62 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



Like the ocotillo, the agave makes a striking figure 

 in many a desert landscape. On scarred, sun-smitten 

 hillsides and down league-long stony bajadas, the 

 earth bristles with their blue-white daggers in im- 

 penetrable chevaux-de-frise, stuck here and there 

 with leaning poles, relics of former years' flowering. 

 Flora is again on the defensive, for without those 

 pikes and lances she could never hold her own 

 against the cattle, bighorn, and deer that covet the 

 succulent flower-stems, and whose tracks you find in 

 spring all about these forbidden preserves. 



From time immemorial the agave has supplied 

 the desert Indians with one of their few luxuries, one, 

 moreover, that is both food and confectionery. Now 

 that every country store offers easy satisfaction to 

 stomach and sweet tooth, this old source of supply 

 has fallen into neglect; but now and then the Indian, 

 answering the call of the wild, still goes afield to 

 bake mescal. One recent spring I was able to join 

 a friendly Volcan Indian who was bound on this 

 time-honored function. Briefly, this is the manner 

 of it: 



Arrived at the mescal ground, which was on the 

 southern desert overlooking the Borego Valley re- 

 gion, our first work was to search for plants with 

 flower-stalks in the right stage of growth. The deer 

 and wild-sheep had been before us, and it took an 

 hour or two to secure a dozen young and tender 

 shoots that Antonio pronounced bueno. With his 

 axe he cut deep into the core of the plant, at the 

 base of the great asparagus-like stalk. The shoot 

 was cut out, its top struck off, and the leaves trimmed 



