The Mayan family, irrespective of sex and age, all slept in that portion of the hut that was set aside as a sleeping apartment. They slept on beds of rushes loosely strewn or woven into mats. The hammock was unknown in Yucatan until the arrival of the Spaniards. It is a very common mistake to believe that the hammock was indigenous to Yucatan. Columbus is the first to mention the hammock, and he found it among the West Indians. It is said to have originated in San Domingo; but whether this is so or not, it is quite certain that the Mayans did not sleep in hammocks until the Spaniards introduced the custom. These Mayan rush beds were sometimes raised from the ground on a sort of rough table made of sticks bound together and supported on four legs. In the poorer huts this is quite a common form of bedstead to-day. As bed-clothes they had cloaks of cotton of varying degrees of thickness according to the wealth of the family. The farm lands belonging to the city were cultivated by the people in common. A special portion of these public lands was set apart each year for the support of the cacique and his family, and it was his subjects' duty to cultivate and reap his crops and carry the harvest to his granaries. A like apportionment of land was made to the highest nobles and functionaries of the State. Hunting grounds were also allotted to the cacique and his chief nobles, and anybody trespassing on these was punished. The Mayans were great hunters, going out in large parties into the woods after attending at the temple and praying for good sport from the gods of the woodland. The quarry were the several birds of the pheasant family which haunt the Yucatecan woods, the marvellously beautiful ocellated turkey and other members of the gallinaceous family, deer, rabbits, the wild pig and, last but not least, the jaguar. A tithe of the "bag" was presented to the caciques. Of fisheries, where available, the cacique and his nobles also got the pick. Fish were abundant, as they are to-day, along the whole coast of the Peninsula, and the Mayans caught them with nets or, when the water was low, by shooting them with arrows. The fish were dried in the sun, and thus kept for many days, and carried twenty or thirty leagues into the interior. The Mayans also hunted the shark, manatee, and the turtle. The manatee they hunted with harpoons, wading out into the estuaries and following it when wounded in their canoes. It was valued for the sake of its fat as well as its flesh. Before starting out to fish they made supplication for good luck in one of the temples which it was the custom to build for this purpose on the beach. Those caciques who held territories on the coast obtained salt from the saline lagoons, which are found in many places on the coast of Yucatan. At the end of the dry season, when these marshes were nearly waterless and it was possible to cross them on foot, expeditions were made for the collection of the salt which formed a