Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/355

Rh built of adobe, or, if near a forest," of pine-slabs leaning against a framework of logs or supported by a tree. The roof is a thatch of cornstalks or branches of trees or the stiff, sword-like leaves of the agave. Very

few of these hovels have doors, and none of them have windows. A heap of stones in the corner or a great flat slab in the centre serves for a fireplace on the earthen floor, and the smoke easily finds its way out through the cracks. Corn is ground between two stones, after the simple ancestral fashion. Tortillas—cakes made of crushed corn and water, baked hard—and rich brown beans, called frijols, hot with pepper, form the staple food. A few unglazed pots and dishes, a rude pitcher or two for water, gourds for cups, a tortilla-trough and kneading-stone, handed down perhaps for generations, with mats for seats and bedding, form all the furniture of the hovels in which most of the people live. The making and the eating of tortillas, however, are not confined to the poor. These are points on which all Mexicans are united. Twenty-five years ago chairs and tables