ahuac. In the grey light of the
morning, I could see suspended from his shoulders the instrument that
had made the mysterious music--a large sea-shell--a long, slender,
curved conch, that hung glistening under his arm.

Struck with the singular appearance of this man, I could not help
entering into conversation with him; though he appeared as if he would
have passed me without speaking a word.

"You are early abroad, friend?" I remarked.

"Yes, master," he replied; "early for a man as old as I am."

I could not help regarding this as a jest; for over the shoulders of the
Indian fell immense masses of jet black hair, which seemed to give
contradiction to the statement of his being an old man.

I looked more narrowly into his countenance. His bronzed skin appeared
to cling closely to his angular features, but there were none of those
deep furrows that betray the presence of advanced age.

"How old are you?" I asked at length.

"That I cannot tell, cavallero," replied he. "I tried from the time I
was able to distinguish the dry season from that of the rains to keep an
account of my age; and I succeeded in doing so up till I was fifty.
After that, for particular reasons, I did not care to know it, and so I
left off counting."

"You say you are more than fifty years old?" and as I put this inquiry I
glanced at the long purple black tresses that hung over his shoulders.

"Nearly half as much more," was the reply. "You are looking at the
colour of my hair. There are ravens who have seen a hundred seasons of
rain without having a feather whitened. Ah! what matters the course of
years to me? A raven croaked upon the roof of my father's cabin when I
was born, at the same instant that my father had traced upon the floor
the figure of one of these birds. Well, then! of course I shall live as
long as that raven lives. What use then to keep a reckoning of years
that cannot be numbered?"

"You think, then, that your life is in some way attached to that of the
raven that perched on the paternal roof when you came into the world?"

"It is the belief of my ancestors, the Zapoteques, and it is also mine,"
seriously responded the Indian.

It was not my desire to combat the superstitions of the Zapoteques; and,
dropping the subject, I inquired from him his purpose in carrying the
conch--whether it was for whiling away his time upon the journey, or
whether there was not also connected with it some other belief of his