fumed vanilla so much
prized, and which often yield the enormous price of fifty dollars a
pound! To preserve these, therefore, was the work of Dona Isidora and
Leona; and they understood perfectly how to do it.

First, they gathered the pods before they were quite ripe. These they
strung upon a thread, taking care to pass the thread through that end
nearest the footstalk. The whole were next plunged for an instant into
boiling water, which gave them a blanched appearance. The thread was
then stretched from tree to tree, and the pods, hanging like a string of
candles, were then exposed to the sun for several hours. Next day, they
were lightly smeared with an oiled feather, and then wrapped in oiled
cotton of the _Bombax ceiba_, to prevent the valves from opening.

When they had remained in this state for a few days, the string was
taken out, and passed through the other ends, so that they should hang
in an inverted position. This was to permit the discharge of a viscid
liquid from the footstalk end; and in order to assist this discharge,
the pods were several times lightly pressed between the fingers. They
now became dry and wrinkled. They had also shrunk to less than half
their original size, and changed their colour to a reddish-brown.
Another delicate touch of the oil-feather, and the vanilla was ready for
the market. Nothing remained but to pack them in small cases, which had
already been prepared from the leaf of a species of palm-tree.

In such a way did the lady Isidora and her daughter pass their time; and
before the summer was out they had added largely to the stock of wealth
of our exiles.

Although these two always remained by the house, they were not without
_their_ adventures as well, one of which I shall describe. It occurred
while they were getting in their crop of vanilla. Leona was in the porch
in front, busy among the vanilla-beans. She had a large needle and a
thread of palm-leaf fibre, with which she was stringing the long pods,
while her mother was inside the house packing some that had been already
dried.

Leona rested for a moment, and was looking over the water, when, all at
once, she exclaimed,

"Maman--Maman! come out and see! oh! what a beautiful cat!"

The exclamation caused Dona Isidora to start, and with a feeling of
uneasiness. The cause of her uneasiness was the word "cat." She feared
that what the innocent child had taken for a "beautiful cat" might prove
to be the dreaded jaguar.