THE ROMADIZO. 



227 



and, when brought to me in a calabash, it had a foamy appearance, as 

 if just drawn from the cow ; and looked very rich and tempting. It, 

 however, coagulates very soon, and becomes as hard and tenacious as 

 glue. The Indians make use of this property of it to eradicate their 

 eyebrows. This is not so painful an operation as it would seem ; for 

 the Indians have never suffered the eyebrows to grow and become 

 strong, and the hair is only down, which is easily plucked up. When 

 the milk coagulates, it expands, so that it forced the glass stopper out 

 of the bottle I put it in, though sealed with pitch. We also got some 

 of the almonds of the country, which I have not seen elsewhere. They 

 are about the size, and have something the appearance, of our common 

 black walnut, with a single oblong kernel, similar in taste to the Brazil 

 nut. 



November 26. — We had much heavy rain for the last day or two. 

 A number of persons were affected with catarrh and headache. The 

 padre told me that half of the population were ill of it, and that this 

 always happens at the commencement of the rains. The disease is 

 called romadizOj and is like our influenza. Ijurra and I were both 

 indisposed with rheumatic pains in the back of the neck and shoulders. 

 I don't wonder at this, for we have slept all the time in a room just 

 plastered with mud, and so damp that, where my bed-clothes came in 

 contact with the wall, they were quite wet; and the rain beat in upon 

 my head and shoulders through an open window nearly over head. 

 My boots are covered with mould every morning, and the guns get half- 

 full of water. 



I gave the padre's servant, who was suffering very much from roma- 

 dizo, fifteen grains of Dover's powder, (Heaven knows if it were proper 

 or not,) and also to the padre's sister, who had been suffering for some 

 days with painful diarrhoea, forty drops of laudanum. The old lady was 

 cured at once, and said she had never met with so great a reniedio. I 

 left her a phial of it, with directions for its use; telling her (at which 

 she looked aghast) that it was a deadly poison. It is curious to see 

 how entirely ignorant the best-informed people out here are concerning 

 the properties of medicines. Most of them do not know the names, 

 much less the effects, of even such common drugs as calomel and 

 opium. I suspect this is the case among most Spanish people, and 

 think that Spanish physicians have always made a great mystery of their 

 science. 



We sailed from Echenique at half-past 1 p. m. Father Valdivia* 

 who is musical, but chanted the mass in a falsetto that would be very 

 difficult to distinguish, at a little distance, from the rattling of a tin patty 



