sick person what would happen to him. If the prophecy was one of life,
the people ate and drank, chanted the histories of the ancestors of
the sick person and of the anito to which the sacrifice was being
made, and danced until they fell through sheer exhaustion. If the
prophecy was one of death, the prophetess bolstered up her bad news
with praises of the sick person, for whose virtues and prowess she
said the anitos had chosen him to become one of them. From that
time she commended herself to him and all his family, begging him
to remember her in the other life. She added other flatteries and
lies, with which she made the poor sick person swallow his death;
and obliged his relatives and friends to treat him from that time as
an anito, and make feasts to him. The end was eating and drinking,
for that marked the termination of their sacrifices. Each person who
attended the sacrifice was obliged to offer something--gold, cotton,
birds, or other things--according to his capacity and wish. The
offering was given to the priest or priestess who had performed the
sacrifice. Consequently, the latter were generally quite rich and
well dressed, and had plenty of ornaments made of various kinds of
jewels. On that account, however, they were not honored or esteemed;
for they were considered as an idle lot, who lived by the sweat of
others. After their duty was once performed no further attention was
paid to them, unless they united with their office nobility or power.

110. To give a list of the omens and auguries would consume much time
and be useless. If the owl lit on the roof at night it was a sign of
death. Consequently, when a house was built some sort of scarecrow
was set up to keep that bird away, so that the house might not be
lost; for a house would under no circumstances be lived in if that
happened. The same was true if any serpent was seen in it after it had
been newly built. If they came across a serpent in any road they would
not proceed farther, even if their business was very pressing. The
same was true if they heard any one sneeze, a rat squeal, a dog howl,
or a lizard [26] sing. Fishermen would not make use of the first cast
of the net or a new fish-corral, for they thought that they would get
no more fish if they did the opposite. Neither must one talk in the
fisherman's house of his new nets, or in that of the hunter of dogs
recently purchased, until they had made a capture or had some good
luck; for if they