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.