ble in their tents as were their brethren in the ex-
pensive city hotels.
Here, waiting and watching, some of them for weeks and months, for an opportunity to get away, they continued the process of moral declination and decivilization. Fledglings fresh from their mothers, little mammon-dried men, and tall hairy fellows, armed to the teeth and streaming with perspira- tion, strolled about the streets, watching the fruit- venders, and water-carriers, ogling the bare-breasted girls, pricing hats, looking wistfully at the tempting catalogue of iced drinks through the open doors of the saloons; or, entering the churches, they would stalk about the isles, peer into the musty confessional boxes and thrust tlieir impious fingers through the lattice, push their way into secret corners, invade the precincts of the altar and profanely handle the orna- ments, and sneer, in their superior conceptions of God-worship, at all this clap-trap of the devil, as they called it.
Some few of the aspiring sort studied Spanish, or essayed some knowledge of the history of crumbling relics ; some played billiards, or gambled, or got drunk ; some fished, gathered shells, braved the sharks and bathed, hunted monkeys and parroquets, or sat under old vine-clad walls gazing at the hum- ming birds as they buzzed about the flowers. Some died of fever; others killed themselves by drinking villainous liquors, eating excessively of fruit, or by overdosing with pills, patent medicines, cholera pre- ventives, and like supposed antidotes to supposed impending disease. Once seized with sickness and without a faithful comrade, a man's chance for recov- ery was small ; for already a coating of callous indif- ference to the sufferings of others seemed to be enclosing the hearts of many of these adventurers, and a pale fever-stricken stranger was too often shunned like a leper.
The morning after our arrival, and for days there-
