crystal. 'He could not give me an explanation of its magical use, except
that by looking into it he could see everything he wanted to see,'
Captain Bourke appears never to have heard of the modern experiments in
crystal-gazing. Captain Bourke also discovered that the Apaches, like the
Greeks, Australians, Africans, Maoris, and many other, races, use the
bull-roarer, turndun, or _rhombos_--a piece of wood which, being whirled
round, causes a strange windy roar--in their mystic ceremonies. The wide
use of the rhombos was known to Captain Bourke; that of the crystal was
not.

For the Iroquois, Mrs. Erminie Smith supplies information about the
crystal. 'Placed in a gourd of water, it could render visible the
apparition of a person who has bewitched another.' She gives a case in
European times of a medicine-man who found the witch's habitat, but
got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was
successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che
'look earnestly' for what they want to find 'into a smooth slab of black
stone, which I suppose to be basalt.'[3]

The kindness of Monsieur Lefébure enables me to give another example from
Madagascar.[4] Flacourt, describing the Malagasies, says that they
_squillent_ (a word not in Littré), that is, divine by crystals, which
'fall from heaven when it thunders,' Of course the rain reveals the
crystals, as it does the flint instruments called 'thunderbolts' in many
countries. 'Lorsqu'ils squillent, ils ont une de ces pierres au coing de
leurs tablettes, disans qu'elle à la vertu de faire faire operation à leur
figure de geomance.' Probably they used the crystals as do the Apaches. On
July 15 a Malagasy woman viewed, whether in her crystal or otherwise, two
French vessels which, like the Spanish fleet, were 'not in sight,' also
officers, and doctors, and others aboard, whom she had seen, before their