THE ANCIENT STAMP MILL
After five or ten miles down the valley, winding through the forest, crossing open clearings, passing here and there a native hut, frequently fording the river, we left the main trail and turned up a shaded ravine, following it to its head, where we passed through a low gap with high mountains on either hand, and then descended toward the river again, thus cutting off a great bend and saving fifteen or twenty miles. As we came down toward the main valley, the timber grew smaller, the persistent mesquit more and more possessed the land, and the sun fell full upon us. The heat was intense. No living thing now seemed anywhere to exist; only the multitudes of little brown lizards, countless thousands of them scurrying on the sand; and iguanas, black as night, sleeping in the crotch of a tree, or on the heated top of a stone near the wayside. Nor did any sound now stir the midday silence except the hum of millions of cicadas, which the fierce sun rays seem only to nurse into active life.
Six hours in the forepart of the day brought us to the Hacienda de Oropeo, on the borders of the Rio de San Pedro. Here we halted for the noontime rest, lying-by beneath an Indian shelter, a wide-thatched roof of palm leaves, under which we could tie our horses, and where we might ourselves repose. Here an old Indian woman cooked for us tortillas and frijoles. We watched her make the tortillas, little cakes of corn meal as thin as sheets of paper. The dry kernels of the corn are first soaked in lime water until the enveloping shell readily comes off. It is then much like samp. The swelled and softened grain is then rubbed to a pulp between two stones, the moistened pulp is patted between the hands to the thinnest sort of a wafer, and these thin wafers are laid upon the top of the clay oven to be slowly dried. The tortilla is said to be the most nutritious of all foods prepared from maize. It is the staff of life of the Mexican peon, and the making of tortillas is the chief vocation in life of his wife and daughters. As soon as the little girls are big enough they begin to pat tortillas, and they continue to pat tortillas throughout their lives. If you travel through an Indian village your ear will be struck by the pat, pat, pat, of hundreds of pairs of hands. The Indian women are patting tortillas. They are always patting tortillas, when not specially occupied in other toils.
COPPER ORE DUMPS—LA CHINA MINES
Toward 4:00 P. M. Izus, our mozo, repacked the loads, again we mounted, and in an hour were across the river, where we ascended a small creek a couple of miles to these ancient mines. It was while resting at noontime, that we noticed a group of thirty or forty men bearing on their shoulders the palm-thatched roof of a moving mansion. Later, we rode past the new domicile, the roof was already set upon the corner posts, and the family were already moved into their habitation.
We are bivouacked in a building where once lived the lord of the mines,—mines now filled with water and abandoned, although none of the workings go down more than one hundred feet. The building is chiefly constructed, both the floor and walls, of sun-baked clay. High above the walls rests the palm-thatched roof. There are no frames in the window openings, no frames in the doorways. Walls and roof being only a protection from the sun heat, the air may blow through where it listeth. Our cots are taken from the back of “Old Blacky,” unrolled and set in the breezy chamber; upon them we sit and sleep.
Our only terrors are the ants, but we set the legs of the cots in little earthenware pans of water and are safe. An Indian family, living in the distant end of the rambling, abandoned buildings across the courtyard, provides us with boiled rice and stewed chicken. Izus has brought us an abundance of bananas and oranges, fresh, fragrant, and luscious. We buy several oranges for a centavo, and a centavo is worth less than half an American cent. The Indian keeps poultry and also gamecocks. These latter are tied by the leg near his door. They are his pride, and he fights them on Sunday after church. When the priest has closed the services the neighbors, who have all brought their chickens, form in a circle, and there the week’s wages are staked and lost upon the issue of the fights. I send you a snap shot of a battle.
