United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"We had soon collected as many as we wanted, and in the evening we returned to the valley, with our little cart half-full of pine-nuts. On reaching home, some of them were parched and pounded into a sort of coarse meal; and that night, for the first time during many weeks, we had cakes to our supper. "We were busy of course every day, as we had plenty of work to do.
Add to a pint of good, rich, boiled custard an ounce of sweet almonds, blanched, roasted and pounded to a paste, and half an ounce of pine-nuts or peanuts, blanched, roasted and pounded; also a small quantity of candied citron cut into the thinnest possible slips; cook the custard as usual and set it on the ice for some hours before using. Pare, core and quarter a dozen large juicy pippins.
Also there were several dozen gray squirrels there waiting to climb on his shoulder and search his pockets for pine-nuts, a supply of which his father always furnished. Bryce always looked forward with eagerness to those frequent trips with his father "to the place where Mother dear went to heaven."
They brought pine-nuts and acorns, and the padres gave them in exchange strings of glass beads of various colors. At once buildings were begun, in which work the Indians engaged with energy, and soon church and dwellings, surrounded by a palisade, were completed.
Through a rift in the great branches two hundred feet above, a patch of cerulean sky showed faintly; the sunlight fell like a broad golden shaft over the blossom-laden grave, and from the brown trunk of an adjacent tree a gray squirrel, a descendant, perhaps, of the gray squirrel that had been wont to rob Bryce's pockets of pine-nuts twenty years before, chirped at them inquiringly.
She pointed to the decayed trunk of a blasted sycamore, a few feet from the trail. A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton leaves and pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's hoard, but for some reason had been deserted. "Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on tip-toe to peep into its recesses.
But wandering from place to place, they camped in the summer along the rivers, where fish was plenty and the wild oats gave them grain. In the fall they hunted pine-nuts and berries in the mountains, till snow drove them down into the valleys. Each Indian town, or rancheria, had a name, and many of these names are still in use.
In two years 158 natives were baptized and enrolled, and instead of relying upon the missionaries for food, they brought in large quantities of acorns, pine-nuts, squirrels, and rabbits. The Mission being located in the heart of the mountains, where pine and oak trees grew luxuriantly, the pine-nut and acorn were abundant.
The natives gave cheerful assistance in bringing timber, erecting the wooden buildings, covering them with tules, and constructing the stockade enclosure which surrounded them. They also brought offerings of acorns and pine-nuts. In a few days so many of them crowded into camp that Padre Somero went to San Diego for an addition to the guard, and returned with two extra men.
"After the Chipmunk had looked at himself, and thanked OLD-man for his new clothes, he wanted to know how he could make his living, and OLD-man told him what to eat, and said he must cache the pine-nuts when the leaves turned yellow, so he would not have to work in the winter time. "'You are a cousin to the Pine-squirrel, said OLD-man, 'and you will hunt and hide as he does.
Word Of The Day