even known in any other part of Mexico. [Illustration: METHODS OF WARFARE] Singularly enough, the badge of office of the self-governing tribes is a scepter, if an ornamented stick held in the hand can be called a scepter. These black savages of the sierras obey it more implicitly, however, than if it were a loaded Gatling gun trained on them. Whenever a government official or justice seizes this mace of the Madre Mountains, and holds it aloft, every person in sight is quelled more effectually than if it were a stick of giant powder that would explode if they did not obey. Its name among them, translated, is "God's Justice," and certainly no superstitious people ever obeyed a mandate more readily and completely than do they this mute expression of their own laws, and without which they would often be lawless under the same circumstances. An almost ludicrous case was told me of a foul murder having been committed by the wild Tarahumaris on the person of a civilized one, the murderers holding possession of the body. It was natural that the civilized faction should want the corpse for burial, and they demanded it, but it was refused. The civilized natives then went to the boundary line of the two factions, hoping to get the chief of the wild savages to assist them. Here they found some four or five hundred of the latter drawn up in battle array, with bows and arrows, to dispute their passage into their own land. The chief was absent and refused to come to the assistance of the others, although demanded in the name of the Mexican law, with corresponding punishment. The civilized natives then conceived the idea of a small body of picked men going in a roundabout way to compel his attendance, which was done, although he still refused to exercise his authority to compel his own band to give up the corpse of the dead Tarahumari. The forcing of the wild chief into the dispute was about to bring on a collision between the two factions, when one of the civilized natives wrenched his scepter from his hand, waved it aloft, and demanded of the wild ones that they cease all hostile demonstrations and bring in the body of the murdered man, all of which they did in the name of "God's Justice."