The doctors say that this stone is not only fatal to women, but also destroys men if flung at them with certain incantations. An European settler once challenged a native doctor to say as many charms as he liked, and throw the magic stone as much as he pleased. This offer, however, he declined, giving the usual excuse of savages, that the white man belonged to a totally different order of beings, and, although the poor black fellow would die from the effects of the doctor-stone, the white man was much too powerful to be hurt by it. The mode in which the crystal is used is very curious, and has been described by an eye-witness. A native of the Tumat country, named Golong, was suffering from a spear wound received in a skirmish with a hostile tribe, and was brought to a bilbo, named Baramumbup, to be healed. The patient being laid on the ground outside the encampment so that women could not run the risk of death through the accidental sight of the crystal, the doctor began a close examination of the wound, and sucked it. He then retired to a distance from the patient, muttered some magic words for a minute or so, and placed the crystal in his mouth. Having retained it there for a short time, he removed it, spat on the ground, and with his feet trampled on the saliva, pressing it deeply into the ground. This was repeated several times, and the doctor took his leave. For several successive evenings the whole of the process was gone through, and the recovery of the patient, which was really rapid, was attributed by all parties to the wonderful efficacy of the doctor-stone. “On making inquiry,” writes Dr. Bennett, “why the physician is so careful in trampling the saliva discharged from his mouth into the ground, no satisfactory reason could be obtained, a vague answer only being returned to the query. But it is not improbable that they consider, by this practice, that they finally destroy the power of the evil spirit, extracted by the operation through the virtues of the stone. Some such reason for this proceeding may be inferred from an observation made to any European who may be present at this part of the ceremony, ‘that he (_i. e._ the disease) may not come up again.’” It is remarkable that a ceremony almost exactly identical in principle is employed by the Guaycura tribe of Brazil. Among them the doctors, or payés, cure local ailments, whether wounds or otherwise, by sucking the part affected, spitting into a hole dug in the ground, and then filling in the earth, as if to bury the complaint.