FISHING AND HUNTING. 
Ill 
brightest fire of any wood ever burned. 
The tender of our engine was filled with 
it, and, as far as fuel was concerned, 
we could have made sixty miles an hour, 
had we wished to do so. * The wood of 
the mesquite is of a beautiful bright 
cherry red ; many a time I have won¬ 
dered if this plentiful, tough, and twisted 
timber of the far Southwest could not be 
utilized in some way as a fancy wood; 
certainly a more beautiful color was never 
seen. Occasionally I thought I saw my 
old friend the sagebrush; then there was 
the ironwood (palo de hierro), that looks 
like a very fine variety of the mesquite. 
Its name is derived from its hardness, and 
is well deserved. It requires an ax to 
fell each tree, and as the quality of differ¬ 
ent trees is always the same, and that of 
different axes is not, even this ratio of 
