contained more than thirty persons, the harvest of a single afternoon.  When the door was locked, we saw for the first time why the policemen had been so timid.  One of them came limping up to us, crying, and showed his leg.  From its fleshy part a good mouthful of flesh had been cleanly bitten by the madman.  The wound was bleeding profusely, and the poor fellow wrung his hands and cried with pain.

[Illustration:  VIEW AT CHICAHUASTLA]

We had finished our measurements and photographs, but there had been no sign as yet of the plaster; concluding that Senor Cordova had forgotten his promise, we were prepared to leave town early the next morning.  After dark two men came from Tlaxiaco, one of whom brought sufficient plaster for making two good busts.  This plaster had been brought, in a crude state, twenty miles from the mountains to Tlaxiaco; had been calcined and ground there, by prisoners in the jail, and then sent fifteen miles to us over the mountains.  We were interested in the men who brought it.  One of them was a prisoner from the Tlaxiaco jail.  He had been sentenced to ten days for drinking, and it was he who carried the plaster.  The other proudly informed us that he was a policeman, and had come to make sure that the prisoner returned.  Thoroughly delighted at their coming, we broke our custom and gave the men a trifle.  Alas, the day!  That very night both men, policeman and prisoner, were thrust into the local jail, helplessly drunk.

One evening, during our stay at Chicahuastla, Don Guillermo begged me to go into the kitchen to examine a baby, upon whom he was thinking of performing a surgical operation.  The creature was a boy some three months old, pure indian.  We had heard him crying at night ever since we had come, but had not seen him.  A tumor, or some growth, was on his neck, below the chin.  Don Guillermo handed me the razor, in order that I might remove the swelling, but I refused the task.  The story of the child is sad.  It is the son of a young indian boy and girl, not married.  That would not be a serious matter among the Triquis.  For some reason, however, the mother did not like the child, and scarcely was it born, when she went with it into the forest; there in a lonely place she choked it, as she thought, to death, and buried it in the ground.  The town authorities, suspecting something of her purpose, had followed her and were watching at the moment.  No sooner had she left the spot than they dug up the child, found it still alive, and brought it to Don Guillermo, who had kept it at the town’s charge.

The last night of our stay at Chicahuastla, just after supper, a cavalcade came to the door.  It was the jefe of the next district—­Juxtlahuaca—­with a guard of six mounted men.  Apparently a pleasant fellow, he was at the moment excited over a recent disturbance in his district.  In an attempt which he had made to adjust a certain difficulty, he and his guard had been fired on and stones thrown from the height above them, by the people of the pueblo.  One of his companions died from the effect of the attack.  The officer plainly feared an outbreak or uprising, and was nervous and uneasy, though Don Guillermo assured him that in his house there was absolutely no danger.  Finally, we quieted down and all went to bed, we with the intention of an early start the next morning.