they went back home again even though they had gone a day's journey, as if the sneeze had been something in the road. Sometimes they went on, and returned without delay from their destination. If the same thing happened when they began to work, they immediately desisted from their labor. If on any similar occasion they heard the singing of a certain bird which they regarded as a bad omen, they did not go on at all with what they had undertaken, even though they had traveled for many days, and even in the case of an entire army in war. They acted in the same manner if the bird came or flew toward their left hand, or if it turned its bill in such or such a direction. It was the same way with other signs which they regarded as evil omens. On the contrary, they were very much encouraged and very joyful when the augury was a good one; and although a thousand times the event was opposite to what the augury, as it seemed, had threatened or promised, they never lacked an excuse for remaining in their error, and for continuing forever in this harmful ignorance. When they began a voyage by sea or by the rivers, they threw into the water a certain quantity of their food out of reverence for the devil, in order to placate him so that he might give them success. If they built a house, they had to perform their rites before entering it; and if the bird of augury entered it they either tore it down, or performed a thousand sacrifices and superstitious rites in order to fit it for habitation. When they bought anything, they did the same before they would put it in the house; and whenever they went out on any little business, those who went and those who stayed at home did nothing but perform superstitious acts that they might have good luck in it. It was the same with everything they did or thought of doing, in life and in death, in sickness and in health; and for this purpose they had their houses full of devices and apparatus. As the devil never turns back from the evil thought and purpose of being as God, which he had in the beginning, he taught them a thousand superstitious rites to adore and revere him, very like those which the church uses in honor of our true God. Hence they had regular feast-days, and days assigned for their worship, and three-day feasts, like our great ecclesiastical feasts. [53] They carried on their wrists blessed beads, which the sorceresses gave them with threats of death if they took them off. They had their sort of holy water; and in one village named Masi, which was much given to all sorts of superstition, they had a certain water with which they washed the arms, the legs and the foreheads of all the children, especially the children of the chiefs. As a result of this, they promised them a long and fortunate life. They had receptacles like charity-boxes, in which they put what they offered the anito. These boxes were set out in dark places, hidden in ravines, or in thickets, or in cane-brakes.