n, who entertained him as long as they were able
to keep awake. He wanted to hear about other countries, about the
bears we had met, and the great war, because he thought there must
always be war somewhere. When everybody was asleep after midnight,
he would retire. He was a widower, and he was the most un-Indian
Indian I ever met.

About five miles east of Mesa del Nayarit the descent toward the
pueblo of Jesus Maria begins. The valley appears broad and hilly,
and the vegetation assumes the aspect of the Hot Country. Specially
noticeable were the usual thickets of thorny, dry, and scraggy trees,
seen even on the edge of the mesa. They are called _guisachi_,
and in the vernacular of the common man the word has been utilised
to designate a sharper. A man who "hooks on," as, for instance, a
tricky lawyer, is called a _guisachero_. It is the counterpart of the
"lawyer palm" among the shrubs of tropical Australia.

Jesus Maria looks at a distance quite a town, on a little plain above
the river-bank. A fine, grand-looking old church, in Moorish style, a
large churchyard surrounding it, and the usual big buildings connected
with the churches of Spanish times, make all extraordinary impression
among the pithaya-covered hills. The rest of the houses look humble
enough. I went a little beyond the pueblo to the junction of arroyo
Fraile with the river of Jesus Maria. As a violent wind, caused by the
cooling off of the hot air of the barranca, blows every afternoon,
I did not put up my tent, but had my men build an open shed. The
wind lasts until midnight, and the mornings are delightfully calm
and cool. The Coras consider this wind beneficial to the growth of
the corn, and sacrifice a tamal of ashes, two feet long, to keep it
in the valley.

The Cora of the canon, and probably of the entire Tierra Caliente,
is of a milder disposition than his brother of the sierra, but he
looks after his own advantage as closely as the rest of them.

The houses of the village are built of stone with thatched roofs,
and, having no means of ventilation, become dreadfully overheated. I
frequently noticed people lying on the floor in these hovels, suffering
from colds. In the summer there is also prevalent in the valley a
disease of the eyes which makes them red and swollen. Although the
country is malarial, the Indians attain to remarkable longevity,
and their women are wonderfully well preserved. All Indian women
age very late in life, a trait