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The Mahhaos are experts in the manufacture of a certain kind of pottery the principal article of which is the "olla" or water pot much used by the whites also in making the warm and turbid river-water cooler by evaporation. 
The long, flat dish in the sketch is their principal table-ware; in it an "olla podrida" of mesquit[e]-bean flour and water melon seeds with other ingredients which it is not material to mention, is poured after having been grinded in a rolling stone mortar and boiled.
Dinner being announced by a loud whoop from the house-squaw, the family forms a squatting circle around the dish filled to the brim - with eager eyes gazing upon it in gladsome anticipation - the right hand of the "Pater familias" is then extended rapidly toward it and a handful scooped out and carried to the mouth and taken inwardly. By a peculiar compound motion half suction and half inhalation producing a familiar and peculiar noise acting like a bugle-call to "peas upon a trencher" on the house dogs who gather around the "hospitable board" at the welcome sound.
This is repeated, turn about, by the whole family, until the last of the men has disappeared when the guests turn over on their backs for a "siesta" of a couple of hours to accelerate digestion. 
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The language of the Mahhaos, polysyllabic, melodious and rich, however it may have been in its original purity, is fast disappearing by adulteration,or rather by the admission of many words belonging in part, or in "toto" to other languages and standing for things of which they had previously no knowledge; or alien names compounded with their own designation for certain things. This is self evident, for instance, in the appellation "Carreta-avunyé" by which they designate a wagon road - the first part of which is a perversion of the Spanish