HREE.

The houses are made of bamboo; some of them are pretty, quite artistic;
the plain ones cost about seventy-five cents each; no furniture of
any kind is needed. The native food is rice, or, as it is called in
the vernacular, "Sow-sow." It is cooked in an earthen pot set upon
stones with a few lighted twigs thrust under it for fire. When it is
eaten with nature's forks--the fingers--with a relish of raw fish,
it is the chief article of diet.

House-cleaning is one thing that I never saw in practice or evidence. I
took a supply of lye with me and it was a huge joke to see the natives
use it in cleaning the floors.

The windows are made of oyster shells which are thin and flat;
these cut in three-inch squares make a window peculiarly adapted to
withstand the heavy storms and earthquakes; it transmits a pleasant
opalescent light.

Coffee is raised, but not widely used by the natives; they prefer
chocolate.

After many unsuccessful attempts, I gave up trying to have my dishes
washed in my way; I soon discovered that the servants used the tea
towels on their bodies. This convinced me, and I let them wash mine
as they did their own, by pouring water on each dish separately,
rinsing and setting to dry on the porch in the sun, the only place
where the vermin would not crawl over them.

The irons used for pressing clothes are like a smooth, round-bottomed
skillet, the inside is filled with lighted sticks and embers. The
operator, who sits on the floor, passes this smoking mass over the
thing to be pressed. The article, when finished, looks as if it had
been sat upon.

One Palm Sunday I visited five different churches in all of which
were palms in profusion, woven into almost innumerable forms; fishes,
birds in and out of cages, trees, fruits, flowers, crosses, crowns,
sceptres, mitres, and saints' emblems. The cathedral at Arevalo looked
like a huge garden, but, in one second after it had been discovered
that a white woman and an American officer were present, the entire
congregation, rising, turned to look at us; it seemed as if a whirlwind
were sweeping the palms, so nervous were the hands that held them.

After the service, the crowd came out and vanished immediately,
fear of an attack having overcome their curiosity.

Nearly all the little children are naked. One day I saw a little
fellow about three years old who was suffering severely with the
smallpox. He was smoking a huge cigar of the kind the natives