ropa (clothes). Armed with the crude washing equipments of the ancient Egyptians—only a stone slab, or at best a wooden tray resembling our bread-trays—they make their week's washing whiter than the whitest. However it is accomplished, the fact remains that without boiling, washing-soda, washboard, tub or bucket, and even in many cases without soap, this perplexing branch of domestic life is brought to perfection.
WATER CARRIER.
The aguador is the most noted of all the classes who serve outside the residence. As there are few houses furnished with pipes, the water supply is transported by this functionary.
His costume is peculiar to himself and well adapted to his vocation. It varies in every province. That worn in the City of Mexico is the most picturesque, and deserves a description. Over a shirt and drawers of common domestic he wears a jacket and trousers of blue cloth or tanned buckskin. The latter are turned up nearly to the knee. With his leathern helmet, broad leather strap across his forehead, called frontera (from which depends the chochocol, or water-vessel), leathern apron, and sandals of the same, called guarachi, we might imagine him to be a man in armor, so completely is he enveloped in this substantial equipment.
The piece that covers the back, and on which the chochocol rests, is called respaldadera, or back-rest; that which reaches from the waist to the knee, delantal or apron; and that which protects the thigh, the rosadera. All these pieces are fastened by means of thongs to a
