G-abb.] OUi [Aug. 20, 



When I asked an Indian where it went, he responded, to the country of 

 Si-h'u', and in reply to the question; where is that? he pointed un- 

 hesitatingly to the zenith. On inquiring where the road was, he told me it 

 was invisible to the eyes of the living, but tint the spirit [wig'bru) couli 

 see it. 



In the other world there are no troubles, no cares. There is plenty to 

 eat and to drink, of those things that the Indian loves most here. Plan- 

 tains and corn are never wanting ; meat and chiclia are always to be had ; 

 and chocolate, the luxury, jjar excellence of the Costa Rican Indian never 

 runs out, or becomes scarce as, alas too often, it does in Talamanca. He 

 needs all his arms and imi)lements, but it does not seem that he will be 

 obliged to work. These little discrepancies, the wisest Tsu-gur does not 

 attempt to explain. After death, the soul remains wandering about near 

 the corpse until the burial feast. Then, by means of the songs of the 

 Tsu-gurs or priests, it makes its journey to the "promised land." 



Their superstitions are however, somewhat more definite and tangible 

 since they affect their every day actions. There are two classes of uu- 

 cleanness, nya and bu-ku-ru' , Anything that is essentially filthy, or that 

 was connected with the death of a person is " ni/a,^' anything unclean in 

 the Hebraic or Hindu sense is bu-ku-ru'. But ba-kto-ru' is even more 

 powerful than it is supposed to be by the Orientals. It suffises not only 

 to make one sick, but even kills. In a party where bu-ku-ru' is excited, 

 it does not affect all alike, but only attacks the weakest. Bu-ku-ru' 

 emanates in a variety of ways ; arms, utensils, even houses become affected 

 by it after long disuse and before they can be used again must be puri- 

 fied. In the case of portable objects lefc undisturbed for a long time, the 

 custom is to beat them with a stick before touching them. I have seen a 

 woman take a long walking stick and beat a basket hanging from the 

 roof of a house by a cord. On asking what tliat was for, I was told that 

 the basket contained her treasures, that she would probably want to take 

 something out the next day and that she was driving off the bu-ku-ru'^ 

 A house long unused must be swept and then the person who is purifying 

 it must take a stick and beat not only the movable objects, but the 

 beds, posts, and in short, every accessible part of the interior. The next 

 day it is fit for occupation. A place not visited for a long time or reached 

 for the first time, is bu-ku-ru'. On our return from the ascent of Pico 

 Blanco, nearly all the party suffered from little calenturas, the result of 

 extraordinary exposure to wet and cold and of want of food. The Indians 

 said that the peak was especially bu-ku-ru', since nobody had ever been 

 on it before. Even we foreigners were sick from it, and had any of them 

 gone to the summit, they would have surely died. On one occasion, while 

 buying some implements, I pulled down off a rack, two or three "blow 

 guns" that, from the dust on them, must have lain there undisturbed for 

 weeks, perhaps months. As I reached out my hand, I beared the warn- 

 ing cry of '■^bu-ku-ru' " from all around ; laughingly disregarding it, and 

 telling them that bu-ku-ru' couldn't hurt us, I began examining them. 



