The Mayan man dresses in loose white-cotton trousers, which he usually wears turned up to the knees, and a loose-fitting shirt of white cotton tucked in at the belt. As often as not the shirt is discarded while at work or in the bush, and the trousers give place to the _maxtli_, a broad loin-cloth. A pudding-basin-shaped straw hat, home-plaited, and sandals made of a single thickness of tanned hide cut to the shape of the foot, with a piece of cord coming up between the first and second toe, passing over the instep and through a string loop on either side of the heel and then twisted round the ankle, complete his outfit. Every Indian wears belted round him in a leather sheath the _machete_, the native weapon universal throughout Central America. It is a sword-like knife, the blade about thirty inches long and two broad, with a plain hand-grip of bone or wood about four inches long. These are fearsome-looking weapons even when, as is usually the case, the blade is straight; but they are positively blood-curdling when they are, as one sees them sometimes, scimitar-shaped or ending with an ugly hook, like the finish of an English billhook. [Illustration: THE NUNNERY (CASA DE LAS MONJAS), CHICHEN ITZA.] The Mayans are a singularly healthy people, and free of skin complaints and those other blood diseases which so often affect native races in a low state of civilisation. But they are not constitutionally strong, and die off like flies when exposed to an epidemic. Though so thoroughly a tropical people, they are cold-blooded with sluggish circulations, if one is to judge by the coldness of their hands, which, even in the children, are froggy in their chilliness. They are a clean race, and the Mayan labourer on coming in from his work would not dream of squatting before his frugal evening meal of tortillas and beans till he has had a hot bath. This he takes in a large shallow wooden trough, exactly like a butcher's tray magnified four times. In this, one end resting on the ground, the other raised on a low log of wood, the Mayan squats and sponges the water over himself with a bunch of henequen or other fibre. In this tray, too, the babies are bathed and the family washing is done. It is always washing-day with the Mayan women, and the hut gardens are always a-flutter with billowy white huipils. The Mayans are a singularly modest people, and, sharing their huts, we were again and again astonished at the decency which triumphed over the fact that a large family of all ages shared the same sleeping-room and slung their hammocks from the same beams.