<p id="d0e6811">Jesus Maria looks at a distance quite a town, on a [503] little plain above the river-bank. A fine, grand-looking old church, in Moorish style, a large churchyard surrounding it, and the usual big buildings connected with the churches of Spanish times, make all extraordinary impression among the pithaya-covered hills. The rest of the houses look humble enough. I went a little beyond the pueblo to the junction of arroyo Fraile with the river of Jesus Maria. As a violent wind, caused by the cooling off of the hot air of the barranca, blows every afternoon, I did not put up my tent, but had my men build an open shed. The wind lasts until midnight, and the mornings are delightfully calm and cool. The Coras consider this wind beneficial to the growth of the corn, and sacrifice a tamal of ashes, two feet long, to keep it in the valley.</p>
<p id="d0e6815">The Cora of the ca&ntilde;on, and probably of the entire Tierra Caliente, is of a milder disposition than his brother of the sierra, but he looks after his own advantage as closely as the rest of them.</p>
<p id="d0e6817">The houses of the village are built of stone with thatched roofs, and, having no means of ventilation, become dreadfully overheated. I frequently noticed people lying on the floor in these hovels, suffering from colds. In the summer there is also prevalent in the valley a disease of the eyes which makes them red and swollen. Although the country is malarial, the Indians attain to remarkable longevity, and their women are wonderfully well preserved. All Indian women age very late in life, a trait many of their white sisters might be pardonably envious of.</p>
<p id="d0e6819">There are twenty Mexicans living here, counting the children; they are poor, and have no house or lands of their own, but live in the Convento and rent lands from the Indians. The Coras, of course, are all nominally Christians, and the padre from San Juan Peyotan [504] attends to their religious needs. I was told that as recently as forty years ago they had to be driven to church with scourges. Some families still put their dead away in caves difficult of access, closing up the entrance, without interring the bodies, and they still dance mitote, although more or less secretly.</p>
<p id="d0e6823">The Indians catch crayfish, and other small fish, with a kind of hand-net of cotton thread, which they hold wide open with their elbows while crawling in the water between the stones. Where the river is deep they will even dive with the net held in this way.</p>