IN CALIFORNIA 139 



cooked to a soft brown mass of molasses candy con- 

 sistency and flavor. Part of this is eaten fresh with 

 great gusto. The remainder is dried in the sun and 

 carried home to mountain cabin or desert wickiup to 

 be consumed later. It is, indeed, even to white pal- 

 ates not a bad titbit, and the Indian, delighting as 

 he does in all manner of sweets, is passionately fond 

 of it. The mescal buds are capable of making by 

 distillation one of the fieriest intoxicants known, as 

 hot, in "bad man" parlance, as "a sulphuric acid 

 cocktail with a cactus-joint for a cherry"; and the 

 fame of this liquor mescal as manufactured by 

 Apaches and Mexicans is much more wide-spread 

 than that of the innocent food stuff called mescal de 

 comer mescal to eat. The making of a distilled 

 liquor from the plant seems not to have been known 

 to any Indians before they were taught the process 

 by white men, and the California tribes appear not 

 yet to have heard of it, or at any rate to have had 

 the good sense not to resort to it. 



Doctor Flora 



From the feast to the doctor appears to be a nat- 

 ural transition, so something may here be said about 

 the medicinal herbs employed by the Indians. East 

 and West, Indian herb remedies have ever possessed 

 a certain glamour for a considerable part of the white 



