and obscene language, improvising as they go along, with remarkable quick-wittedness, not binding themselves down to any conventional oaths or forms of invective, but pouring out a stream of vituperation and obscenity to meet each case, which strikes with unerring fidelity the weak points in the habits, morals, ancestry, and personal appearance of their opponents. The young girls are as bad as, if not worse than, the older women, for whom they seem to have no respect. They are extremely clean in their persons, and wash frequently, though with regard to their homes they are not nearly so particular as hens, dogs, pigs, and children roll about together promiscuously on the floor, and fleas, lice, and jiggers abound only too frequently. The description given by Landa (chap. XXXII, p. 192) of the Indian women at the time of the conquest applies equally well to their descendants of the present day: Emborachavanse también ellas con los combites, aunque por si, como comian por si, y no se emborachavan tanto como los hombres.... Son avisadas y corteses y conversables, con que se entienden, y a maravilla bien partidas. Tienen poco secreto y no son tan limpias en sus personas ni en sus cosas con quanto se lavan como los ermiños. The women are very industrious, rising usually at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning to prepare the day's supply of tortillas or corn cake. During the day they prepare tobacco (_kutz_) and make cigarettes; gather cotton (_taman_), which they spin (_kuch_), weave (_sakal_), and embroider for garments; weave mats of palm leaf and baskets (_xush_) of a variety of liana (_ak_); make pottery (_ul_), and cotton and henequen cord, of which they construct hammocks (_ǩan_). In addition to these tasks they do the family cooking and washing, look after the children, and help their husbands to attend to the animals. Till late at night the women may be seen spinning, embroidering, and hammock-making by the light of a native candle or a small earthenware cuhoon-nut oil lamp, meanwhile laughing and chatting gayly over the latest village scandal, the older ones smoking cigarettes, while the men squat about on their low wooden stools outside the house gravely discussing the weather, the milpas, the hunting, or the iniquities of the Alcalde. Among the Indian women of British Honduras the old customs are rapidly dying out; spinning and weaving are no longer practiced, pottery making has been rendered unnecessary by the introduction of cheap iron cooking pots and earthenware, candles have given place to mineral oil lamps, and even the metate is being rapidly superseded by small American hand mills for grinding the corn. The men's time is divided between agriculture, hunting, fishing, and boat and house building, though at times they undertake tasks usually left to the women, as mat and basket making, and even spinning and weaving. The Indians of British Honduras who live near