But the most interesting dish was iskiate, which I now tasted for the first time.  It is made from toasted corn, which is mixed with water while being ground on the metate until it assumes the consistency of a thick soup.  Owing to certain fresh herbs that are often added to the corn, it may be of a greenish color, but it is always cool and tempting.  After having tramped for several days over many miles of exceedingly rough country, I arrived late one afternoon at a cave where a woman was just making this drink.  I was very tired and at a loss how to climb the mountain-side to my camp, some 2,000 feet above; but after having satisfied my hunger and thirst with some iskiate, offered by the hospitable Indians, I at once felt new strength, and, to my own astonishment, climbed the great height without much effort.  After this I always found iskiate a friend in need, so strengthening and refreshing that I may almost claim it as a discovery, interesting to mountain climbers and others exposed to great physical exertions.  The preparation does not, however, agree with a sedentary life, as it is rather indigestible.

The dress of the Tarahumare is always very scanty, even where he comes in contact with the whites.  One may see the Indians in the mining camps, and even in the streets of the city of Chihuahua, walking about naked, except for a breech-cloth of coarse, home-spun woollen material, held up around the waist with a girdle woven in characteristic designs.  Some may supplement this national costume with a tunic, or short poncho; and it is only right to add that most of the men are provided with well-made blankets, which their women weave for them, and in which they wrap themselves when they go to feasts and dances.  The hair, when not worn loose, is held together with a home-woven ribbon, or a piece of cotton cloth rolled into a band; or with a strip of palm leaf.  Often men and women gather the hair in the back of the head, and men may also make a braid of it.

The women’s toilet is just as simple.  A scrimpy woollen skirt is tied around the waist with a girdle, and over the shoulders is worn a short tunic, with which, however, many dispense when at home in the barranca.  The women, too, have blankets, though with them they are not so much the rule as with the men.  Still, mothers with babies always wear blankets, to support the little ones in an upright position on their backs, the blanket being tightly wrapped around mother and child.  The women nowadays generally wear sandals of the usual Mexican cowhide pattern, like the men; but there is ample evidence to prove that such was not the case in former times.