I was recently looking through some of my old copies when I came across a morsel contributed by Lady Rebekah Phillips Dixon. In describing some Indians of Arizona she spoke of them making tortillas, but could not describe how they were made, as there was an obstruction to her view. I have very often watched the Indians preparing them.
They first get a large bread-pan (and it doesn't particularly matter whether it is scrupulously clean or not), and dump in a quantity of flour without measuring it, and which, by-the-way, has generally been done up in the corner of an old shawl, and hidden in the brushy part of the wick-i-up, or stowed under the bed. From the corner of the shawl she has on, or perhaps the hem of her skirt, the squaw extracts a can from which she takes, also without measurement, a bit of yeast. From still another portion of the shawl she gets a little salt and mixes the whole together with water.
The dough thus made is divided into balls, a trifle smaller than a biscuit, and laid out in a row until she resurrects from a neighboring cactus, or from under a saddle, or, still more likely, out of the bed, a very greasy frying-pan which, often without washing, is transferred to the fire to heat. The squaw seats herself in front of it, and taking one of the small lumps of dough she very swiftly tosses it from one palm to the other until it is very thin, when it is transferred to the frying-pan, where it remains until slightly browned, when it is tossed up very dexterously about two feet and comes down again in the pan—turned. When it is done it is laid on the coals, where it completes its baking. The tortillas are about a quarter of an inch thick, and to my taste about as near to sole-leather as anything not leather can be.
Florence E. Cowan.
Kingman, Arizona.
Questions and Answers.
Joseph Cook, 3311 Howell Street, Wissinoming Philadelphia, is engaged in the commendable task of looking up names of his ancestry, and he wants all the Cooks in the country to write him. If all do, his mail will be large. "M. T." is here again for further information. She asks for yells and colors of the following colleges: Pennsylvania State, Grinnell, Stevens Institute, St. Albans Military, Georgetown, Lake Forest, and the State universities of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.
Henry B. Foss asks if Chicago is not now the richest of all American colleges. Hardly, we think, but it is among the very wealthiest. The last gift of its chief founder, $3,000,000, was, we believe, contingent upon the people of Chicago, or at least the friends of the university, raising an equal sum. Should they do so, the plant of the university would be worth about $13,000,000—a vast sum, which can make Chicago a great factor in educational matters. "Who writes our puzzles!" asks Victor Landrum. A score or more different persons. Some authors furnish material, and one of the editors puts that material together. Some of our cleverest puzzle work has been done by women—Ellen Douglas Deland, Mrs. Pollie Pemberton Bermann, Mrs. Clara J. Denton, Mrs. H. E. Banning, Miss J. M. Cox, Mrs. M. E. Saffold, and Miss L. E. Johnson.
Fred Hayden asks if we think young men should study politics. We answer, yes. "Is an electric locomotive for heavy traffic doing successful work anywhere?" inquires Emanuel Parrish. Yes, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, hauling freight trains through the tunnel under the city of Baltimore. "Do members of the House of Representatives at Washington get the same salary as United States Senators?" asks J. B. G. Yes, $5000 a year, besides some allowances for stationery and travelling expenses. No, the members of the British Parliament, either Lords or Commons, are not paid. Yes, the young Duke of Marlborough is a full member of the British House of Lords.
