, the knowledge of the hidden and secret things of
nature; easily enough confounded in uncultivated minds with sorcery and
magic.[57-*]

It is very significant that neither the radical _na_ nor any of its
derivatives are found in the Huasteca dialect of the Mayan tongue, which
was spoken about Tampico, far removed from other members of the stock.
The inference is that in the southern dialects it was a borrowed stem.

Nor in the Nahuatl language--although its very name is derived from
it[58-*]--does the radical _na_ appear in its simplicity and true
significance. To the Nahuas, also, it must have been a loan.

It is true that de la Serna derives the Mexican _naualli_, a sorcerer,
from the verb _nahualtia_, to mask or disguise oneself, "because a
_naualli_ is one who masks or disguises himself under the form of some
lower animal, which is his _nagual_;"[58-[+]] but it is altogether
likely that _nahualtia_ derived its meaning from the custom of the
medicine men to wear masks during their ceremonies.

Therefore, if the term _nagual_, and many of its associates and
derivatives, were at first borrowed from the Zapotec language, a
necessary corrollary[TN-6] of this conclusion is, that along with these
terms came most of the superstitions, rites and beliefs to which they
allude; which thus became grafted on the general tendency to such
superstitions existing everywhere and at all times in the human mind.

Along with the names of the days and the hieroglyphs which mark them,
and the complicated arithmetical methods by means of which they were
employed, were carried most of the doctrines of the Nagualists, and the
name by which they in time became known from central Mexico quite to
Nicaragua and beyond.

The mysterious words have now, indeed, lost much of their ancient
significance. In a recent dictionary of the Spanish of Mexico _nagual_
is defined as "a witch; a word used to frighten children and make them
behave,"[58-[++]] while in Nicaragua, where the former Nahuatl
population has left so many traces of its presence in the language of
to-day, the word _nagual_ no longer means an actor in the black art, or
a knowledge of it, but his or her armamentarium, or the box, jar or
case in which are kept the professional apparatus, the talismans and
charms, which constitute the stock in trade or outfit of the
necromancer.[59-*]

Among the Lacandons, of Mayan stock, who inhabit the forests on the
upper waters of the Usumacinta r