with pins very much like those worn at the present day. It is also true that the natives, the peons of Peru and Ecuador, the descendants of the Incas, never wear anything except black, and still celebrate with impressive and appropriate ceremonies the anniversary of the day on which Atahualpa was strangled. In Chili the custom has died out, for the Inca empire was never able to sustain itself there against the savage Araucanian tribes of Indians who inhabited the southern range of the Andes. The Inca women in Peru and Ecuador are not at all pretty. They are dwarfish in stature, broad across the shoulders, and resemble in feature the squaws of the North American tribes, except that they have the almond-shaped eyes of the Mongolians; and it is probably true, as urged by the antiquarians, that the Incas were of the same origin as the Chinese, for their customs, their adeptness at all sorts of ingenious work, and their manner of living bear a striking resemblance to those of the interior provinces of the Chinese empire. The Incas have had their blood diluted by intermarriage with the lower grades of the Spanish race, and it is very difficult to find pure natives now. The people of the mixed race are called cholos. It is the transplanted Spanish rose, the pure Castilian type, that blooms with the greatest beauty in the gardens of Peru. The climate has refined it, and has clarified the dark olive tint that is found in Castile. The greatest beauties in Lima are the descendants of the oldest families--those of the longest residence in the country--and their loveliness appears not only to have been transmitted from generation to generation, but to have been enhanced thereby. This is true not alone of the aristocrats, for some of the loveliest girls belong to the humbler families, and are found in the tenement-houses, clothed in the shabbiest garments, which serve only to heighten their loveliness, and to make them fair prey for the wolves that prowl around in Lima as they do everywhere else. The fate of these girls, if described, would make a chapter more horrible to contemplate than the disclosures recently made in London. Their beauty is a fatal gift, and their poverty and ignorance make them an easy prey to the tempter. Seldom are they allowed to remain at home after the age of fourteen or fifteen, when they become the mistresses of the haughty dons. But the social laws of Spanish America are so liberal that these women are treated much better than in lands of higher civilization, for it is not only expected that every [Illustration: RUINS OF THE WAR.] man who can support a mistress will do so, but his reputation will suffer among his fellows if he does not.