d my attention to
_bruheria_ directly at the side of the church. In front of the building,
to the right of the door as one enters, is a hole in the ground, into
which a few large stones have been clumsily thrown or laid. Here
chickens, flowers, eggs, etc., are buried, in order to secure good luck
or to restore health. Carefully removing some of the stones, we saw
ample evidences of such offerings, in bones, bits of egg-shells, and
dried flowers. From here, the climb was easy to the crest overlooking
the village, and to the curious tower-like mass projecting conspicuously
from it. The cave is situated in this mass of rock and faces almost
east; it is a shallow cavern, well-sheltered and dry, perhaps fifty feet
wide along the cliff's front, though only the eastern third, which is
the more completely worn out, is used for ceremonies; it is, perhaps,
no more than eight or ten feet deep, and has greater height than depth.
Within the cave itself we found a little table, a small chair, and two
blocks for seats. On either side of the table, a pole was set obliquely
against the wall. The upper end of the left-hand pole was tied with a
strip of palm which was looped through a hole in the rock wall. At two
or three other places, strips of palm had been slipped through natural
holes in the wall, behind bars of stone, and then tied. To the left,
were a censer and two candle-sticks, behind which, lying obliquely
against the wall, were twenty-five or thirty dance-wands. These were
sticks wrapped with corn-husks and tufted with clusters of flowers tied
about the middle and at each end. The flowers used were mostly the
yellow death-flower and purple ever-lastings. Two or three of them were
made with the yellow death-flower--_cempoalxochil_--alone. A few were
made of _xocopa_ leaves. While only twenty-five or thirty were in
position, hundreds of old ones lay on the bank to the left. Three small
crosses of wood were placed near the wands; much white paper, clipped
and cut into decorated designs, was lying about, as also wads of cotton,
colored wools, long strings of yarn, and bits of half-beaten bark fibre.
Near the front edge of the cave was a hole with large stones; here, with
a little scratching, we found feathers and bits of bone of turkeys and
hens, that had been sacrificed, as well as splints of pine tied together
with bark string. Wooden spoons, probably used in the banquets of the
witches, were stowed away in crevices of the rock. C