"
"Their women," says the same author, "are described by the Spaniards as
pretty, though with a serious and rather melancholy cast of countenance.
Their long, black hair might generally be seen wreathed with flowers,
or, among the richer people, with strings of precious stones and pearls
from the Gulf of California. They appear to have been treated with much
consideration by their husbands; and passed their time in indolent
tranquillity, or in such feminine occupations as spinning, embroidery,
and the like; while their maidens beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of
traditionary tales and ballads.
"Numerous attendants of both sexes waited at the banquets. The balls
were scented with perfumes, and the courts strewed with odoriferous
herbs and flowers, which were distributed in profusion among the guests
as they arrived. Cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before
them as they took their seats at the board. Tobacco was them offered, in
pipes, mixed with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars inserted
in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver. It is a curious fact that the
Aztecs also took the dried tobacco leaf in the pulverized form of snuff.
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