"The plateaux are always cool, so the Aymara wears a comparatively warm costume, consisting of a thick woollen shirt and a poncho of many colours, with dark, narrow breeches coming just below the knee. The legs are bare, and the feet equally so, or are shod with sandals of raw hide. The Aymara, like the Tibetan, another dweller in plateaux, is insensible to cold; he sleeps bare-footed in the hardest frosts, and walks through freezing water or over ice without apparent inconvenience. On days of festival the Aymara replaces the poncho by a sort of tight-fitting tunic. The head is well covered with a large woollen bonnet, which protects the neck and ears. The women also wear a shirt or chemise of thick wool or cotton, over which they throw a mantle of coarse, heavy wool, striped with bright colours, and retained on the chest by a sort of spoon of silver or copper, the slender handle serving as a pin. A heavy woolle petticoat, pleated in front, and usually dyed a dark blue, covers the lower part of the body to the ankles. The Aymara woman wears several of these petticoats superimposed, which gives her a very bulky look about the hips. A somewhat unattractive hat completes the costume. Men and women alike having a perfect contempt for hygiene, all parts of the body are coated with a respectable layer of dirt. Their clothes, which they never put off, even to sleep, are worn until they fall into tatters, and usually give off a disagreeable ammoniacal odour. "The Aymara tongue differs from the Quechua; it is a harsh, guttural idiom, rather formless, but having conjugations. It is forcible and concise. The peoples conquered by the Quechuas learned the language of their conquerors; but the Aymaras retained theirs, and when the Spaniards conquered the country, the Aymaras, who had long been a subject race, were decadent and diminishing in numbers. "By the innumerable vestiges of building and the tombs near Lake Titicaca we may judge that this country was once thickly populated. But the plains afforded no refuge, and the inhabitants could not escape the forced recruiting which supplied the mining centres. At the time of Tupac-Amaru's insurrection the Aymaras, happy to reconquer their liberty, or perhaps merely to effect a change of masters and to satisfy their bellicose instincts, threw themselves into the revolt; whereupon war, sickness and famine considerably reduced their numbers. To-day they are estimated to be about 400,000 strong.