ANIMALS AND PLANTS OF THE REGION 45 



was then opened, the stones thrown back in a wide, 

 craterlike rim, and the well cooked heads carefully 

 removed and opened. The rich food was taken out and 

 eaten, or was placed in baskets or spread out on clean 

 stones to dry in great slabs that would keep for months. 



Years ago Gen. H. C. Merriam, who had trailed 

 bands of raiding Apaches, described to me the freshly 

 opened mescal pits with their delicious food somewhat 

 like candied sweet potatoes, and told of long swift 

 journeys made by the Indians, each with a slab of dried 

 mescal tied to his saddle. 



With mescal, and perhaps sotol (pronounced soto) as 

 vegetables, it is probable that these Indians did not 

 cultivate squashes, melons, corn, and beans as exten- 

 sively as did the Pueblo tribes farther west. For nut 

 bread they had an abundance of acorns from three or 

 more species of oaks growing in the gulches, and from 

 other species a little higher up in the Guadalupe Moun- 

 tains. Four well worn grinding-holes at the entrance 

 to the cave were probably used for grinding acorns, 

 but may have been also used for crushing the sugary 

 pods of mesquite beans, of which the Indians make a 

 sweet and very nutritious cake. The valuable, food- 

 producing mesquite bush covers practically the whole 

 Pecos Valley and the warm slopes of the ridges to above 

 the cave. The little black walnuts grow in great pro- 

 fusion in the wider gulches, the nuts of which although 

 delicious are so small that one must work half the day 

 to get a good meal from them. Wild onions, wild 

 potatoes, and other bulb and tuber-bearing plants are 

 still found here. The seeds of grasses and of a great 



