AN COSTUMES.]

"Their clothing is a petticoat of silk or cloth, with many silver or
golden laces, with a very double ribbon of some light color, with long
silver or golden tags hanging down in front the whole length of their
petticoat to the ground, and the like behind; their waistcoats made
like bodies, with skirts, laced likewise with gold and silver, without
sleeves, and a girdle about their waist of great price, stuck with
pearls and knobs of gold. Their sleeves are broad and open at the end,
of Holland or fine China linen, wrought, some with colored silks, some
with silk and gold, some with silk and silver, hanging down almost to
the ground; the locks of their heads are covered with some wrought
quoif, and over it another of net-work of silk, bound with a fair silk,
or silver, or golden ribbon, which crosses the upper part of their
foreheads, and hath commonly worked out in letters some light and
foolish love posie; their bare, black, and tawney breasts, are covered
with bobs hanging from their chains of pearls. And when they go abroad,
they use a white mantle of lawn or cambric, rounded with a broad lace,
which some put over their heads, the breadth reaching only to their
middles behind, that their girdle and ribbons may be seen, and the two
ends before reaching to the ground almost; others cast their mantles
only upon their shoulders; and swaggerers like to cast the one end over
the left shoulder, while with their right arm they support the lower
part of it, more like roaring boys than honest civil maids. Their shoes
are high and of many soles, the outside whereof of the profaner sort
are plated over with a lift of silver, which is fastened with small
nails with broad silver heads. Most of these are or have been slaves,
though love have set them loose at liberty to enslave souls to sin and
Satan; and for the looseness of their lives, and public scandals
committed by them and the better sort of the Spaniards, I have heard
them say often, who possessed more religion and fear of God, they
verily thought God would destroy that city, and give up the country
into the power of some other nation.

"And I doubt not but the flourishing of Mexico in coaches, horses,
streets, women, and apparel, is very slippery, and will make those
proud inhabitants slip and fall into the power and dominion of some
other prince of this world, and hereafter, in the world to come, into
the powerful hands of an angry Judge, who is the King of