in the
barranca. The women, too, have blankets, though with them they are not
so much the rule as with the men. Still, mothers with babies always
wear blankets, to support the little ones in an upright position
on their backs, the blanket being tightly wrapped around mother and
child. The women nowadays generally wear sandals of the usual Mexican
cowhide pattern, like the men; but there is ample evidence to prove
that such was not the case in former times.

The people are, for Indians, not especially fond of ornaments, and
it is a peculiar fact that mirrors have no special attraction for
them. They do not like to look at themselves. The women often wear
ear-ornaments made of triangular pieces of shell attached to bead
strings, or deck themselves with strings of glass beads, of which the
large red and blue ones are favourites; and necklaces made from the
seed of the _Coix Lachryma-Jobi_ are used by both sexes, chiefly for
medicinal purposes. The men wear only single strings of these seeds,
while the necklaces of the women are wound several times around the
neck. The shaman, or medicine-man--a priest and doctor combined--is
never without such a necklace when officiating at a feast. The seed
is believed to possess many medicinal qualities, and for this reason
children, too, often wear it.

Peasant women in Italy and Spain use the same seed as a protection
against evil, and even American women have been known to put strings
of them on teething children as a soothing remedy.

An important fact I established is that the Indians in the barrancas,
in this part of the country, use something like trincheras for the
cultivation of their little crops. To obtain arable land on the
mountain slopes the stones are cleared from a convenient spot and
utilised in the construction of a wall below the field thus made. The
soil is apt to be washed away by heavy rains, and the wall not only
prevents what little earth there is on the place from being carried
off, but also catches what may come from above, and in this way
secures sufficient ground to yield a small crop. Fields thus made
can even be ploughed. On the slopes of one arroyo I counted six such
terraces, and in the mountainous country on the Rio Fuerte, toward
the State of Sinaloa, chile, beans, squashes, _Coix Lachryma-Jobi_,
and bananas are raised on trincheras placed across the arroyos that
run down the hills. There they have the form of small terraces,
and remind one of simil