EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES 



old-time cookery to oblivion, there are Indians who 

 pack up every spring and repair to the mescal fields, 

 there to open again the ancient baking pits which 

 their fathers and their fathers before them had used, 

 and camp for a week at a time, cutting and cooking, 

 feasting and singing, and telling once more the im- 

 memorial legends of their race. 



The process of preparing mescal as I happen to 

 have observed it in California is this: The succu- 

 lent, budding flower-stalks when just emerging from 

 amid the leaves are cut out with an axe, or better yet 

 with a native implement fashioned for the purpose — 

 a long, stout lever of hard wood (oak or mountain 

 mahogany) beveled at one end like a chisel. They 

 are then trimmed of their tips and all adhering leaf- 

 age, the desirable portion being the butt, which is 

 filled with all the pent-up energy that the plant was 

 holding in reserve for the supreme act of flower and 

 seed production. Meantime, a circular pit, about a 

 foot and a half deep and five or six feet in diameter, 

 has been prepared — usually one that has been used 

 in previous years being dug out. This is lined side 

 and bottom with flat stones, and a huge fire of dry 

 brush started in it, care being taken to use no wood 

 that is bitter. When the fire has burned down, the 

 mescal butts are placed in the hot ashes, covered 



135 



