USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



over with more hot ashes and heated stones from the 

 sides of the pit, and all is then buried beneath a 

 mound of earth. There the mescal is left to steam 

 until some time the next day, like the four-and- 

 twenty blackbirds of the nursery rhyme in their 

 pie. When the pit is opened the mescal, still hot and 

 now charred on the outside, is drawn out, the burnt 

 exterior pared off, and the brown, sticky inside laid 

 bare, to be eaten on the spot or laid away to cool and 

 be transported home for future use. If the buds 

 have been cut young enough, mescal is tender and 

 sweet, the flavor suggesting a cross between pine- 

 apple and banana and pleasant to most white 

 palates. Indians are extravagantly fond of it, and 

 it is rare indeed that the stock carried home lasts 

 over the following summer. Should the buds be too 

 old when cooked, the result is unpleasantly fibrous, 

 though in such cases one need only chew until the 

 edible part is consumed, when the fibre may be spat 

 out. Mr. Coville, in his account of the Panamints 

 above quoted, speaks of finding at some forsaken 

 Indian camps along the Colorado Eiver, dried and 

 weathered wads of chewed mescal fibre — visible re- 

 minders of forgotten feasts. 



Denizens of the same region with the Agaves, and 



136 



