206 
These build round the hacienda their villages of mud, sticks and palm- 
leaf thatch hovels fenced in with cactus and maquey hedges and mud 
walls, and are quiet and docile, but lacking utterly any spark of intelli- 
nt ambition. The hands who are not regularly ‘employed on the work 
quantity is gathered naturally at the end of the year when the harvest 
is taken in. The central mass of heart leaves (cogol/ho) in the plant-is 
alone gathered, leaving the outside leaves (penea), or say about 70 per 
cent. to waste, as the flesh of these outer leaves is found to be too hard 
to work. Although a fresh crop of leaves springs up from the terminal 
bud which was previously protected, this process prevents the plant 
from flowering, thereby causing its decrease, as it dies after about four 
years of this treatment. Having got his load of cogolhos, the peon makes 
his way back to the hacienda, where he sets about extracting the fibre, 
for ag when finished and dried he gets s from 25 to 50 cents* per 
ba (25 pounds) either in money, or as is almost universal, in credit 
at the ranch store. The price he receives depends largely on the 
distance from which the cogolhos have been brought. Under the rude 
peon seen preparing the fibre. With a bundle of raw Lechu- 
guilla cogiilbiog at his left, the man sits with his legs stretched out on 
either side of a wooden peg, about 8 inches high and 3 inches in 
diameter, driven firmly into the ground with a slant to the left. Fixed 
to this is another piece of wood about 3 — square, about an inch 
above and parallel with the ground. About half an inch above this 
table the peg ang a a werk in es to receive me point of the ¢tallador, 
a blunt-edged ironscraper in a wooden handle which the man takes in 
se right hand. The simple SRA ESE used are shown in the wood-cut 
Tearing a cogolho to pieces, taking a leaf and dexterously stripping 
the thorny margin oe its sides, he places a corn-c ca sph n the hollow of 
(whic h the operator holds as if it were a spade handle), and the process 
hi repeated for the other end (the base) of the leaf. When the pile of 
causes some of the pulp to remain on the fibre and give it a green tinge 
* Mex. dollar worth 38}d. 
