about when they mentioned nations who used gold for fetters and chains, especially among the nobles.  Their ornamenting the teeth is also worth notice, although it is a barbarous practice to deprive them of their natural whiteness, which God conferred upon the teeth for the beauty of man.  On the other hand, they showed themselves to be both skilful and prudent in trying to maintain them as necessary instruments for the preservation of health and life.  They are thus very diligent in rinsing out their mouths and cleansing their teeth after eating, and upon arising in the morning.  For the same purpose they treat and adorn their teeth in the following way:  From early childhood they file and sharpen them, [44] either leaving them uniform or fashioning them all to a point, like a saw—­although this latter is not practiced by the more elegant.  They all cover their teeth with a varnish, either lustrous black or bright red—­with the result that the teeth remain as black as jet, or red as vermilion or ruby.  From the edge to the middle of the tooth they neatly bore a hole, which they afterward fill with gold, so that this drop or point of gold remains as a shining spot in the middle of the black tooth.  This seems to them most beautiful, and to us does not appear ugly.

These people were and still are very sagacious, and keen in traffic and bargaining, and in buying and selling; and they applied themselves to all gainful pursuits—­and not least to agriculture and to the breeding of animals, regularly carried on for the profits thus made.  They have not only great harvests of rice (which is their ordinary bread), but also crops of cotton, with which they clothe themselves, and from which they manufacture quantities of cloths, which were, and are yet, much esteemed in Nueva Espana.  For this reason, the Spaniards regarded them as a people from whom large profits might be gained, and they were not mistaken, for, from the gains on cotton fabrics alone (which there they call lompotes), one encomendero left an estate of more than one hundred and fifty thousand pesos in a few years.  The soil is not only good and favorable with a sunny climate, but fertile and rich.  Besides possessing many gold mines and placers—­of which they make but small account, because of the China silks which bring them more profit—­they raise fowls in great abundance.  Besides the domestic fowls, which are most numerous and very cheap, the fields are full of wild ones.  There is an infinite number of domestic swine, not to mention numberless mountain-bred hogs, which are very fat, and as good for lard as the domestic breed.  There are also many goats which breed rapidly, bearing two kids at a time and twice yearly; there are entire islands abounding with them.  As to the buffaloes, there called carabaos, there are beside the tame and domestic breed, many mountain buffaloes, which are used [as food] the same as those in Europe—­although somewhat less ugly in appearance, and with singularly large horns,