Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/70

 effect no improvement. But we had the luxury of one tiny fire-place, to which in my despair I fled for refuge. In this little treasure our scheme of housekeeping was inaugurated with results both brave and gay.

Among the latter experiences I may class my first coffee-roasting, not realizing till then that the essential feature of a mill was lacking, and that I was at least five hundred miles from any possible purchase of one.

Pancho, however, was equal to the emergency, and, going off, soon returned with a metate. (See upon the floor of kitchen No. 2, a portrait of this important culinary utensil.)

It was a decidedly primitive affair, and, like the mills of the gods, it ground slowly, but like them, it also ground to powder.

The metate is cut from a porous, volcanic rock, and is about eighteen inches long by a foot in width and eight inches in thickness. The upper surface, which is generally a little concave, is roughened with indentures; upon this the article is placed and beaten with another stone called a mano, resembling a rolling-pin. Almost every article of food is passed between these stones—meat, vegetables, corn, coffee, spices, chocolate—even the salt, after being washed and sun-dried, is crushed upon it. Such a luxury as "table salt" was not to be had. Previous to use these stones are hardened by being placed in the fire. The rough points become as firm as steel, and one metate will last through a generation.

This necessity of every-day life was a revelation to me. The color of an elephant, it was quite as unwieldy and graceless, but its importance in the homely details of the ménage was undeniable. It had but two competitors to divide the honors with—the maguey plant and the donkey. They were all three necessary to each other and to the commonwealth at large.

Equipped with an inconceivable amount of pottery of every shape and kind, maguey brushes, fans of plaited palm—the national bellows wooden forks, spoons, and many other nameless primitive articles, my collection of household gods was complete.