he deceased would be carried away by
the Devil. If the feasts were not given, the departed would continue
to wander about in animal shape. This is the direful fate meted out
to people who are too poor to pay the shaman. Sometimes, if the dead
person has not complied in life with the customary requirements
in regard to feasts and sacrifices, the shamans have a hard time
in lifting him to heaven. It may take hours of incantations and
much tesvino to get his head up, and as much more to redeem his
body. Sometimes the head falls back, and the shamans have to call
for more tesvino to gain strength to lift him up again.

The Tarahumares had no great scruples about my removing the bodies of
their dead, if the latter had died some years before and were supposed
to have been properly despatched from this world. Where a body had
been buried, the bones that were not taken away had to be covered up
again. One Tarahumare sold me the skeleton of his mother-in-law for
one dollar.

Chapter XXI

Three Weeks on Foot Through the Barranca--Rio Fuerte--I Get
My Camera Wet--Ancient Cave-dwellings Ascribed to the Tubar
Indians--The Effect of a Compliment--Various Devices for Catching
Fish--Poisoning the Water--A Blanket Seine.

On a cold day in the end of October I started from Guachochic bound
for the upper part of the great Barranca de San Carlos and the country
southward as far as there were Tarahumares. Everything seemed bleak
and dreary. The corn was harvested, the grass looked grey, and there
was a wintry feeling in the air. The sere and withered leaves rustled
like paper, and as I made camp near an Indian ranch I saw loose stubble
and dead leaves carried up in a whirlwind, two or three hundred feet
up toward a sky as grey and sober as that of northern latitudes at
that time of the year. We travelled to the southeast from Guachochic
over pine-clad hills, coming now and then to a lonely ranch.

About seven miles before reaching the barranca I arrived at a point
8,600 feet high, from which I could look over this vast expanse of
woodland, extending all the way up to the deep gorge and diminishing
in breadth toward the northwest. At San Carlos, a ranch but recently
established in this wilderness, I left my animals, and immediately
prepared for an extended excursion on foot into the barranca and
its neighbourhood.

Nearly the whole country of the Tarahumares is drained by the river
Fuerte, which, with its ma