CHAPTER IV. 



PRESENTS. 



368. Travellers, coming in contact with strange peo 

 ples, habitually propitiate them by gifts. Two results are 

 achieved. Gratification caused by the worth of the thing 

 given, tends to beget a friendly mood in the person ap 

 proached; and there is a tacit expression of the donor s de 

 sire to please, which has a like effect. It is from the last of 

 these that gift-making as a ceremony proceeds. 



The alliance between mntilations and presents be 

 tween offering a part of the body and offering something else 

 is well shown by a statement respecting the ancient Peru 

 vians; which also shows how present-making becomes a 

 propitiatory act, apart from the value of the thing presented. 

 Describing people who carry burdens over the high passes, 

 Garcilasso says they unload themselves on the top, and then 

 severally say to the god Pachacamac, 



&quot;I give thanks that this has been carried, and in making an 

 offering they pulled a hair out of their eyebrows, or took the herb 

 called cuca from their mouths, as a gift of the most precious things 

 they had. Or if there was nothing better, they offered a small stick 

 or piece of straw, or even a piece of stone or earth. There were 

 great heaps of these offerings at the summits of passes over the 

 mountains.&quot; 



Though, coming in this unfamiliar form, these offerings of 

 parts of themselves, or of things they prized, or of worthless 

 things, seems strange, they will seem less strange on remem 

 bering that at the foot of a wayside crucifix in France, may 



