might have been termed the national garment of the Mexican woman--and has accepted the less graceful and becoming garments of European fashion. In all outer guise, she is steadfastly setting herself to become a mere imitation, if not a caricature, of the belles of other civilizations; but within she is still the child of the South, the daughter of a race of Indians, dashed indeed with Spanish blood but preserving many of the Indian characteristics intact; and these do not agree with normal culture. For it must be remembered that in Mexico there is to-day, owing to the wholesale expulsion of the Spaniards at the establishment of independence, hardly a family of unmixed blood; and those who do claim uncontaminated descent from the Spanish _hidalgos_ are looked upon with utmost disfavor almost--ostracized, indeed. On the other hand, the Mexicans have come to look upon Americans of the North with respect and even affection, and to welcome them to their country and often to their homes. The result, of course, has been partly to establish a heterogeneous culture, neither Spanish, Indian, nor American, and yet a commingling of all three, at least in outward form. But beneath the veneer of the new culture the Mexican woman preserves the characteristics which have been hers for centuries and which in their greater part came down to her from her Indian forebears. She is still passionate, jealous, vengeful, sudden and violent in all her impulses, most of which are founded upon that which she calls her love, but which, as a rule, is but passion. Her traditions do not agree with her surroundings as she would fain make them; and the question as to which will finally survive in permanent conquest is one that can be answered by time alone, that convenient arbitrator to which to refer all vexed questions of this sort. To that tribunal may be left the questions for the future which have been suggested to thoughtful readers concerning the Mexican woman. CHAPTER III THE WOMEN OF SOUTH AMERICA