Pulque trains are run daily from the mescal plantations, where the pulque is made, into the large cities to supply the bibulous inhabitants with their customary beverage.
Before the Apaches were conquered and herded on reservations a mescal bake was an important event with them.
Nearby also, were some mescal pits used for baking the agave, a native plant that is in great demand as food by the Indians.
Old mescal pits can yet be found in some of the secluded corners of the Apache country that were once the scenes of noisy activity, but have been forsaken and silent for many years.
It is prepared by roasting it in a mescal pit and, when done, tastes much like baked squash.
The spot was evidently an old rendezvous where the marauding Apaches were accustomed to meet in council to plan their bloody raids, and to feast on mescal and pinole in honor of some successful foray or victory over an enemy.
John Slaughter had seized his opportunity while the bandits were drinking to their own good luck and his death in the mescal shop.
They had a final round of drinks in a mescal groggery, swung into their saddles, and went jingling down the street to enjoy the massacre.
It was the habit of the Apaches to rest between the long forced marches of their raids, choosing always a spot high in the mountains where the mescal plant grew.
There was no pulque, the maguey being unknown to the region, but bottled mescal and aguardiente de caña amply made up for it.
Many groups of peons were returning now, without their loads, but maudlin and nasty tempered with the mescal for which they had exchanged them.
Mescal is a plant of the desert, with great, pointed, fleshy leaves.
This method of roasting mescal is about the same pursued farther north with camas root.
When he banks the pile with earth, he arranges a few long bayonets of the mescalso that their tips shall project.
He bought for them mescal and other fiery drinks which were now being sold in view of the coming festival.
He knew that if the soldiers came upon the roof they would find him, but he relied upon the mescal and their lack of zeal.
To reach them at their dizzy altitude was impossible, but we were able to enter some caves a few hundred feet above our camp, finding in them nothing but charred mescal and other evidences of Apache camps.
The men are addicted to intoxication at their feasts, the liquor in common use among them being mescal and aguardiente, a colorless spirit made from the sugar-cane.
The charm which they use is a ball made of mescal mixed with wild honey; this is carried under the left arm, in a small leather bag,--and the spell is effected by simply laying the right hand upon this bag.
The mescal consisted of round patches of cactus with spear-shaped leaves, low on the ground, with a long dead stalk standing or broken down.
The new trail led up and down over dark red rich earth, through thickets of jack-pine and maple, and then across long slopes of manzanita and juniper, mescal and oak.
I saw both prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak, and juniper trees.
The honey from the flowers of mescal and mesquite is the best to be obtained in this country of innumerable bees.
The washes and stream-beds were bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow and dust laden; the mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts.
The Chief said Mescal did not suffer any from the stiffness, but I'll admit that I suffered both mentally and physically.
I wasn't scared by the storm, but Mescal was positively unnerved.
No; the ranger loaded him with two water kegs, and when Mescal got excited on a steep switchback the ranger lost his head and drove him over the edge.
Why, I loaned him to one of the rangers last week and he took him down the Hermit Trail and Mescal fell overboard.
I told the Chief I knewMescal was knock-kneed and stiff-legged.
Rosa knew how much harm mescal (a kind of intoxicating drink made from the maguey or Mexican aloe) did among the neighbors.
I, too, drank enough mescal to feel the effect of it, but I was not drunk.
Mescal is a fiery liquor produced in Mexico from several species of Agave.
The mescal was as central to the Apache way of life as the bison was to the plains Indians.
The Mescalero Apaches roasted the mescal or century plant using the same technique they used for sotol.
The violet-throated Lucifer hummingbird may sometimes be found at a mescalin blooming season.
Like all agaves, the mescalexpends its strength on this onetime burst of blooming.
If you climb the foot trail to Juniper Flat through the thickly grassed woodlands above the Basin, you will pass more than one dead mescal with its towering bloomstalk supported by the limbs of some pinyon pine.
And high on the rock ledges shot up the wonderful mescal stalks, beginning to blossom, some with tints of gold and others with tones of red.
These big brown and seamy-barked pines with their spreading gnarled arms and webs of green needles belonged to her, as also the tiny brook, the blue bells smiling out of the ferns, the single stalk of mescal on a rocky ledge.
Mescal is one of the chief native foods of both Wallapais and Havasupais.
Not only are the cliff-dwellings and mescal pits proof of this, but the Havasupais can tell the families to whom they originally belonged and to whom the rights in them have descended.
Sometimes the mescal is pounded and eaten raw, and again it is pounded, soaked in plenty of water, partially fermented, and the liquor used as a drink.
Pinion nuts can only be gathered in the pinion forests afar off, and to gain mescal the pits must be dug and the fibres cooked deep down in the mysterious recesses of the Grand Canyon.
Bartley suggested that they sit at one of the side tables and study the effects of mescal on the natives present.
Let's sit in this corner and watch the mescal work for a livin'.
There must have been a littlemescal in that second punch," he thought.
And if you're short of implements, you might at any time need a mescal stick, or an arrow shaft or an arrow, even.
She was compounding drinks from mescal and bisnaga.
Jack and his wife have gone over to Mescal with their car and there's nobody home but the old lady and the youngsters.
Jack and his wife have gone over to spend a few days with some friends in Mescal or they'd run you over in the car.
It grows in the valleys, while the mescal grows in the mountains.
The only place on the desert slope where this species was taken was in Mescal Wash.
They seem not, or only rarely, to penetrate the yellow pine forest belt, but tracks have been found occasionally near the lower edge of the forest, as at the head of Mescal Canyon.
Eberle who has trapped for many winters in the vicinity of Mescal Canyon stated that he caught badgers occasionally.
In the course of a two hour hike in lower Mescal Wash, at about 3500 feet, eleven jack rabbits and two cottontails were noted.
In Mescal Wash, at an altitude of 4000 feet, eremicus occurred along with the chaparral-inhabiting Peromyscus boylii and Peromyscus californicus.
Specimens were taken in the chaparral association in San Antonio Canyon, near Jackson Lake among yellow pines, and in Mescal Canyon at the upper limit of the Joshua tree woodland.
To-day they are to cross the divide, ford Black river, and continue on to the mountains where the mescal grows abundantly.
From the camp where they have passed the winter they take to the trails which lead to the mescal hills.
The gathering of the mescal continues for several days, an area covering a radius of perhaps two miles being stripped of its budding plants, for such only are harvested.
The mescal harvest occurs in the season of new life and growth, when the call from the wild is strong in the blood, and like a class of children—for they are but grown-up children—they pour out into the wilds.
The pit being ready and the mescal gathered, the work of cooking commences.
Nothing can give a better idea of the economic life of these people than a description of one of their annual mescal harvests.
Close by is the mescal pit, perhaps twenty feet in diameter and three feet deep; it may have been used a hundred years or a thousand, abandoned for a long period, and then brought into use again.
This dried mescalmay be eaten without further preparation, but it is generally made into a gruel by mixing with water.
In the United States they are called mescal buttons, and in Mexico peyote.
Their only amusement is to drink mescal and pulque.
It is generally through mescal that the Indians become peons.
The one in Yoquibo had established himself in the only room left intact in the old dilapidated vicarage, and eked out a living by selling mescal to the Indians.
At the time of my visit these Indians had absolutely nothing to sell us but the sweetmescal stalks.
The executioner is given mescal that he may be in proper spirit to strike hard.
These refer mainly to abstinence from mescal and women, and are conscientiously observed for five days before and five days after the occasion, by the family who arranges the dance.
