Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/276

256 A great deal of this knowledge is still preserved amongst their descendants, and considered efficacious. For every illness there is an herb, for every accident a remedy. Baths are in constant use, although these temezcallis are confined to the Indians. In every family there is some knowledge of simple medicine, very necessary in haciendas especially, where no physician can possibly be procured. . . ..

There is a hill upon 's property, said to contain much buried treasure. There are many traditions here of this concealed Indian wealth, but very little gold has been actually recovered from these mountain-tombs. Buried gold has occasionally come to light; not by researches in the mountains, for few are rash enough to throw away their money in search of what would probably prove an imaginary treasure; but by accident—in the ruins of old houses, where their proprietors had deposited them for safety in some period of revolution; perhaps no later than at the time of the Spanish expulsion.

Some years ago, an old and very poor woman, rented a house in the environs of Mexico, as old and wretched as herself, for four reals a week. It had an old broken up stone patio, (inner court-yard) which she used occasionally to sweep with a little old broom. One day she observed two or three stones in this patio, larger and more carefully put together than the others, and the little old woman being a daughter of Eve by some collateral branch, poked down and worked at the stones, until she was able to raise them up; when lo! and behold, she discovered a can full of treasure; no less than five