Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/359

Rh during the rainy season the levels around the rock which is the fonndation of the town, become filled with stagnant pools until the whole adjacent country is covered with water. The burning sun of the coast acts rapidly upon these shallow marshes and fills them with insects and miasma. San Blas soon becomes uninhabitable, and its population betake themselves either to Tepic, Guadalajara, or the first elevations of the mountains in the interior.

The only mining region of any note in Jalisco is that of Bolaños. The mines of Hostotipaquillo, near Tepic, are now abandoned; those of Guichichila, Santa Maria del Oro, Santa Martin and Ameca, in the district of Etzatlan, in the neighborhood of Cocula, are partially wrought. Among the unexplored sites of base and spurious metals in this State, we may mention those found in the vicinity of Compostella, those near the ranches of Rosa Morada and Buena Vista, towards the coast, between the villages of Santiago and Acaponeta, and those near Guajicoria, north of the last named village.

The Islands of La Isabela, San Juanico and Marias, lie on the Pacific coast of Jalisco.

The aborigines of Jalisco, formerly warlike and devoted to a bloody religion, belong to the tribes of Cazçanes, Guachichiles and Guamanes. They are most generally tillers of the ground, adhering to the doctrines of the Catholic church, and they have particular fondness for settling a while in lonely and wild regions, and for changing their place of residence frequently. The manners and customs of the Guachichiles are in many respects peculiar. They still use the bow and arrow as weapons. Their quivers are made of deer and shark skins, and the points of their reed arrows are formed of a hard wood and rarely of copper. The garments of the men consist of a kind of short tunic, roughly made by themselves of blue or brown cotton material, with a girdle hanging down in front and behind, to which is generally added a pair of trousers of tanned goat or deer skin. Married persons, men as well as women, wear straw hats with broad rims and high crowns, ornamented with a narrow ribbon of bright colored wool and tassels. Their black bushy hair is worn very long, bound with bright colored ribbons and tassels, or plaited in queus. No unmarried person, male or female, dare wear a hat. The women are clothed with an under garment of rough wool or cotton and a mantle of the same material, which has an aperture on top through which they pass their heads. When