Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/218

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214
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 6. A Shell of the Trunk.

sacking if he is so poor as to feel compelled to reserve his zarape for dress occasions, is swung from his forehead by a head-yoke a pig-skin, supported by a sac, or more usually by a coarse net of cordage, and sticking out from its open top is to be seen a long gourd of the type that we call the Hercules club. In his hand he carries a short curved knife. Plodding from one bearing plant to another, the Indian stops at each long enough to uncover the cavity in its crown, press the smaller end of the gourd to its bottom and, by sucking at the upper end, draw into the lower part of the gourd the exuded sap, and thrust the gourd over his shoulder into the pig-skin bag on his back—his finger meantime stopping the upper hole so that the fluid may not run out until he wishes it to. A quick scraping of the cavity follows, the stone or