tent with occupying the position of the ugliest and most unattractive of the races.
As to the real merits of this classification, it is not possible for me to speak. I only know how the various shades and complexions impressed me as a subject for study. The dark, olive-tinted types seized upon my fancy from the date of my advent into the country. I felt a deep and sympathetic interest in them, as being the more directly connected with the aborigines. In their quiet and humble manner I read the history of a conquered people. In these dark shades there exist at least two different types. The pale though dark, swarthy, bloodless face, with melancholy, expressionless eyes and dejected bearing, indicates the one, while the other, the type above all others pleasing and interesting to me, possesses a rich brown skin, with carmine cheeks and lips; glistening, white teeth, united with great, wondering, half-startled, luminous eyes, soft and shy as those of the gazelle. Even their forms and gait are different, the one thin and shambling, the other, plump, full-blooded, graceful and active. Their politeness and humility, even among the most ragged and degraded, are touching. This is not confined to their bearing toward superiors, but is also shown to each other.
The salute of the poorest to his bronze-colored compatriot as they pass, makes the air musical with their liquid Indian idiom. Their code of etiquette is expansive enough to cover that practiced in the grandest homes in our American cities. In this respect the wealthiest hacendado has no advantage over the humblest peon who toils for him a natural life-time. They are strictly careful never to omit the Don and Doña to each other, and "where you have your house," and "muy á su disposicion,"—terms synonymous with the higher classes—are in no way modified by the lower. Even their children are taught to say, on being asked their names, su criado de V. (your humble servant).
The talent for music is even more striking than that of the cultured higher classes. It is no unusual thing to hear every part of an air carried through in perfect harmony by full, rich, native voices,
