abstinence. A number of gentlemen came in the evening to visit Cn. We were received by this family with so much real kindness, that we soon found ourselves perfectly at home. We had a plentiful supper—fish, meat, wine and chocolate, fruit and sweetmeats; the cookery, Spanish Vera-Cruzified. A taste of the style was enough for me, garlic and oil enveloping meat, fish and fowl, with pimentos and plantains, and all kinds of curious fruit, which I cannot yet endure. Bed was not unwelcome, and most comfortable beds we had, with mosquito curtains, and sheets and pillows all trimmed with rich lace, so universal in Spanish houses, that it is not, as with us, a luxury. But the mosquitoes had entered in some unguarded moment, and they and the heat were inimical to sleep.
19th.—I opened my eyes this morning on the painting of a very lovely Madonna, which hung, unvalued and ill-framed, in one corner of the apartment. At eight, rose and dressed, and went to breakfast. Here, when there are two guests whom they wish to distinguish, the gentleman is placed at the head of the table, and his lady beside him.
To me nothing can exceed the sadness of the aspect of this city and of its environs—mountains of moving sand, formed by the violence of the north winds, and which, by the reflection of the sun's rays, must greatly increase the suffocating heat of the atmosphere. The scene may resemble the ruins of Jerusalem, though without its sublimity. The houses seem blackened by fire; there is not a carriage on the streets—nothing but the men with the wide
