Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/95

CH. VI.] but being disincumbered, as I before mentioned, from all unnecessary, or as we should rather think, necessary, clothing, they glided along with a sort of quick ambling pace at the rate of from four to five miles an hour. Each member of the different families carried a burthen in proportion to its sex and age: little children of five or six years old, obliged to be on the run to keep up with their parents, were thus training to the duties which they were bound to fulfil, without change or intermission, during the whole course of their lives, even to the age, should they be fortunate enough to reach it, of their hoary grandsires who were tottering by their side. I found that they all, without exception, on reaching the Plaza, after having deposited their burthens, went to pay their devotions in the church. Many of them took their bundles in with them, and I was pleased to see the simple but humble offering which some of them would make by sprinkling the floor of the church, for there