They do not excel in writing or in learning to write, although not a few have studied the same length of time and the same subjects as white men, but they are generally clownish and slow of understanding. It happens very often that after they have been given a clear and oft-repeated order, they will manage to execute it the wrong way, and their memory is so short that, although they attend catechism daily from the age of six or seven until they are twelve or fourteen years of age, there are very many among them who have never been able either to learn it or to commit it to memory. Those, however, who do not evade those lessons and who furthermore attend the preaching of the gospel in their own language, have obtained Catholic ideas about eternity, the last judgment, the glory of God, purgatory, and hell. As the climate of the peninsula is so hot that it exhausts our physical strength and energy, as well as reduces the needs of man who can live almost nude and in the open air and feed himself sparingly, we cannot expect that the Indian should be particularly inclined to work. We had the same experience among the other native races, although perhaps their social standard may impose greater necessities. A hut of six or seven yards in length by three or four in width, he builds himself; its walls consist of rows of sticks (which sometimes are covered with a coat of clay) and thatched with palm-leaves or grass, with a door frequently made of reeds twined together. Two or three roughly-woven hammocks of henequen, a machete, perchance a hoe, perhaps a hatchet, and, very rarely, a poor shotgun, are all his furniture. A _metate_ to grind his corn, an earthen pot to boil it, another pot to cook the vegetables and the _atole_, a _comal_ or flat earthenware plate to cook the corn-cakes or tortillas, a pitcher for water, one or two _jicaras_ of _gúero_,[11] an equal number of gourds cut in halves to make drinking vessels and for other purposes, are the eating utensils. A roughly-made, circular stool of half a yard in diameter and about as much in height, and which is used for shaping the tortillas as well as for a table at which they eat their meals, etc. Fifteen to twenty yards of cotton cloth for the man's clothes, for the wife's, and for the children's, which costs a real per yard, supposing the woman does not spin and weave this herself; two or three coarse needles, a reel of cotton thread, a straw hat, sandals, a handkerchief and a cotton belt; a large straw basket or hamper, a _mecapal_, and a sack of henequen, complete the list. A trough in which to wash clothes and to bathe themselves; a few pounds of corn which he sows himself, as well as chile, beans, calabazas,[12] _camote_ [sweet potatoes], and _jicama_,[13] a bunch of bananas, the leaf of which is used to shape the tortillas, and perhaps a sour orange. His wood he himself cuts in the forest for cooking his meals and also for the fire which he keeps all night in the center of the