everything in his power for our comfort and assistance, and supplied us
with letters to the _jefes politicos_ of the districts through which we
were to pass. We congratulated him upon the cart-road over which we
had come from Zanatepec, an important public work for this part of the
world; he told us he began it three years ago with a force of but nine
men; that it would be extended to San Cristobal and San Bartolome; that
he was no engineer, but that he could tell quite well when a road was
passable for a cart. We found him greatly interested in a congress
which he had called of persons interested in labor questions. Among the
questions which he hoped to see considered was the abolition of the
system of _peonage,_ which still exists in full development in the
state.

Less than three leagues from Tuxtla Gutierrez is Chiapa, famous for the
brightly painted gourds and calabash vessels there manufactured and
sent out to all parts of the republic. Toys, rattles, cups, and great
bowl-basins are among the forms produced. We visited a house where five
women were making pretty rattles from little crook-necked gourds. The
workers sat upon the floor, with their materials and tools before them.
The first one rubbed the body of the dry gourds over with an oil paint.
These paints are bought in bulk and mixed upon a flat slab, with a
fine-grained, smooth, hard pebble as a grinder, with _aje_ and a white
earth dug near the road between Chiapa and Tuxtla Gutierrez. The _aje_
is a yellow, putty-like mass which gives a brilliant, lacquer-like
lustre; the white earth causes the color to adhere to the surface to
which it is applied. The second woman rubbed the neck of the gourd with
green paint; the third painted the line of junction of the two colors
with white, using a brush; the fourth brought out the lustre of the
before dull object by rubbing it upon a pad of cotton cloth upon
her knee, giving a final touch by careful rubbing with a tuft of