196 Yucca Whipplei. 



which has been formed into balls of two to four inches in diameter^ 

 This substance they eat green, by chewing and extracting the sweet 

 juice and ejecting the white fibrous ' cud ' left after the operation, 

 or, to heighten the relish, they roast it over the coals, sometimes 

 merely warming it through. They will tell you this is mesqual 

 (mez-kal). A botanist would tell you that it is Yucca Whipplei. 

 What's in a name after all? Mesqual will taste just as sweet to the 

 uninterested savage. Still earlier in the season you may see little 

 bands of Indians on foot, and mounted on their wretched mustangs,, 

 bound for the hills; they are going after mesqual too. They will 

 bring back with them many fibrous, spherical, sticky and dirty 

 looking masses about as large as a cocoanut, fiber and all. If you 

 have courage enough to taste it you will find it quite sweet, and the 

 Indian will tell you it is mesqual, and muy dulce. 



When the mesqual is suitable for cooking they gather great 

 quantities of it, at some convenient spot near their camp. They 

 then make a slight depression in the soil, in which a fire is built and 

 maintained for some time, until the ground, and a quantity of 

 stones also, which have been thrown in, become quite hot. When 

 this primitive oven is at the right temperature the mesqual, stripped 

 of its leaves, is thrown in, the embers having been first raked to one- 

 side. When a thick layer of mesqual has been placed in the oven, 

 the hot stones, embers, ashes, soil and green grass are thrown over 

 the whole pile and a fire keptburning on top of it; this is kept going 

 till the chief cook deems the mesqual to be thoroughly cooked, when 

 the pile is pulled to pieces and the contents allowed to cool. In taste 

 it has a faint resemblance to a baked sweet apple, and is about of 

 the same consistency. The whole mass is a mixture of this sweet, 

 soft pulp and coarse, white fibers, much like a manilla rope yarn. 

 Care must be taken not to eat much of it, for it has a medicinal 

 effect similar to castor oil, though the Indians do not seem to mind 

 this at all. I am told that the Indians on the desert north of us 

 knead up the fresh-baked mesqual into cakes, and these are dried in 

 the sun for future use. The Agave deserti is also called mesqual, 

 and is cooked the same way, and I have good season to believe sev- 

 eral other sorts of agave. In fact I believe that Yucca Whipplei is 

 the only yucca that is used in this manner. Mesqual seems to be the 

 general name for all plants that are prepared as I have stated, 

 hence Whipple's yucca also becomes mesqual, because eatable in this 

 manner. 



Should you wander along the sand washes and slopes of the 

 higher parts of our valley you cannot help noticing a curious look- 

 ing plant growing there in considerable numbers. From an upright 



