[Illustration: THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT AT SAN BARTOLOME]

We had been told that San Bartolome was full of goitre, and we really
found no lack of cases. It is said that forty years ago it was far more
common than now, and that the decrease has followed the selection of a
new water source and the careful piping of the water to the town. In the
population of two thousand, it was estimated that there might be two
hundred cases, fifty of which were notable. None, however, was so
extraordinary as that of which several told us, the late _secretario_ of
the town, who had a goitre of such size that, when he sat at the table
to write, he had to lift the swelling with both hands and place it on
the table before he began work. The former prevalence of the disease is
abundantly suggested by the frequency of deaf-mutes, a score or more
of whom live here--all children of goitrous parents. Bad as was San
Bartolome, it seemed to us surpassed by San Antonio, where we found
the disease in an aggravated form, while at Nenton, our first point in
Guatemala, every one appeared affected, although we saw no dreadful
cases.

San Bartolome is an almost purely indian town, where for the first time
our attention was called to the two sets of town officials--indian and
_ladino_. The indian town government consisted of four Indians of pure
blood, who wore the native costume. This, here, is characteristic, both
for men and women. The men wore wide-legged trousers of native woven
cotton, and an upper jacket-shirt, square at the bottom, made of the
same stuff, with designs--rosettes, flowers, geometrical figures, birds,
animals, or men--wrought in them in red, green, or yellow wools; about
the waist was a handsome brilliant native belt, while a bright kerchief
was twisted about the head. The men were well-built, but the _alcalde_
was a white _pinto_. Women wore _huipilis_, waist-garments, sometimes