king them. "What does it matter," they said, "if
one or two of us are killed?" Cowards as the Tarahumares are when few
in number, they do not know fear when many of them are together. They
are harmless when not interfered with, but neither forget nor forgive
an injury. On several occasions they have killed white men who abused
their hospitality, and they even threatened once, when exasperated by
abuses, to exterminate all the whites in some sections of their domain.

The robbers were taken by an escort of Indians to the little town of
Carichic, and from there sent to Cusihuiriachic ("where upright pole
is") to be tried. This place is about a hundred miles from Nararachic,
and as the Indians during the next weeks were called to be present at
the trial as witnesses, it annoyed them not a little. They were sorry
they had not killed the evil-doers; and it would even have been better,
they said, to have let them go on stealing.

In the fight the gobernador had got a bullet through his lung. I
saw him a fortnight afterward, smoking a cigarette and on the way to
recovery, and after some days he, too, walked to Cusihuiriachic. A few
months later the robbers managed to dig themselves out of the prison.

On an excursion of about ten miles through the picturesque Arroyo
de las Iglesias, I passed seventeen caves, of which only one was
at present inhabited. All of them, however, had been utilised as
dwellings before the construction of the road to Batopilas had driven
the Indians off.

I saw also a few ancient cave-dwellings. Of considerable interest were
some burial-caves near Nararachic, especially one called Narajerachic
(= where the dead are dancing). A Mexican had been for six years
engaged there in digging out saltpetre, with which he made powder,
and the cave was much spoiled for research when I visited it. But
I was able to take away some thirty well-preserved skulls and a few
complete skeletons, the bodies having dried up in the saltpetre. Some
clothing with feathers woven in, and some bits of obsidian and of
blue thread were found, but no weapons or utensils. According to the
miner, who appeared to be trustworthy, he had excavated more than a
hundred corpses. They were generally found two and a half feet below
the surface, and sometimes there were others underneath these. With
many of them he found ear ornaments made of shells, such as the
Tarahumares of to-day use, besides some textile made of plant fibre,
and a jar w