Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/285

Rh our fellow-citizens say, if they were to see a being of this class strive to imitate the women in every particular? The air of the body, the garb, the steps, the actions, even to the smallest movements, every thing announces in them a contemptible and extravagant effeminacy. The pains they take to counterfeit feminine casualties are excessive. I know not whether the sight of one of these creatures would most move your indignation or your laughter. The wool with which, instead of hair, Nature has provided them, the one half being brought into the finest tresses, is united in a knot, in such a way as that the extremity forms a frizzled ball. Several small curls, nicely disposed, fall on each side of the forehead, without there being any deficiency of patches on the temples. The open sleeves and deep ruffles, which leave the arm in a manner bare; the tread on the point of the toe; the care taken that the dress should swell out as much as possible behind; all these, and a thousand other little peculiarities, are employed by them, as they dare not renounce altogether in public the male attire, to modify it to such a degree, as that the most careless observer sees a man arrayed in the dress of both sexes. Thus it is that they present themselves in this extravagant array: one of the hands placed in the girdle; the other muffled up in the mantle, with a feminine air; the head erect, and, like a little mill, in constant motion, sometimes reclined on one shoulder, and sometimes on the other. They measure their steps as if with a compass, and make a thousand