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296 scorched the faces of their children with hot cloths in the belief that its growth was thereby prevented. However, pottery fragments from Alta Vera Paz occasionally show faces with a heavy moustache, and certain of the gods appear on the manuscripts with beards. Bearded figures also occur on vases and among the sculptures, notably at Quirigua. The hair was usually worn long, and the priests in Guatemala had great difficulty in persuading their converts to cut it. In Yucatan a patch was burnt short on the top of the head, the rest of the hair being plaited and wound round the head with the exception of a small tail behind. The women wore it in two long plaits down the back. Head-ornaments existed in great variety and were extremely elaborate among the men; brilliant feathers were used in great profusion, and masks of animals or gods were frequently added, if we may accept the evidence of the sculptures. Clothing itself was made from textiles, and was usually assumed about the age of five or six, children under that age going nude. The principal garment worn by men was a girdle of about a hand's breath, the ends falling down before and behind (e.g. Figs. 61 and 82; pp. 297 and 344). These ends were ornamented by the women with embroidery or feather-work, and in the monuments they are shown furnished with the most elaborate designs, of which the most frequent is a grotesque face, often highly conventionalized, with long nose-ornaments, probably representing a water-deity. Wide, square shoulder-mantles were also worn, as well as sandals of plaited hemp or hide. The sandal-strings, again, were often highly decorative, and in the monuments the sandal itself is of so elaborate a nature that it may almost be said to be a shoe (Pl. XXII, and Fig. 61). The manuscripts seem to show some sort of a leg-covering also (e.g. Fig. 46, e). Women wore a skirt, and often covered the upper portion of the body with a cloth or a tunic open at the sides; the breast-cloth was