weave all their own clothing, and have their own priest, church and school. Everything is a model of cleanliness, and throughout the entire village not one thing can be found out of place; the women are about the medium height, with slim but shapely bodies; their hands and feet are very small, and their faces of a beautiful Grecian shape; their eyes are magnificent, and their hair long and silky; they dress in full skirt, with an overdress made like that we see in pictures of Chinese women, or like vestments worn by priests of the Catholic Church. It is constructed of cotton in the style and pattern of lace. Around the neck and ends it is beautifully embroidered in colored silk, the dresses always being white. On the feet they wear woven slippers of a pink color, and on their heads a square pink cloth long enough in the back to cover the neck, like those worn by peasant girls in comic operas; the arms are bare, covered alone with bands and ornaments; the neck is encircled with beads of all descriptions, and is also hung with silver and gold ornaments; the ear-rings are very large hoops, like those introduced into the States last fall; they never carry a baby like other tribes, but all the children are left religiously at home.
The men are large and strongly built, not bad-featured, and wear a very white, low-necked blouse and pantaloons, which come down one-third the distance between waist and knee. They also wear many chains, ornaments, bracelets, and earrings. They are always spotlessly clean, and if they have a scratch on their body—of which they get many traveling the thorny—roads they do not go outside their village until entirely healed. They are industrious and rich, and never leave their homes but once a week, where they bring their marketing and sell to the Indians in Cordoba, as they are never venders themselves, selling always by the wholesale. Their language is different from all the others, but they also speak Spanish. The women are sweet and innocent. They look at one with a smile as frank as a good-humored baby and are undoubtedly the handsomest and cleanest people in the republic. I would not have missed them for anything, and can now believe there are some Indians like the writers of old painted them.
In the time of Maximilian a colony of Americans asked
