’The horns of the oxen are so large that they contain ten bushels, (Schaeffel.) They use them to hold all manner of things.  Horses, oxen and stags, are harnessed to their wagons.  Stags are used here as cattle are used in the Middle Kingdom, and from the milk of the hind they make butter.  The red pears of the Fusang tree keep good throughout the year.  Moreover, they have apples and reeds; from the latter they prepare mats. No iron is found in this land; but copper, gold, and silver are not prized, and do not serve as a medium of exchange in the market.

’Marriage is determined upon in the following manner.  The suitor builds himself a hut before the door of the house where the one longed for dwells, and waters and cleans the ground every morning and evening.  When a year has passed by, if the maiden is not inclined to marry him, he departs; should she he willing, it is completed.  When the parents die, they fast seven days.  For the death of the paternal or maternal grandfather they lament five days; at the death of elder or younger sisters or brothers, uncles or aunts, three days.  They then sit from morning to evening before an image of the ghost, absorbed in prayer, but wear no mourning clothes.  When the king dies, the son who succeeds him does not busy himself for three years with state affairs.

’In earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha.  But it happened that in the second year-naming ’Great Light,’ of song, (A.D. 458,) five beggar monks, from the kingdom Kipin, went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings and images.  They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners.’

Such is the account of Mexico, as given by the old Buddhist monk Hoei-schin.  What is there authentically known of ancient America and its inhabitants which confirms his account?

In the Fusang tree we have, according to the opinion of Neumann, the Agave Americana or Great American Aloe, called by the Indians Maguey, which is remarkably abundant in the plains of ‘New-Spain,’ and which supplies so many of the wants of its inhabitants even at the present day.  An intoxicating drink, paper, thread, ropes, pins, and needles, (from the thorns,) and clothing, are all furnished by it, so that a traveler, observing the ease with which these are obtained, declares that in Mexico the Maguey plant must first be exterminated ere the sloth and idleness which now so generally afflict them, can be checked.  Such a curious plant, supplying to such an extent, and so exclusively, so many of the needs of life, would naturally be the first object noted by an explorer.