*34 Wild specimens of
the vegetable might be seen still higher, springing up
spontaneously amidst the stunted shrubs that clothed the lofty
sides of the Cordilleras, till these gradually subsided into the
mosses and the short yellow grass, pajonal, which, like a golden
carpet, was unrolled around the base of the mighty cones, that
rose far into the regions of eternal silence, covered with the
snows of centuries. *35
[Footnote 34: Malte-Brun, book 86.
The potato, found by the early discoverers in Chili, Peru, New
Granada, and all along the Cordilleras of South America, was
unknown in Mexico, - an additional proof of the entire ignorance
in which the respective nations of the two continents remained of
one another. M. de Humboldt, who has bestowed much attention on
the early history of this vegetable, which has exerted so
important an influence on European society, supposes that the
cultivation of it in Virginia, where it was known to the early
planters, must have been originally derived from the Southern
Spanish colonies. Essai Politique, tom. II. p. 462.]
[Footnote 35: While Peru, under the Incas, could boast these
indigenous products, and many others less familiar to the
European, it was unacquainted with several of great importance,
which, since the Conquest, have thriven there as on their natural
soil. Such are the olive, the grape, the fig, the apple, the
orange, the sugar-cane. None of the cereal grains of the Old
World were found there.
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