294 ON THE FEONTIEB. 



the doctor in demanding a fee for making it. There is, 

 therefore, always a strong incentive to declare the patient's 

 recovery a preordained certainty. Such a declaration must 

 of itself contribute to the sick person's convalescence by 

 sustaining his courage and filling him with confidence ; 

 for unbounded faith in their medical practitioners' prog- 

 nostications is a prevailing feeling amongst savages. But 

 to make this favourable prophecy is a very serious thing 

 for the medicine-man to do. The Mojave M.D. cannot 

 come to a wrong conclusion from the diagnostics of a case 

 with the same impunity that M.D.'s of other tribes can. 

 Whatever be the result announced after completing the 

 incantation, should the event be different, the mistake is 

 recorded against him ; and if he prove so unreliable as to 

 make three mistakes, he is considered a convicted impostor 

 whose ignorance or folly has tended to cause the decease of 

 his patients ; and that, having so made himself an active 

 accomplice of Old Death, he deserves to die and be made 

 a warning to all future aspirants for his high office. So, 

 he is stripped of his insignia and ignominiously executed. 

 Much may be said on both sides as to the advantages or 

 otherwise of this system. Certainly it has one effect, it 

 renders the calling of a quack amongst a lot of naked 

 savages as perilous to himself, and as little likely to prove 

 remunerative, as our system makes the career of a medical 

 impostor dangerous to his patients and one of the easiest 

 paths to wealth. 



The domestic question shall be touched upon very 

 lightly. One of the strangest customs of this singular 

 people is that polyandry is an honourable state amongst 



