in
a moment transport themselves to distant places, and, as quickly
returning, report what they had witnessed; they could create before the
eyes of the spectator a river, a tree, a house, or an animal, where none
such existed; they could cut open their own stomach, or lop a limb from
another person, and immediately heal the wound or restore the severed
member to its place; they could pierce themselves with knives and not
bleed, or handle venomous serpents and not be bitten; they could cause
mysterious sounds in the air, and fascinate animals and persons by their
steady gaze; they could call visible and invisible spirits, and the
spirits would come.

Among the native population of the State of Vera Cruz and elsewhere in
southern Mexico these mysterious personages go by the name _padrinos_,
godfathers, and are looked upon with a mixture of fear and respect. They
are believed by the Indians to be able to cause sickness and domestic
calamities, and are pronounced by intelligent whites to present "a
combination of rascality, duplicity and trickery."[26-[++]]

=17.= The details of the ceremonies and doctrines of Nagualism have never
been fully revealed; but from isolated occurrences and partial
confessions it is clear that its adherents formed a coherent association
extending over most of southern Mexico and Guatemala, which everywhere
was inspired by two ruling sentiments--detestation of the Spaniards and
hatred of the Christian religion.

In their eyes the latter was but a cloak for the exactions, massacres
and oppressions exerted by the former. To them the sacraments of the
Church were the outward signs of their own subjugation and misery. They
revolted against these rites in open hatred, or received them with
secret repugnance and contempt. In the Mexican figurative manuscripts
composed after the conquest the rite of baptism is constantly depicted
as the symbol of religious persecution. Says a sympathetic student of
this subject:

"The act of baptism is always inserted in their records of battles
and massacres. Everywhere it conveys the same idea,--making evident
to the reader that the pretext for all the military expeditions of
the Spaniards was the enforced conversion to Christianity of the
natives; a pretext on which the Spaniards seized in order to
possess themselves of the land and its treasure, to rob the Indians
of their wives and daughters, to enslave them, and to spill the