from the province of Ceara, with very dark skin, hair, and eyes, and
teeth filed like shark's teeth. They go barefooted, as a rule. Here
you will find all the incongruities typical of a race taking the
first step in civilisation. The women show in their dress how the
well-paid men lavish on them the extravagances that appeal to the
lingering savage left in their simple natures.

Women, who have spent most of their isolated lives in utterly
uncivilised surroundings, will suddenly be brought into a community
where other women are found, and immediately the instinct of
self-adornment is brought into full play. Each of them falls under
the sway of "Dame Fashion"--for there are the _latest things_, even
on the upper Amazon. Screaming colours are favoured; a red skirt with
green stars was considered at one time the height of fashion, until an
inventive woman discovered that yellow dots could also be worked in. In
addition to these dresses, the women will squander money on elegant
patent-leather French slippers (with which they generally neglect to
wear stockings), and use silk handkerchiefs perfumed with the finest
Parisian eau de Cologne, bought at a cost of from fourteen to fifteen
dollars a bottle. Arrayed in all her glory on some gala occasion,
the whole effect enhanced by the use of a short pipe from which she
blows volumes of smoke, the woman of Remate de Males is a unique sight.




CHAPTER II

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF REMATE DE MALES