104 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



takes his day off in a manner unique — for a bus- 

 iness man. He drives his car into the desert unpro- 

 vided either with food or drink, thus proving that 

 desert-craft is not confined to Indians, Mexicans or 

 the Western born and bred. Once he invited me 

 to accompany him and only a piece of ill luck inter- 

 fered to prevent. It would have been a day replete 

 with interest and eniovment for the desert-lover! 

 He gets his drink from the water-storing cactus, 

 which puts out its green shoots every spring and is 

 said to hold moisture at least twenty years. For 

 fruit he seeks various desert plants familiar to him, 

 one of which is said to bear a kind of bread. 



Then there is the creosote plant, one of Nature's 

 many free medicines to those unlearned in books. 

 Should the old Indian squaw be crippled with rheu- 

 matism, her friends die a deep hole in the ground, 

 and heating rocks place them within it. Then they 

 gather the leaves of the creosote plant and strew 

 them on the stones. Upon these they pour cold 

 water, and picking up the squaw they wrap her in 

 blankets and place her in a chair over the steam. 

 There they leave her until she is cooked and cured. 

 Such is the simple economic vapor-bath devised by 

 the sage and ignorant Indian — the ignorant Indian 

 who years and years ago recognized the virtues of 

 massage, and so well handed down his knowledge 

 that even to this day many a Mexican woman raised 

 in a jacal can so handle and manipulate a sick person 

 that the results equal those produced by some high- 

 priced masseuse. 



Amongst other singular growths of this region 



