The women wore the chemise-like garment which all Mayan women wear to-day, with the headcloth we have previously described. They smeared and scented their bodies with an unguent made of a favourite resin, and their long hair, parted in the middle, was worn either in a thick plait or loose over the shoulders. The Mayan woman was as much the head of the domestic household as members of her sex are in civilised countries. The chief food of the Mayans was always maize, with which the housewife made _atole_, a thick porridge mixed with honey, still a favourite dish of the Indians to-day. This and the tortillas formed the morning meal. Sometimes a mess of ground black beans was added. There were two meals a day, the chief one being the evening meal, when venison, birds, and fresh or salted fish figured in the menu of the richer people. The family did not eat together: the men having their meal separately from the women. The Mayan drinks consisted of a maize-water called _keyem_ and fermented liquors made of honey, fruits, and pepper. Marriage was an important matter among the Mayans, and the arrangements were left in the hands of the parents; sometimes in the hands of a professional matchmaker. A union having been arranged, the day of the ceremony was made the occasion for a great feast. There seems to have been a great deal of poetry about the Mayan nature, for flowers figured largely in the decorations and the Mayan word for marriage is poetical and allegorical in the extreme: _Kamnicte_--literally, "the reception of the flower of May." The actual ceremony appears to have been nothing more than the formal handing over of the bride to the groom by the priest, after he had satisfied himself that they knew their own minds. Thereafter there were feasting and dancing, lasting well into the evening, generally ending in the fermented drink being far too much for the men of the party, who had to be helped home to their huts by their wives and daughters.