It is the augurs, called bovites, who encourage these superstitions.  These men, who are persistent liars, act as doctors for the ignorant people, which gives them a great prestige, for it is believed that the zemes converse with them and reveal the future to them.

If a sick man recovers the bovites persuade him that he owes his restoration to the intervention of the zemes.  When they undertake to cure a chief, the bovites begin by fasting and taking a purge.  There is an intoxicating herb which they pound up and drink, after which they are seized with fury like the maenads, and declare that the zemes confide secrets to them.  They visit the sick man, carrying in their mouth a bone, a little stone, a stick, or a piece of meat.  After expelling every one save two or three persons designated by the sick person, the bovite begins by making wild gestures and passing his hands over the face, lips, and nose, and breathing on the forehead, temples, and neck, and drawing in the sick man’s breath.  Thus he pretends to seek the fever in the veins of the sufferer.  Afterwards he rubs the shoulders, the hips, and the legs, and opens the hands; if the hands are clenched he pulls them wide open, exposing the palm, shaking them vigorously, after which he affirms that he has driven off the sickness and that the patient is out of danger.  Finally he removes the piece of meat he was carrying in his mouth like a juggler, and begins to cry, “This is what you have eaten in excess of your wants; now you will get well because I have relieved you of that which you ate.”  If the doctor perceives that the patient gets worse, he ascribes this to the zemes, who, he declares, are angry because they have not had a house constructed for them, or have not been treated with proper respect, or have not received their share of the products of the field.  Should the sick man die, his relatives indulge in magical incantations to make him declare whether he is the victim of fate or of the carelessness of the doctor, who failed to fast properly or gave the wrong remedy.  If the man died through the fault of the doctor, the relatives take vengeance on the latter.  Whenever the women succeed in obtaining the piece of meat which the bovites hold in their mouths, they wrap it with great respect in cloths and carefully preserve it, esteeming it to be a talisman of great efficacy in time of childbirth, and honouring it as though it were a zemes.

The islanders pay homage to numerous zemes, each person having his own.  Some are made of wood, because it is amongst the trees and in the darkness of night they have received the message of the gods.  Others, who have heard the voice amongst the rocks, make their zemes of stone; while others, who heard the revelation while they were cultivating their ages—­that kind of cereal I have already mentioned,—­make theirs of roots.