THE RAINBARREL OF THE DESERT

Expedition, the Mohaves, near the mouth of the Bill Williams river in 1853, were found cooking ducks and other birds in this juice by means of heated stones, dropped into the cavity, with the birds, wrapped in the squeezed pulp.

You imagined yourself alone on the desert, thirsty and lost you now have your drink of water but you are still lost. Look about you. The saguaro points absolutely straight up but every bisnaga as far as your eye can see is leaning toward the southwest. You are lost no longer and the explanation for this compass-like trait is more simple and interesting than you'd suspect.

The bisnaga is a huge, accordion pleated capsule of moist pulp with no woody skeleton inside to hold it rigid. During times of plenty it sucks water from thetion to the surface exposed. As the supply inside diminishes the cactus economizes by drawing together all its pleats, which, of course, cuts down the exposed surface. Since the heat on the southwest side is always most intense these pleats are most tightly drawn. This becomes chronic and draws the whole body out of plumb as a twisted lip or a scar draws the face.

The good fellows in any crowd always get the nicknames so it is no wonder refreshing drink similar to the well-known limeade, and often compared to lemonade. Then the echinocactus hematacanthus just an odd little barrel cactus

Bloom of the barrel cactus.

ground so greedily it almost explodes. The deep pleats spread out and become shallow. Then comes the dry season and evaporation takes place in proportion the bisnaga has more to its credit than anything else that grows on the desert. The Traveler's Friend, the Compass, the Barrel, the Candy Cactus, the Fishhook, the Niggerhead, these are a few of the ways the desert dwellers speak of this good fellow. There are so many of the echinocacti, each doing its bit for the world it lives in, that the good deeds of the family as a whole could not be catalogued. One is called the Mexican Lime cactus, with fruit which makes a refreshing with especially fine fruit two or three inches long, very sweet with dark brown seeds. The ripe fruit gradually dries and is eaten as a sweetmeat without any treatment at all; firm and sweet and very sugary, considered by all the natives and thousands of tourists a rare delicacy. Good if you can get it; it is very rare.

The root system of our own well known rain barrel of the desert is more spreading than that of the saguaro and very different. One examined showed three main roots, very slender, running about two and one-half inches under ground, one dipping to three and one-half. The longest ended fully nine feet from the twenty-two inch plant which it supported. Another interesting discovery was that (Turn to Page 35)