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Three different times the trial was repeated, and each time after invoking their zemes, the young men tried to free themselves from their bonds. El Comendador's champions repeated the invocation, "St. Mary, help me, St. Mary, help me!" and immediately the Virgin, robed in white, appeared.
Whenever the women succeed in obtaining the piece of meat which the bovites hold in their mouths, they wrap it with great respect in cloths and carefully preserve it, esteeming it to be a talisman of great efficacy in time of childbirth, and honouring it as though it were a zemes. The islanders pay homage to numerous zemes, each person having his own.
There is an intoxicating herb which they pound up and drink, after which they are seized with fury like the mænads, and declare that the zemes confide secrets to them. They visit the sick man, carrying in their mouth a bone, a little stone, a stick, or a piece of meat.
They ask him what he has seen, and the cacique declares that he was in conversation with the zemes during the whole time, and as though he were still in a prophetic delirium, he prophesies victory or defeat, if a war is to be undertaken, or whether the crops will be abundant, or the coming of disaster, or the enjoyment of health, in a word, whatever first occurs to him.
Some are made of wood, because it is amongst the trees and in the darkness of night they have received the message of the gods. Others, who have heard the voice amongst the rocks, make their zemes of stone; while others, who heard the revelation while they were cultivating their ages that kind of cereal I have already mentioned, make theirs of roots.
One more thing worthy of remembrance and I shall have finished my book. The natives of Hispaniola were much impressed by the arrival of the Spaniards. Formerly two caciques, of whom one was the father of Guarionex, fasted for fifteen days in order to consult the zemes about the future.
These traditions are handed down by the old men. The islanders venerate another zemes, made of marble, which is of the feminine sex, and is accompanied by two male zemes who serve as attendants; one acting as herald to summon other zemes to the woman's assistance when she wishes to raise storms or draw down clouds and rains; the other is supposed to collect the water which flows down from the high mountains into the valleys, and upon the command of the female zemes to let it loose in the form of torrents which devastate the country whenever the islanders have failed to pay her idol the honours due to it.
He led the procession of men and women festively adorned, beating on a drum, to the cavern where the priests awaited them. Presents were offered, and old dances and songs repeated in honor of the Zemés, and of departed caciques.
These men, who are persistent liars, act as doctors for the ignorant people, which gives them a great prestige, for it is believed that the zemes converse with them and reveal the future to them. If a sick man recovers the bovites persuade him that he owes his restoration to the intervention of the zemes. When they undertake to cure a chief, the bovites begin by fasting and taking a purge.
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