These _Zahoris_,[26-†] as they are generally called in the Spanish of Central America, possessed many other mysterious arts besides that of such metamorphoses and of forecasting the future. They could make themselves invisible, and walk unseen among their enemies; they could in a moment transport themselves to distant places, and, as quickly returning, report what they had witnessed; they could create before the eyes of the spectator a river, a tree, a house, or an animal, where none such existed; they could cut open their own stomach, or lop a limb from another person, and immediately heal the wound or restore the severed member to its place; they could pierce themselves with knives and not bleed, or handle venomous serpents and not be bitten; they could cause mysterious sounds in the air, and fascinate animals and persons by their steady gaze; they could call visible and invisible spirits, and the spirits would come. Among the native population of the State of Vera Cruz and elsewhere in southern Mexico these mysterious personages go by the name _padrinos_, godfathers, and are looked upon with a mixture of fear and respect. They are believed by the Indians to be able to cause sickness and domestic calamities, and are pronounced by intelligent whites to present “a combination of rascality, duplicity and trickery.”[26-‡] =17.= The details of the ceremonies and doctrines of Nagualism have never been fully revealed; but from isolated occurrences and partial confessions it is clear that its adherents formed a coherent association extending over most of southern Mexico and Guatemala, which everywhere was inspired by two ruling sentiments--detestation of the Spaniards and hatred of the Christian religion. In their eyes the latter was but a cloak for the exactions, massacres and oppressions exerted by the former. To them the sacraments of the Church were the outward signs of their own subjugation and misery. They revolted against these rites in open hatred, or received them with secret repugnance and contempt. In the Mexican figurative manuscripts composed after the conquest the rite of baptism is constantly depicted as the symbol of religious persecution. Says a sympathetic student of this subject: