The dish is easy enough to prepare and does not taste at all bad, but it is hard work for one's teeth to make a meal of it, as the kernels assume the consistency of little pebbles, and many months of such a diet lengthens your dentist's bill at about the same ratio as that in which it shortens your molars.

You will ask why I did not carry provisions along with me.

Simply because preserved food is, as a rule, heavy to carry, to say nothing of its being next to impossible to secure more when the supply is exhausted.

Some chocolate and condensed milk which I ordered from Chihuahua did not reach me until seven months after the date of the order.

Besides, the Indians are not complaisant carriers, least of all in this exceedingly rough country.
For over a year I thus continued to travel around among the Tarahumares, visiting them on their ranches and in their caves, on the highlands and in the barrancas.