ith beans.

A few months later at Aboreachic (Tarahumare: Aoreachic = where
there is mountain cedar) I examined a burial-cave in which the dead
were interred in a different manner from that described before. The
cave is somewhat difficult of access. The ascent of 300 feet has
to be made over a track at some places so steep that holes have
been cut for the feet, to enable a person to climb up. On reaching
the top I found a spacious cave, which had been used as a kind
of cemetery, but unfortunately the peculiarity of the cave had
attracted treasure-seekers, whose destructive work was everywhere to
be seen. Still I could see that the corpses had been placed each by
itself in a grave in the floor of the cave. The graves were oblong or
circular basins lined with a coating of grass and mud and about three
feet deep. Apparently no earth had been placed immediately over the
body, only boards all around it laid lengthwise in a kind of box. The
bodies were bent up and laid on their sides. Over the top boards
was spread a layer of pine bark about an inch thick, which in turn
was covered with earth and rubbish three inches deep, and this was
overlaid with the coating of grass and mud so as to form a solid disk
four or five inches, thick. The edge of the basin was slightly raised,
thus making the disk a little higher than the level of the floor. I
secured four skulls from here, besides a piece of excellently woven
cloth of plant fibre, another piece interwoven with turkey feathers,
and a fragment of a wooden needle.

Don Andres told me that he had observed similar modes of burial in
the neighbourhood of Nararachic. It may be worth mentioning that
the miner who excavated in the burial-cave near Nararachic mentioned
above, told me of having met with somewhat similar structures in his
cave; the material was the same, but they were of different sizes,
not larger than two feet, and he found them empty.

The ancient modes of burial that I have come upon, in the Tarahumare
country are either like those in Nararachic or in Aboreachic. There
scarcely seems any doubt that the bodies buried here were
Tarahumares. The Indians of to-day consider the dead in the ancient
burial-caves their brethren, and call them Ana-yauli, the ancients.

From Guajochic I went to Nonoava (in Tarahumare: Nonoa, nono = father),
although this town is outside of the Tarahumare country proper. The
natives here, as may be expected, are pretty well Mexicanised, and