
From the leaves the natives thatch their houses, and the spines make
needles and pins. The fibre of the leaf is used in making rope,
wrapping-twine, hammocks, sisal, mats, carpets, hairbrushes, brooms,
baskets, paper and thread, firewood, and from the roots a very palatable
food is made, and upon its bountiful leaves there feeds an army of green
caterpillars about the size of your middle finger, and epicures do say
that when they are properly stewed and set before you that you forget
all about clam-bakes and gumbo soup and shrimp-pies and edible birds’
nests and just concentrate your mind upon the _gusanos de la maguey_, to
all of which I say amen. I had to concentrate all of my attention and
other things, too, to prevent a violent volcanic eruption just looking
at the tempting morsel. I do not doubt the epicures in the least; on the
contrary, I had so much faith in their judgment that I was willing to
take their word without the caterpillars. But I did eat one dozen--by
proxy, that is paying for them and enjoying that consumptive Mexican’s
appetite as the whole dozen followed each other down the chute, but I
might add, I had to put a weight on my stomach to avoid--well a
catastrophe.
The maguey is absolutely independent of rain or moisture. It grows on
the mesa that does not get a rain in six years. It is a bulbous plant
and multiplies by suckers set in holes. The usual method is to take a
crow-bar and dig a hole among the rocks and give it just enough earth to
hold the roots and it will do the rest. There is nothing more beautiful
than a maguey farm on the plains of Tlaxcala, with the plants set ten
feet each way and spread over the plain for forty or fifty miles. The
plants are so green they seem to have a blue tint, and the rows are so
symmetrical, no matter which way you look, your vision will focus to a
point in the distance where all rows converge to the vanishing point
like the rails of a railroad on level ground. For a hundred miles south
of the capital, every available rod of ground is planted in maguey which
grows without any cultivation whatever, and will yield to the farmer ten
dollars to the stalk during the single five months of its productive
period. No field gets ripe at once. An acre with several hundred stalks
may not have two dozen to come to maturity this year, and as soon as
they are exhausted new bulbs are set in their stead, which makes a
perpetual orchard. A plant that is to mature this year is easily known
by the bleaching of the leaves as it yields its last vitality to the
central bud.
Whenever the train stops, hordes of women gather around to sell to the
passengers from earthen-ware vessels at a cent a drink. As the passenger
lifts the putrid liquid, the dripping vessel leaves a trail of viscid
streamers, like the gossamers of the bridging spider, or the saliva from
an ox under the yoke, and especially if the wind is blowing, the network
of sticky pulque streamers from car windows is just about as pleasant
as the opening chorus of a candy-pulling, or the closing scene at a
turpentine still.
In the families of the Spanish and French, pulque is never taken, but
wines, champagne and sherry, are the household drinks, and the great
national drink of America, lager beer, is slowly adding the dignified
William goat and the overflowing schooner to the pictorial decorations
of the Mexican house-fronts. The amount of liquid refreshments these
people, especially the women, can embrace within their anatomy is
astonishing. The dinner hour is prolonged from one to two hours in
conversation and guzzling, and when a gentleman sees a lady’s glass
empty at any part of the table, it is customary for him to walk around
to her chair and fill the glass from his bottle; and these opportunities
are eagerly sought by the watchful men, as it indicates a lack of
attention to permit a lady’s glass to become empty. But I have never
seen this class of people drunk or tipsy. The liquor must be very weak
to permit so many bottles being emptied without a knockout.
A young Mexican at Guadalupe attempted to make his national drink
aristocratic by giving it a lofty name. He asked me if I would not seal
our good friendship by joining him in a glass of _vino blanco_. I told
him I did not know what white wine was, as red was the only fast color
the Americans patronized, but I would seal the friendship all right and
let him drink for both of us. To this he raised not a particle of
objection. I doubt if any such magnanimous windfall had ever come his
way before when he could drink for two. He landed me in a pulque joint
and this was my awakening to the _vino blanco_.
I had come in search of knowledge, and found it by means of my nose,
which I had to hold while I grandiloquently told him to “tank up.” The
proprietor brought him a half gallon rancid soapsuds, which he first
offered me. I backed off and told him I had not done a thing to him to
deserve such punishment, and besides, soapsuds more than a week old
always went against my constitution and by-laws, and that I was subject
to heart-failure anyway, and had to guard against undue exertion, such
as vomiting, etc. He said it was not soapsuds, but “_vino blanco_,”
(pulque nueva), and if I did not believe it was new pulque, just smell.
I told him that was exactly what ailed me now, I had smelled and was
leaning against the counter on account of it, and if he would just let
me off I would burn a candle to his choice saint. After my friend had
“tanked up” and swallowed most of the fragrance, I was able to stand up
once more, and then I very kindly asked that proprietor if he did not
think that stuff was ripe enough to bury. I said, “Sir, in my country
when a corpse is kept till the flies swarm in the house, it is a sure
sign that it is time for the funeral. Now sir, just look at the flies.”
“O yes,” said he, “_los muscos_ love _vino blanco_ also, and they come
because they know a good thing when they se--smell it.” Now what was the
use of wasting logic on this logician? So my friend and I entered the
street. It was a warm day, and while we had argued, I think the heat had
contracted the street. At any rate it was much too narrow for my friend
and his _vino blanco_, and he and a lamp-post had quite an argument
about who had the right of way.
I think the post must have hit him below the belt from the way he fell
out, and with the guilt of the act resting so heavy on my conscience I
fled from the scene and vowed I would never buy soapsuds any more for my
poor, martyred Guadalupe guide.
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