1803 
Cofre de 
Perote 
er both mad© of porous lava. Both the woman and her daughter worked 
an hour or two daily at this. During this operation a couple of turkeys 
and a venerable billy goat mde various onslaughts on the increasing 
dough pile. Usually each onslaught of this character was the cause of 
the rcsaan calling h®: oldest boy a scries of rile epithets because he 
did not attend to keeping the animals away. 
After the wet com dough had been prepared the woman placed a large 
flat stone on 5 supporting fire stones over the coals and then made 
tortillas and baked them on this inpr©vised oven, These, with beans 
boiled in an earthen pot, made up the min food of the household al¬ 
though scs» neat was cooked and eaten with the broth once a day and a 
few potatoes* Bach meal was seasoned with a sauce made of crushed 
chilis end tomatoes* Coffee with sugar was also prepared on a few 
oee&sions* 
The people were quite hospitable and prepared food for ay 3 men 
and offered some to isyself and assistant, but fortunately we had a stock 
or ovr wm. 
The stom continued and heemm very cold a e nif:ht shut down with a 
high north wind* We put our bods down as best we could on one side of 
the room in the mud and slept oblivious of the gale outside that soughed 
t 
and roared through the tops of the sturdy pines, The next day the storm 
continued unabated, end streams of water began to trickle tlirough places 
' t 
' S 
in tho roof and wore accompanied by frequent falls of clots of wet soot 
that soon rendered us all of the complexion of chimney-sweeps. 
:V 
/ 
morning 
■1 
found one of them dying from exposure to the storm and the others were 
I 
evidently not far from following suit. Soon after the mule died and the 
sf \ S »■« * ■ - 
cKmsr hurried his saddles on and departed down tho mountain fearing that 
his other animals would also die. The floor of the hut now became very 
- 188 - 
\ 
