out for me to kneel on, and my Mexican and Indian attendants were told to retire, while he made his examination.  Having ascertained that I had a headache, he took my head between his dirty hands, pressed it, applied his lips to my right ear, and commenced to suck very energetically.  This was rather trying to my nerves, though not unendurably so.  Presently he let go his hold, and spit out quite a lot of blood into a cup an Indian boy was holding out to him.  He repeated the operation on my left ear with the same result.  “More pain?” he asked.  “Yes,” I said, “in my right hand.”  He immediately grabbed that member in his mouth, biting almost through the skin over the pulse, and after having sucked for a little while, deposited contents, of a similar nature, into the cup from his mouth.  It was afterward found that the blood was mixed with a considerable number of grass seeds, which had been the cause of my illness.  I had not known that I was so “seedy.”

The curing is often performed at dances, during the night, as the family who give the feast expect to receive, in return for all their trouble and expense, the benefit of the shaman’s magic powers, whether any of them are ill or not.  Once a man, his wife, and his child had been cured with tesvino, but nevertheless they still anxiously looked to the shaman for more treatment, apparently feeling that they needed more strength against coining evil.  The woman said:  “Yesterday I fell into the water and got wet and felt ill, and in the night I dreamed that I was dead and that you cured me.”  To this the doctor replied, “Yes, that is why I came to cure you.”  Then, yielding to their beseeching glances, he daubed them again, this time holding their hands and with a little cross in his left hand.  Then he said:  “Now you need not be afraid; I have cured you well.  Do not walk about any more like fools and do not get wet again.”  And they were content.

There is a shaman near Baqueachic (baka = bamboo reed) who has a great reputation for curing cattle, or rather for keeping them in health.  Every year he makes a tour of the different ranches, and the Indians bring their animals to him to be treated.  A large hole is dug in the ground and a fire kindled in it.  Then some green branches of the mountain cedar and some copal are thrown in and burned, and the animals driven one by one through the smoke.  Since the veterinary gets one animal for each ceremony, he becomes quite rich.

The shamans also undertake to cure the sun and the moon, because these, too, are often ill and have to be righted.  Not a feast is held in which some spoonfuls from the jars containing the remedies are not thrown up for the benefit of the sun and the moon.  Occasionally, however, special ceremonies have to be performed to cure the celestial bodies, particularly the moon, because from her all the stars receive their light.  At the period of the dark moon she is considered to be sick and tied up by the Devil, and the world