has to look on while
the man is being punished, just as he afterward has to witness his
sweetheart's chastisement. She opens her eyes "like a cow," as my
informant expressed it, while the man generally looks down.

Many times the judges are ashamed to go through this performance,
the character of which is below the standard of propriety of most
primitive tribes; but, strange to say, the parents themselves compel
them to let the law have its course. Afterward the girl is handed over
to her lover in order that they may become officially married by the
Church the next time the priest arrives. This may not happen for two
or three years, but the two are meanwhile allowed to live together,
the girl going to her lover's home. To avert all the misery in store
for her, an unfortunate woman may try to doctor herself by secretly
taking a decoction of the leaves of the chalate, a kind of fig-tree.

Sometimes punishment is dealt out to young people for being
found talking together. Outside of her home a woman is absolutely
forbidden to speak to any man who does not belong to her own immediate
family. When fetching water, or out on any other errand, she must under
no circumstances dally for a chat with a "gentleman friend." Even
at the dancing-place it is against the law for her to step aside
to exchange a few words with any young man. If discovered in such a
compromising position, both offenders are immediately arrested, and
their least punishment is two days' imprisonment. If their examination
by the judges proves that their conversation was on the forbidden
topic of love, they get a whipping and may be compelled to marry.

Some of the boys and girls who have been punished for talking together
in this manner, are so frightened that they never want to marry
in Lajas, but the more defiant ones deliberately allow themselves
to be caught, in order to hasten their union and steal a march on
their parents. For these Indians are by no means beyond the darts
of Cupid, and both men and women are known to have arranged with a
shaman to influence the objects of their tender thoughts, and have
paid him for such service. A woman may give a shaman a wad of cotton,
which he manages to put into the hand of the young man for whom it
is intended. Afterward the shaman keeps the cotton in his house,
the affection having been transmitted by it.

On the other hand, men and women, to subdue their natural instincts,
go into the fields and grasp the b