Its culms and leaves afford excellent fodder for cattle; and the grain, of which the yield in favourable situations is upwards of a hundredfold, is used for the same purposes as maize, rice, corn and other cereals.
On balance, this will be a hundredfold increase in productivity.
But even supposing $1,000,000,000 to be a juster estimate according to present-day values, it is probable that the increase of this since 1790 has been more than a hundredfold and since 1850 (since when such data have been gathered by the census) about fifteenfold.
Parts of the Peten district are equally fertile, maize in this region yielding two hundredfold from unmanured soil.
Their legal salaries were absolutely insignificant, but they had been permitted to augment them ten and a hundredfold by means of private trade and gifts from the native powers.