At Buenos Ayres, where the hedgerows are generally formed of the common aloe, I had an opportunity of trying various experiments with it, and had some cordage made from it of beautiful texture and whiteness by some sailors from one of his Majesty's ships. I also tried my hand at making pulqué, after seeing Mr. Ward's account of the manner in which it is made in Mexico; but, though we obtained an abundance of the liquor, following the process described by him of taking out the stem as soon as it began to shoot, and collecting the sap as it accumulated in the socket or basin beneath, it was never sufficiently palatable to our tastes to be drinkable; but this probably was from our want of experience in the mode of preparing it: however, I have no doubt that consumers enough might be found of this or any other such beverage amongst a people who can drink so filthy a preparation as the chicha, the liquor in common use amongst the natives of the united provinces,--one of the ingredients of which is said to be maize chewed by old Indian women.[66] In some of those saline and arid districts, where no other fresh water is to be found, there grows a species of the aloe, well known to the natives, from which, on being tapped by an incision made in one of the thickest leaves, a clear stream will spurt out sufficient to allay the traveller's thirst. In many parts of Oran is found the celebrated cuca, or coca, plant (_Erythroxylon Peruviana_), sometimes called _El Arbol del hambre y de la sed_,--"The tree of hunger and thirst;" to the natives more necessary than bread. Hungry or weary, with some leaves of coca to chew, mixed with a little lime or alkali of his own preparation, the Peruvian Indian seems to care for no other sustenance:--he never swallows it, but is perpetually chewing it, as the Asiatics do the beetle-nut: give him but his bag full of this, and at most a little dried maize besides, and he will undertake the hardest labour in the mines, and, as a courier, perform the most astonishing journeys on foot, frequently travelling a hundred leagues across the snowy and desolate regions of the Cordillera. In surveying countries like these, still in their natural state, it is impossible not to be struck at every step with the infinite and wonderful variety of the works of the Almighty, and with the manifest evidences they uniformly display of an unceasing and beneficent provision for all the wants of His creatures, in every clime and under all circumstances.