Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/248

228 silk stockings with shoes of the most delicate texture.

The men have seldom any clothing on down to the waist except the shirt: a loose pair of roughly tanned, brown chamoise breeches, open at the knees, makes up the extent of their toilette: they nevertheless wear their hair parted like the women, or suffer it to hang down in short curls like those which seem to be prescriptively appropriate to the temples of an English tar; and it is always long behind, being confined in plaits terminating in one or two tails, according to the dignity of the wearer, or the more, perhaps, intelligible distinction between a barrister's wig and that of a sergeant-at-law.

With all these whimsicalities, (I am speaking of the native inhabitants,) I think them a gentle and harmless set of creatures. Out of the whole population of Guatemala, there is not perhaps, a proportion of three tenths of them entitled to be considered as possessing any political opinion, or that notion of temporal authority which causes