A MISADVENTURE. 223 
transferable with all their beneficial powers; they 
therefore often stole them from each other, and, when 
.the Spaniards arrived, hid them away lest they should 
be taken by the strangers. They believed that these 
zemes presided over every object in nature. Some 
had sway over the elements, causing sterile or abun- 
dant years; some governed the seas and forests, the 
springs and fountains, like the nereids, the dryads, 
and satyrs of antiquity. Once a year each cacique 
held a feast in honor of his zemi, when his subjects 
pn JNDIAN FEML 
formed a procession to the temple; the married men 
and women decorated with their most precious orna- 
ments, the young females entirely naked, carrying 
baskets of flowers and cakes, and singing as they 
advanced.” 
In the “Smithsonian Report” for 1876 is an elabo- 
rate article describing, with many engravings, a col- 
lection of antiquities from Porto Rico, containing 
several Indian “stools” of stone and wood. These 
stools are ornamented with a head-piece resembling 
this tortoise, and even the eye-sockets have the ap- 
