a certain rock
in the vicinity. There is another priest who pays some attention to
the Tarahumares, but he lives in Nonoava, and makes only annual visits
to baptise infants or marry their elders who wish for the blessings
of the Church.

Chapter XI

A Priest and His Family Make the Wilderness Comfortable for
Us--Ancient Remains Similar to those Seen in Sonora--The Climate
of the Sierra--Flora and Fauna--Tarahumare Agriculture--Ceremonies
Connected with the Planting of Corn--Deterioration of Domestic
Animals--Native Dogs of Mexico.

Called on the padre and found him to be a very social, nice,
energetic-looking person with a tinge of the "red man" in his veins.

He complained to me that the Indians were lazy about coming to
mass. None of them paid taxes, and there was no way of forcing
them. Nearly all of them he considered heathens, and only about a
thousand came to the feasts. They arrive in the village on the evening
before, and hear vespers. Then they give themselves up to drinking,
and on the feast day proper are not in a condition to go to church.

He thinks there are some great men among the Tarahumares, but that,
their mental faculties being entirely uncultivated, they are, as it
were, rough diamonds. In the padre's opinion not only all the Indians,
but also the Mexicans living' among them, will soon relapse into
paganism altogether.

Living under rough conditions as he does, it is a lucky thing for
the padre that his physique is equal to emergencies. Once at the
neighbouring village of Tonachic (= where there are pillars) he
admonished the people, in a powerful sermon, to mend their ways. As
they were coming out of the church, a scoundrel who resented the
charges attacked him with a stick, but the padre managed to disarm
him and gave him such a sound thrashing with his assailant's own
weapon that the latter had to keep his bed for a fortnight.

He showed me his stately old adobe church, built in missionary
times. The ceiling, however, was infested with myriads of bats,
the smell of which was quite sickening, and I was glad to get out
again. With him in this uttermost outpost of Christendom lived
his aged mother and six sisters, and they treated us with all the
hospitality their very limited means permitted. We especially enjoyed
their home-made macaroni.

In the family of the good priest lived a little Indian orphan girl,
about five years old, as nice and sweet a child as