The houses of the village are built of stone with thatched roofs, and, having no means of ventilation, become dreadfully overheated.  I frequently noticed people lying on the floor in these hovels, suffering from colds.  In the summer there is also prevalent in the valley a disease of the eyes which makes them red and swollen.  Although the country is malarial, the Indians attain to remarkable longevity, and their women are wonderfully well preserved.  All Indian women age very late in life, a trait many of their white sisters might be pardonably envious of.

There are twenty Mexicans living here, counting the children; they are poor, and have no house or lands of their own, but live in the Convento and rent lands from the Indians.  The Coras, of course, are all nominally Christians, and the padre from San Juan Peyotan attends to their religious needs.  I was told that as recently as forty years ago they had to be driven to church with scourges.  Some families still put their dead away in caves difficult of access, closing up the entrance, without interring the bodies, and they still dance mitote, although more or less secretly.

The Indians catch crayfish, and other small fish, with a kind of hand-net of cotton thread, which they hold wide open with their elbows while crawling in the water between the stones.  Where the river is deep they will even dive with the net held in this way.

The day after my arrival I was requested to come to.  La Comunidad, that the people might hear my letters read.  This over, I explained that I wanted them to sell me some corn and beans, a blue tunic of native make, and other objects of interest to me, that I also wanted them to furnish me two reliable men to go to the city of Tepic for mail and money; that I wished to photograph them and to be shown their burial-caves, and to have a real, good old shaman visit me, and some men to interpret.  The messengers were duly appointed, but it took them two days to prepare the tortillas they had to take along as provisions.  My desire to see the burial-caves was looked upon with ill-favour.  The old shaman, however, was promptly sent for.  He soon arrived at the council-house, and without having seen me he told the Indian authorities that “it was all right to tell this man about their ancient beliefs, that the Government might know everything.”  When he came to see me he took my hand to kiss, as if I were a padre, and I had a most interesting interview with the truthful, dear old man, who told me much about the Cora myths, traditions, and history.  I gathered from what he said that he could not be far from a hundred years old, and he had not a grey hair in his head.  His faculties were intact, except his hearing, and while I was interviewing him he was making a fish-net.

I had him with me one day and a part of the next, but by that time he was a good deal fatigued mentally, and I had to let him go.