put into it a little of the same material which has been laid aside till it became sour, which operates like yeast, causing the honey-water to ferment.
As soon as the maguey juice in the hog-skin has fermented, it is pulque; and is readily sold for eight, and sometimes as high as twenty-five cents a quart, producing a very large revenue upon the cost of the plant.
It is not ordinarily sold at wholesale; but each maguey estate has its retail shops in town, from which the whole product of the estate is retailed out.
One man, who has five of these shops in the city of Mexico, keeps his carriage; and is reckoned, among the magnates of the land, deriving from this source alone, it is said, $25,000 a year.
The excise which Government derives from the sale of this liquor, which, in taste, resembles sour butter-milk, amounted to $817,739 in the year 1793.
PEROTE.
The traveler from the coast always arrives at Perote at a late hour; and as he leaves it again at an early hour next morning, he recollects nothing of it but its chilly night air, and the good supper which he was too cold to enjoy. But on his return from Mexico, he usually has an hour of daylight, which he can improve in a survey of this small and cleanly town. Here the freight-wagons, with their twenty horses apiece, stop to recruit; and the cargo-mules, that take this route, are gathered in the immense stable-yards, which give to the place the appearance of a collection of caravansaries. The whitewash-brush has been industriously applied to the outside of the houses; and though they are chiefly built of that frail material, dried