The Spaniards are the aristocracy, poor but proud--very proud. The mixed race furnishes the mechanics and artisans; while the Indians till the soil and do the drudgery. A cook gets two dollars a month in a depreciated currency, but the employer is expected to board her entire family. A laborer gets four or six dollars a month and boards himself, except when he is fortunate to have a wife out at service. The Indians never marry, because they cannot afford to do so. The law compels them to pay the priest a fee of six dollars--more money than most of them can ever accumulate. When a Spaniard marries, the fee is paid by contributions from his relatives. It is a peculiarity of the Indian that he will sell nothing at wholesale, nor will he trade anywhere but in the marketplace, on the spot where he and his forefathers have sold garden-truck for three centuries. Although travellers on the highways meet whole armies of Indians bearing upon their backs heavy burdens of vegetables and other supplies, they can purchase nothing from them, as the native will not sell his goods until he gets to the place where he is in the habit of selling them. He will carry them ten miles, and dispose of them for less than he was offered at home. An old woman was trudging along one day with a heavy basket of pineapples and other fruits, and we tried to relieve her of part of her load, offering ten cents for pineapples which could be had for a quartillo, or two and a half cents, in market. She was polite but firm, and declined to sell anything until she got to town, although there was a weary, dusty journey of two leagues ahead of her. The guide explained that she was suspicious of the high price we offered, and imagined that pineapples must be very scarce in market, or we would not pay so much on the road; but it is a common rule for them to refuse to sell except at their regular stand. A gentleman who lives some distance from town said that for the last four years he had been trying to get the Indians, who passed every morning with packs of alfalfa (the tropical clover), to sell him some at his gate, but they invariably refused to do so; consequently he was compelled to go into town to buy what was carried past his own door. Nor will the natives sell at wholesale. They will give you a gourdful of potatoes for a penny as often as you like, but will not sell their stock in a lump. They will give you a dozen eggs for a real (ten cents), but will not sell you five dozen for a dollar. This dogged adherence to custom cannot be accounted for, except on the supposition that their suspicions are excited by an attempt to depart from it.