Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/144

134 they have constructed, the owl is tethered upon a branch, with chain-room enough to enable him to reach and move about upon the ground; while a string is led from the chain to the shelter, by means of which the owl is kept in a lively condition. The fluttering of the bird between the ground and the perch attracts the attention of the crows; their circling and cawing are noticed by the hawks and eagles, which come around to see what the crows have found, and are shot.

Doctor and Patient in Ancient Hispaniola.—Some of the curious features and customs of the people which were described by the early travelers in Hispaniola or Hayti have been recalled by Mr. H. Ling Roth, in a paper before the Archæological Institute. The missionary Ramon Pane says that the doctors were dieted along with their patients, and were obliged to purge themselves when they did. Intoxicating himself by snuffing a powder which may have been tobacco, the doctor would say extravagant things. These were regarded as communications from the Cemis or fetich, and as embodying revelations of the origin of the sickness. Having put into his mouth a package of small bones and flesh and gone through some preliminary observances, the doctor would go toward the sick man and turn him twice about; then, standing before him, take him by the legs, feel his thighs, descending by degrees to his feet, and draw hard, as if he would pull something off; then, going to the door, he would shut it, saying, "Begone to the mountain, or to the sea, or whither thou wilt!" With this he would give a blast as if he were blowing something away, turn about, clap his hands together, and shut his mouth, while his hands would be quaking as if he were a-cold. Then he would blow on his hands, and drawing in his blast as if sucking the marrow of a bone, he would suck at various parts of the man's body. This done, after a coughing and making of faces, as if they had eaten some bitter thing, the doctor would pull out what he had put into his mouth before starting out. If it was anything eatable, he would tell his patient that the Cemis had put it into him to cause the distemper because he had not made a suitable offering to it. If the patient died, and his friends were strong enough to oppose the physician, they would mix with the juice of a certain herb and the dead man's nails and forehead hair pounded between two stones, and, pouring it down the dead man's throat and nostrils, ask him whether the physician was the cause of his death. This they would do till the dead man would speak, "as plain as if he were alive," and answer all that they asked of him, when they would return him to his grave. Another method of making the dead speak was to place the body over a very hot fire covered with earth, when the dead would answer ten questions and no more. If the physician had failed to do his duty, he was waylaid and bruised, but a particular mutilation was necessary to secure his death. At night, after the bruising, snakes were believed to lick the doctor's body, and he would tell the people that the Cemis had come to his assistance.

Country Life, Past and Present.—As to whether country life is more comfortable now than it was fifty years ago, something may be said on both sides. Most of the places remote from large towns were literally out of the world in the old times, so far as society and active life were concerned. Traveling by public conveyance was difficult, inconvenient, and expensive; and visits to the city were rarely enough made to be with many literally the event of a lifetime, while hosts of other persons never enjoyed them at all. Communication by letter even was not common, for postage was high and graduated according to the distance, and only those who were able to indulge in it as a luxury felt that they could afford to dispatch many letters except on business or in cases of necessity. There were market towns, and they enjoyed a kind of prosperity of their own from which many of them have fallen since railroads came in, and they had their societies and their peculiar codes and usages and games and amusements, which left no lack of sources of enjoyment. But very few now living in those same towns would exchange their present life there for that of the past. There were, however, a sociality and a heartiness in the neighborhood life of those days, a freedom and equality of intercourse among the people of all classes—an ignoring, in fact, of class distinctions—a community of feeling and reciprocal interest