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Rh wild pigs had crossed his path, and we turned off through the forest in the direction which he supposed the wounded pig had taken. I took a compass bearing and then we spent hour after hour cutting our way with our machetes, making casts across and across this line without any success, for we saw no trace either of buildings or caves. After the first two hours of fruitless search Domingo came to a halt and proposed that we should make an offering, so we all three squatted down facing one another and solemnly burnt small pieces of copal so that the scented smoke might rise into the air and propitiate the spirits of the hills. This offering was made almost every hour during the rest of our search and seemed to inspire Domingo with renewed confidence, but he told us that there were times when the hills were "muy mañosos" (very cunning), and would give up nothing one desired to find. Once Gorgonio asked him why he did not pray, but he answered at once that there was no use whatever in saying prayers when one was in the forest. Possibly he thought prayer to belong to the Christian side of his faith, for use only in church and in the neighbourhood of the priest, and that propitiatory offerings alone were of avail with the ancient hill spirit. Certainly in this case the Spirit of the hills was more than usually ill-disposed; perhaps it resented the presence of a doubting stranger, for neither that day nor the next did it vouchsafe to show us those images of the ancient gods of which we were in search. On our way back to camp, quite close to the track, we came upon some "cimientos," rough stone foundations of ancient Indian dwellings, and Domingo at once said that the cave had stones round it just like that, so that we felt more than ever convinced that he had chanced on the ruins of an ancient temple.

It rained nearly all night and we felt the cold much more severely than I could have imagined, for the thermometer did not go below 60°. Next day I took Carlos and some of the other mozos with me to clear and examine the "cimientos" we had found the evening before, whilst Gorgonio and Domingo and all the rest were employed on a further search for idols. The search was again fruitless, and, from something in his manner, I began to think that Domingo was haunted by some superstition and was unwilling to take us to the idols even if he knew where they stood. The "cimientos" did not prove to be very interesting. Some of the stones used in the principal foundation-mound were large, but they were poorly worked and had been merely flaked off from the quarry. The front of the mound was formed into three broad steps or terraces, but I could find no trace of walls or building on the flat top. A trench dug through the mound showed it to be made of rough pieces broken off the neighbouring limestone rock, and of small stones mixed with a few shreds of coarse pottery.