[Illustration:  ZAPOTEC WOMAN; SAN BLAS]

[Illustration:  CASE OF WHITE PINTO; TUXITA GUTIERREZ]

Pinto, a spotting or discoloring of the skin, is a common disease in many parts of Mexico.  Three varieties are recognized—­white, red, and blue or purple.  The disease is particularly frequent in the states of Guerrero and Chiapas, and we had heard that it was very common in Chiapa.  Perhaps twenty per cent of the population really has the disease; at San Bartolome perhaps seventy-five per cent are affected; in some towns an even larger proportion is reported.  The white form appears the commonest.  One subject examined at Tuxtla Gutierrez was a woman some sixty years of age.  At birth she showed no symptom of the trouble, but spots began to appear when she was seven or eight years old.  She was naturally dark, and the white spots were in notable contrast to her normal color; the spots increased in number and in size until her face and arms looked as if they had been white and become brown-spotted, instead of vice versa.  After she was forty years of age her spots varied but little.  The cause of this disease is still obscure, although several treatises have been written upon it.  Authorities do not even agree as to the sequence of the forms of the disease, if there be such sequence.  Some assert that the white form is the early stage and that the disease may never progress beyond it; others assert that the white spots are merely the permanent scars, left after the disappearance of the disease itself.  Maps of distribution seem to show a distinct relation of the disease to altitude and character of water-supply.  The common herd attribute it to an insect sting, to drinking of certain water, or to bathing in certain pools.  Usually, there is no pain or danger connected with the trouble, except in the red form, but if the person affected changes residence, itching and some discomfort may temporarily ensue.  The presidente at Chiapa took us to the jail, where the prisoners were filed before us and made to hold out hands and feet for our inspection.  Such cases of pinto as were found were somewhat carefully examined.  All we encountered there were of the white variety.  Later, at private houses, we saw some dreadful cases of the purple form.  Very often, those whose faces were purple-blotched had white-spotted hands and feet.

We had not planned to stop at Acala, but after a hard ride over a dreary road and a ferrying across a wide and deep river in a great dugout canoe thirty feet or more in length—­our animals swimming alongside—­we found our beasts too tired for further progress.  And it was a sad town.  How strange, that beautifully clear and sparkling mountain water often produces actual misery among an ignorant population!  Scarcely had we dismounted at our lodging place, when a man of forty, an idiot and goitrous, came to the door and with sadly imperfectly co-ordinated movements, gestured a message which he could not speak.  Almost as soon as he had gone a deaf-mute boy passed.  As we sat at our doorway, we saw a half-witted child at play before the next house.  Goitre, deaf-mutism, and imbecility, all are fearfully common, and all are relatedly due to the drinking water.