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STOCK RAISING. 149 
tough fibre of the leaf excellent mattresses, matting, and 
ropes are extensively manufactured by the Indians, and used 
everywhere throughout the State. From the root is distilled 
the spirit of that name. Mescal spirit of the best quality, 
matured by age, stands on perfect equality with good 
whiskey, and is considered, as a spirit, to be very whole- 
some. If watered by the retailer it is ruined; and if adul- 
terated with the products of the sugar-cane a eds inferior 
article is produced. The process of making Mescal spirit has 
too often been told to allow of a description here. 
STOCK-RAISING IN SONORA. 
The great advantages which Sonora possesses as a stock- 
raising country cannot well be exaggerated. Grama stands 
first among the grasses; next comes a blue, coarse grass, 
greatly relished by cattle; then follow many varieties; all 
are perennials, so that in an unusually dry season they 
do not altogether fail, and the stock are preserved from 
starvation. 
Besides the grasses, there are a great variety of shrubs and 
bushes that cattle thrive well on and eat with zest. The 
Mezquit and Paloferro usually yield in early autumn an abun- 
dant crop of beans, which are called by the natives Pechita. 
At this season all the cattle grow very fat. A species of 
wild sage, which grows in many places, gives the beef a 
peculiar and delicious flayour much extolled by the epicures 
of the country. All these dry and nutritious forms of food 
cover the inland plains everywhere, and furnish so large a 
supply and variety of fodder that I doubt if any country 
could feed more stock, acre for acre, than Sonora. In the 
narrow valleys there grows a weed (it was just coming up 
