286 ON THE FEONTIEE. 



How was her head dressed ? With flowers : she was 

 literally covered with natural flowers flowers that would 

 be priceless exotics here flowers of every radiant hue, 

 their colours blended and mingled with the innate taste 

 that showed she was a descendant from the ancient race 

 who wrought the marvellous feather-work of old Peru. She 

 stood there, an intoxicating dream of beauty. 



To the man who is familiar only with European figures, 

 I can give no adequate idea of her grace of carriage, her 

 elegance of movement, the perfect proportions of her limbs, 

 the matchless beauty of the curves of her muscles : there 

 is no such living perfection of form to be seen in Europe 

 now. 



The use for generations of stays, of ligatures, of high 

 heels, stomachers, ruffs, steel and whalebone, horse-hair 

 and wire, has settled that question as far as the well-off are 

 concerned ; and pour les autres, toil, hardship, and privation, 

 disease and vice, have set their marring mark on every line 

 of beauty about them. The woman I am describing was a 

 descendant of the Conquistadors as fine a body of men as 

 ever left old Spain and the Incas. Her ancestors, on one 

 side certainly, had been kings when the mammoth trees of 

 California were but seeds. For ages back, the race from 

 which she chiefly sprang had been born rulers ; their men 

 had worked not, their women had not toiled; she, until 

 grown up, had run about untrammelled the children's 

 dress of the country is but a chemise ; as a girl she had 

 climbed the tall cocoa-nut for its food, dived in the deep 

 blue bay for shells a fearless swimmer, a daring horse- 

 woman, an accomplished dancer; no corset had spoiled 



