wed them to fire off a rifle shot as a warning, something they
always like to do. The sound reverberated through the still night with
enough force to frighten a whole army of robbers. The next morning I
sent for the most important Tepehuane, told him the object of my visit,
and asked him about the track. He gave me what information he could,
but he was unable to procure a guide for a longer time than that
day. We were then left to ourselves, with the odds against us. Twice
we lost our way, the first time passing a mitote dancing-place, and
coming to a halt before a steep mountain wall, passable only for agile
Indians. The second time we landed at the edge of a deep barranca,
and there was nothing to do but to turn back to a ranch we had passed
some time before. Luckily we met there a Tepehuane and his wife,
who assured us that we were at last on the right track. However, we
did not advance farther than the confluence of two arroyos, which the
man had pointed out to us deep down in the shrubbery. Before leaving
us he promised to be at our camp in the morning to show us the road
to Las Botijas, a small aggregation of ranches at the summit. In a
straight line we had not gone that day more than three miles.

When passing one of our guide's ranches--and he had three within
sight--I noticed near the track a small jacal about 100 yards
off. The man told me that he was a shaman and that here he kept his
musical outfit, ceremonial arrows, etc.; though he appeared to be an
open-hearted young man, I could not induce him to show me this private
chapel of his, and we had to go on. He parted from us on the summit,
but described the road so well that we encountered no difficulty
during the remaining two days of our journey.

I was glad to be once more up on the highlands, the more so that we
succeeded in finding there arroyos with water and grass. On reaching
the top of the cordon we had been following, we came upon a camino
real running between the villages of San Francisco and Santa Teresa,
and now we were in the Sierra del Nayarit. I was rather surprised
to find another barranca close by, parallel with the one we had just
left. As far as I could make out, this new gorge begins near the pueblo
of Santa Maria Ocotan, high up in the Sierra; at least my old Mexican
informed me that the river which waters it rises at that place and
passes the Cora pueblos of Guasamota and Jesus Maria. We travelled
along the western edge of this barranc