ands which had once been delicate, and a
brown face, half Spanish, half Indian, modest and serious enough.
We pointed to a tall orange-tree overhead, laden with fruit of every
hue from bright green to gold. She, on being appealed to in
Spanish, answered with a courteous smile, and then a piercing scream
of--'Candelaria, come hither, and get oranges for the Governor and
other senors!' Candelaria, who might have been eighteen or twenty,
came sliding down under the Banana-leaves, all modest smiles, and
blushes through her whity-brown skin. But having no more clothes on
than her mother, she naturally hesitated at climbing the tree; and
after ineffectual attempts to knock down oranges with a bamboo,
screamed in her turn for some Jose or Juan. Jose or Juan made his
appearance, in a ragged shirt. A lanky lad, about seventeen years
old, he was evidently the oaf or hobbedehoy of the family, just as
he would have been on this side of the sea; was treated as such; and
was accustomed to be so treated. In a tone of angry contempt (the
poor boy had done and said nothing) the two women hounded him up the
tree. He obeyed in meek resignation, and in a couple of minutes we
had more oranges than we could eat. And such oranges: golden-
green, but rather more green than gold, which cannot be (as at home)
bitten or sucked; for so strong is the fragrant essential oil in the
skin, that it would blister the lips and disorder the stomach; and
the orange must be carefully stripped of the outer coat before you
attack a pulp compared with which, for flavour, the orange of our
shops is but bad sugar and water.

As I tethered my horse to a cacao-stem, and sat on a log among
hothouse ferns, peeling oranges with a bowie-knife beneath the
burning mid-day sun, the quaintest fancy came over me that it was
all a dream, a phantasmagoria, a Christmas pantomime got up by my
host for my special amusement; and that if I only winked my eyes
hard enough, when I opened them again it would be all gone, and I
should find myself walking with him on Ascot Heath, while the snow
whirled over the heather, and the black fir-trees groaned in the
north-east wind.

We soon rode on, with blessings on fair Candelaria and her stately
mother, while the noise of the surf grew louder and louder in front
of us. We took (if I remember right) a sudden turn to the left, to
get our horses to the shore. Our pedestrians held straight on;