LANDS NEAI^HOME Ginntf Company-Publisher is *mm BANCROFT Street Scene in Quito YOUTH'S COMPANION SERIES STRANGE LANDS NEAR HOME EDITED BY GINN & COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK - CHICAGO - LONDON THE YOUTH'S COMPANION SERIES GEOGRAPHICAL READERS THE WIDE WORLD NORTHERN EUROPE UNDER SUNNY SKIES TOWARD THE RISING SUN STRANGE LANDS NEAR HOME Copyright, 1902, by Perry Mason Company 36.4 CHAMPION ACCESSION UBfUBY PREFATORT NOTE x h, are very salt. The weed seems always to move west before the trade winds. Over these fields of shining drift, land birds came singing to the ships of the adventurers ; and on one of the matted beds a land crab appeared, a sure indication of a near shore. The crews of Columbus feared to enter the Sargasso Sea. They had been told that in sailing west they would come to a sea of monsters, and they feared that these ocean meadows might cover hidden foes and perils. The peculiar beauty of the Bahama Sea is its clearness and deep purple color. This dark purple color is said to be the result of the "shadow of deep waters," though whether this is a scientific view I do not know. Under a cloudless sky the sea is luminous purple. A cloud shadow changes this royal hue into emerald. One gazes down into deeps unknown and sees the pairs of dolphins as clearly as the white-winged birds overhead. One's eye follows [5] Strange Lands near Home the flying fishes as clearly when they go down as when they dart into the open air. One here dreams of coral gardens, of sea nymphs, and recalls the ancient poets' conceptions of Oceanus and Neptune. All fancies seem possible to the creative imagination here. On the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles grow the most abundant cocoanut groves in the world. The trees are graceful and lofty, and as a rule are slanted by the winds. They bear a solid burden of fruit. "I have counted from forty to fifty cocoanuts on a single tree ! " I said to an officer of my steamer, in surprise. u I have counted a hundred," was his answer. It seems wonderful that so slender a trunk can hold aloft in the air such a weight of fruit. The nuts on a single palm are not only numer- ous but of great size. A single nut often yields a pint of cocoanut water. The palms of all the islands must be as fruitful to-day as when the first voyagers saw them. Columbus speaks of flocks of parrots that "dark- ened the sun." Such flocks do not appear now, but in every port of the Antilles there is a parrot [6] The Sea of the Discovery market. The natives love their parrots, and the cool trees and drinking stands of the parrot market make a popular place of resort. As a rule, the birds are not confined in cages. They are left to climb about on the booths in which cocoanut water and cool drinks are sold. The glory of the Bahama Sea is the night A sudden hush falls upon the purple serenity; the sunset flames, and the day is done. The roof of heaven seems low, and the stars come out like silver suns. One does not need to look upward to see the stars. The heavens are below as well as above; the sky is in the sea. One recalls the pictures that Columbus gives of the expansion of his soul. One here feels a longing to attain larger knowledge and all that is best in life, and wonders what new discoveries may await the spiritual facul- ties in wider horizons than these. Wherever he may go, the tourist will ever return in memory to the Sea of the Great Discovery. It is the para- dise of the ocean world ; the temple gate of the West. H. BUTTERWORTH. r.7] A TRIP TO SANTO DOMINGO SHOULD you like to get on board a steamship for a voyage to the island of Santo Domingo? It may be only a dream steamship to you, but it is the image of one in which I did make that voyage some time ago. Let us suppose that I have you all on board, the anchor weighed, and the harbor of New York fading in the distance. Your first hour on board will probably be passed in putting your books and clothes into something like order. While you are about this, dinner will be announced, but if the wind happens to be ahead, the rolling and pitching of the vessel may make you think of something very different, namely, your bed, and how to get into it. You try to do this, and everything seems to be against you. Your books come tumbling down from the upper berth in which you had laid them. Your traveling bag rolls over upon your feet and hurts them. Your portable inkstand, which you [8] A Trip to Santo Domingo imprudently got out in order to write down your last impressions of New York, falls out of the rack into the wash basin and sprinkles the premises with ink. You feel very ill, and it makes you worse to hear the vessel strain in the sea, with doleful noises, as if her wooden sides were in pain. At last, with the help of steward or stewardess, you are properly undressed, and your dizzy head is glad to rest upon a hard, rather damp pillow. Rock, rock, rock. If you are not very ill, the motion soon lulls you to sleep, and in the dark- ness of the night you hear only the boatswain's whistle piping shrill and sweet, and the heavy steps of the sailors who come up on deck and go below when the watch is changed. We will suppose that these rough days are past, and that our ship is now carried smoothly over the tropical sea by a favorable wind. The seasick folk are all up and dressed, though not in their best clothes. They begin to laugh at their late misfortunes. How bright the sky is, and how warm is the sunshine ! The thought of dinner becomes [9] Strange Lands near Home a pleasant one, as the sea air gives the recovered patients a keen appetite. If you look over the side of the vessel, you will see quantities of gulf weed, yellow sprays that look almost golden in the blue water. You may fish for this, if you will, with a long string and a large pin bent to serve as a hook. When you have caught a bit of it, and have drawn it on board, you will find it a coarse, common seaweed, not worth preserving. You will see here and there, too, the Portuguese man-of-war. This is a shellfish called a " nautilus," which looks as if it carried a tiny sail on the surface of the water. Shoals of flying fish dart out of the sea and fall back into it. If a few should be caught on deck, they will be found very nice when fried. Meantime the weather grows warm. It is perhaps only four days since you came on board wrapped in your winter furs and wadded coat. Now you find summer clothing very comfortable, and a broad shade hat indispensable, for the glare of the light upon the water is very trying to the eyes. At sunset you see such wonderful clouds of every shape 1 There is one which looks like a [10] A Trip to Santo Domingo party of ladies with queer bonnets, which melt and change as fashions really do. There is a lion galloping after a dog. Now the dog changes to a lizard, and the lion to a whale. There is a group of fiery, untamed horses, which presently take the shape of a monstrous giant, who loses his head and in turn melts into something else equally strange and unsubstantial. As night comes on, the sky seems to turn into black velvet, studded with diamond stars. You can stay on deck until bedtime without danger, and when you bid your friends good night, even the voices of dear ones sound sweeter in the soft, tropical air than elsewhere. On one of these nights you pass a distant light which looks almost like a star very near its setting. They tell you that this is Turk's Island light, and your heart is cheered by the sight of something that is really on land. After this you have still a good many miles to sail, but before long there comes a morning in which you become aware that something has caused new excitement and activity on board the steamer. Then comes a knock at your door, and the cry: Strange Lands near Home " Porto Plata is in sight ! Come out and have a look at Mount Isabel ! " You run out, wondering if this can be true, and are astonished to see the lofty mountain, rising sharp and sheer against the cloudless sky. At its base lies a pretty, thriving little town. The ship is just steaming into the harbor. Presently she comes to anchor in the roadstead. [12] A Trip to Santo Domingo Boats rowed by negroes come alongside, and the health and customs officers come on board. There is much shaking of hands and chattering in Span- ish and in English. You walk carefully down the companionway, and the boats soon land you at the long wooden causeway, which in turn soon brings you to terra firma. No matter how well you may like the sea, it Is a great pleasure to find yourself on land again. The steamer stays but one day at Porto Plata, but this gives you time to see much that is new and amusing. In the first place, you will look at the little carts, drawn each by one bullock, which are driven down into the shallow water to receive the goods brought from the steamer in large boats called " lighters." Then you will like to walk through the streets and to look at the shops, which display many curious things. Among other commodities, the fruits of the coun- try will interest you. Passing by the market, you will see heaps of golden oranges, which are offered you by the thousand. Bananas are sold in huge bunches. You can buy one of these bunches for twenty-five cents. It would cost you five dollars in New York or Boston. Then there C'3] Strange Lands near Home are sapodillas, with russet skin and orange pulp surrounding a large polished stone ; and arimoyas, purple in color and full of milky juice ; and sour- sop, or guanabana, of which the juice only is used. This latter fruit looks like a soft green pineapple. Its flavor resembles a combination of pineapple and strawberry. You can squeeze it to obtain juice, but if you attempt to bite into it, you will find noth- ing but a tough fiber, which is quite uneatable. In these warm climates people usually rise very early and take a long nap in the middle of the day. So you will find that the little town seems to go to sleep between twelve and one o'clock and to remain very quiet for about three hours. You will feel drowsiness stealing over you, and will do well to follow the general custom and to take what is called a " siesta." You can do this best at the hotel, a bare and barnlike building, in the upper story of which you will easily find a cot bed with a mosquito netting hung over it. There are no glass windows here, or anywhere else in the tropics, but the stout wooden shutters will make the room dark enough. It may be nearly four o'clock when you wake from your slumber and find the town waking up, [4] A Trip to Santo Domingo too. A fresh breeze now blows from the sea, and the atmosphere is comfortably cool. The horses' hoofs rattle on the pavement, and if you look out, you will see the pretty little animals going along very swiftly and so smoothly that their riders are scarcely stirred in the saddle. If you walk a little out of the town, you will find plenty of ferns and wild flowers, and you will see numbers of curious yellow land crabs crawling about on the road. But at nightfall you will be warned to go on board your steamer. Returning, and clambering up the sides, you may find the sailors amusing themselves by throwing bits of pork to the sharks, whose ugly pinkish heads are now and then thrust up out of the water, expecting a choice morsel. You now understand why it is better to be on board before dark, as the boat which brings you might upset, in which case these sea monsters would be very ready to make a hasty meal, with- out distinction of persons. In the early, early morning, while you are still sleeping soundly, the anchor is weighed and the steamer starts for Samana, which is the next stopping place. JULIA WARD HOWE. C'S] IN THE GRAND PLAZA OF MEXICO HERE stood Montezuma's mighty Temple to the Sun. Much allowance must be made, of course, for the vivid imaginations of the Spanish his- torians in the romantic days of the discovery and conquest of the New World; but even to this day, and right here on and about the great plaza, you see unimpeachable testimony to this heathen temple's storied splendor. This grand plaza is still, as it was when Cortes first entered it as the invited guest of the great Indian city, the heart of Mexico. The palace built, or rather begun, by Cortes stands on the eastern side of the great square. This palace is the largest in the world. It is not the finest palace in the world, but it is the broadest ; cover- ing more acres of ground than any other palace or public building of any sort that I have seen in all my travels. It is a low and ugly edifice and is built, for the most part, out of the stones of the overthrown Temple to the Sun. In the Grand Plaza of Mexico Every Monday morning all Mexico, or at least all the idle and curious and pleasure-seeking por- tion of Mexico, and that is a large portion of the citizens, comes to this plaza to hear the band play and see the troops deploy before the palace The President and his officers, all in brilliant uni- forms, sit or stand on the upper balcony of the palace and review the troops. There are always many ladies with the President and his officers, many of them American ladies, and there is C'7] Strange Lands near Home often much cheering and patriotic enthusiasm. The musjc is very good, as in all Latin lands. The Mexican soldier, as seen here at these cos- tume parades, is a queer, pitiful little fellow, and he is- still more queer and pitiful as you see him out of the city marching up and down the country. It is the policy of Mexico to keep her soldiers constantly moving about; and as the Mexican soldier usually has his wife and children with him, he cuts a queer figure when marching up and down the country from town to town. At such times he is always barefooted; and at best he has, as a rule, only wooden sandals to wear. When marching in the country he generally has his pantaloons and coat rolled up and tied in a bundle along with his blanket and provisions. His bundle the wife generally has on her head as she trots along at his side. The poor little brown soldier, his naked skin glistening like polished copper in the sun, nearly always has a child in his arms. His affection for his little brown children is truly beautiful. As night approaches and the troops are nearing the place to camp, the women go on before with their burdens on their heads and their babies on their The Cathedral in Mexico [19] Strange Lands near Home backs, and make fires and prepare the scanty meal; while the poor little brown soldiers trim up their irregular lines a bit, and enter camp with a show of discipline under the sharp orders of the handsome officers. When the bands play in the grand plaza and the troops deploy and the glistening brass cannon rumble and trundle over the big cobblestones, you see thousands of women and children on the edge of the square watching it all with intense delight, for to many of them this is their first glimpse of the great palace and the President of Mexico. After an hour of rather awkward parade over the ugly cobblestones and under the eye of the President, one regiment after another is permitted to melt away, and drop out in a " go as you please " march again for the country. Ah, then you should see the wives, the babies, who have been noting the brave soldiers' all this time ! They struggle forward, they clasp husband or father by the neck, hand, anywhere that they can get hold of him. They praise his beauty and his soldierly bearing, they insist on carrying his gun, they kiss him over and over again ; and he is glad ; he is very glad. He sheds tears of joy as he [20] In the Grand Plaza of Mexico trudges on toward one of the seven gates of the city. Now and then he stops, catches up a half-naked child, presses it to his heart, kisses it over and over again, and only sets its little naked brown feet again on the ground in order to take up another of his miserable little children and embrace it also. All these soldiers are very, very small men. I have often seen them fairly stagger under the weight of their big, ugly muskets during a hot day's march in the country. At such times the little children lie thick along the line of march under cactus plants and in the shadow of stone walls, nearly dead from exhaustion, waiting for the poor, tired father to come back and take the little starved things to his heart. After the palace the one special object of interest here by this storied plaza of Mexico City is the cathedral. It stands on the north side of the square facing the sun, as did the great heathen temple from the ruins of which it was built. There are many rare and costly pictures here in this glorious old cathedral; and yet the real pictures of Mexico, the pretty ones, the pathetic ones, the pictures that make you put your [21] Strange Lands near Home handkerchief to your eyes a dozen times a day, are people themselves. How loving they are ! How true they are to one another in all their misery, all their abject ignorance and most piteous poverty ! There is a little flower garden and some great trees in the center of the grand plaza, and here late in the afternoon the band plays, and the fash- ionable people congregate. You should see the little brown gardener in broad hat and narrow white breechcloth at work in the flower garden here in the grand plaza of Mexico City. You should see him mow the lawn. How does he do it? In the first place he squats flat down on his naked heels, and then he hitches himself along as fast as he cuts away the grass, without rising or even lifting his head from his work. And what does he mow with? It is a little piece of glass, or rather of obsidian, the same that he used when Cortes came. In digging up the stump of a eucalyptus tree here last winter the gardener came to a stone which proved to be a huge and hideous idol. The government claims all such discoveries, and [22] Strange Lands near Home in excavating this idol for the fine museum in the palace, two others were found. They weigh per- haps a ton each, and had long ago been tumbled down here, no doubt, by the Spaniards when they destroyed the Temple to the Sun. It is said that many rare and curious things, as well as much gold and silver, are still buried here on the site of the pagan temple, but only the impoverished government can make excavations. I have now described the eastern and the north- ern sides of the great square, the palace, and the cathedral. The other two sides are made up entirely of broad porches. These porches reach out from fashionable stores and fine shops of all sorts, and are turned into little booths or bazaars by day and on till midnight ; but from the moment of midnight the porches belong to the people till sunrise. A little before midnight those pretty little shops that blaze and brighten all day and till late at night begin to melt away. The Arab, the Turk, the Frenchman, the German, all sorts of store- keepers fold up their tents, and suddenly start out, as the little helpless children of the sun steal in and lie down to rest on the hard stones of this In the Grand Plaza of Mexico half mile of porches. Here they rest till three in the morning, when the sudden sun comes pouring over the low palace like a silver sea and flooding their faces! They spring to their feet on the instant ; they pour forth into the plaza in torrents; one, two, ten thousand people with their kindly copper faces lifted to the sun ! JOAQUIN MILLER. A MEXICAN CITY WHY do people feel that they must go to Europe for " change of scene " ? This was to me, while living in Mexico, an ever-recurring question. There are many quarters of London which make visitors exclaim, " How like Boston this is ! " Indeed, all great cities resemble one another more or less, and in dress and manner their inhabitants have much in common. In Europe, quaint national customs have to be sought for. On the contrary, the moment one sets foot in Mexico one knows that he is in a foreign land. The new and the picturesque appear at every turn. Visit, for instance, the green old city of Fuerte, on the river Fuerte, in the northern state of Sina- loa. I saw it first on a March day, at the end of a dusty stage journey from Alamos. Orange and paradise trees in the little plaza perfumed all the air, and made an atmosphere one never could for- get. These trees are the more delightful because they grow in the most arid lands on the earth. [26] A Mexican City The entire seaboard in this part of Mexico is naturally treeless and waterless. " El Fuertc " means " the fort," and this place was an old strong- hold, protecting the coast from the Indians. Fuerte is the dullest of dull towns. An occa- sional bullfight creates a little movement for a day or two, but that is all. The streets are poorly paved, the brick sidewalks are narrow. The build- ings are mostly of one high story, though there are a few two-story dwellings. As at the state capital, Culiacan, at Guaymas, and at other places, one of the important edifices is an unfinished cathedral unfinished since the time of the Indian president, Benito Juarez, who dealt the Catholic Church an almost crushing blow. There is appearance of life in one quarter, where a house is being roofed, and we stop to watch the workmen. A Mexican gentleman in a suit of white linen directs them. He wears the native sombrero of gray felt, broad in the brim, tall and pointed in the crown, and trimmed with a band of silver braid or a heavy gilt or silver cord and tassels. The Indian workmen everywhere, and the peons also, wear wretched clothing all of one pattern and Strange Lands near Home made of mania, the coarse cotton cloth woven in the native mills. On the head they wear coarse straw hats, and on their feet sandals of rawhide. These sandals! It is a wonder they can be worn at all. A friend once brought me a pair of sandals from Sinaloa. Said he, " I have tramped miles in those sandals." It was difficult to believe he had ever traveled ten rods in them. I tried them one day for garden work, making a hole through the stocking for the fastening cord to pass between the toes. The experiment lasted about ten minutes. It is said that those who know how to wear them keep the sand from get- ting between them and the feet by a certain way of walking. It is true that the Mexican sandal wearers often have feet that an artist would like to model. To return to the roof finishers : they have large vats containing a sort of mucilage which is made by laboriously pounding, and then soaking in water for a day or more, the limbs of a certain kind of cactus with which the country abounds. With this they mix a mortar of lime and sand and lay it over the bricks, pressing it well between the cracks. A Mexican City Then they mix pure lime with this mucilage, pour it on the roof little by little and, getting down on hands and knees, commence the laborious process of rubbing it in, working hours or even days, painfully rubbing with a wooden trowel until the whole surface is dry and almost as smooth as glass. When properly made, these roofs are said to last a lifetime and never to leak. The windows of this house, and of all the better houses in cities, are protected by vertical iron bars, but they rarely have glass. Wire nettings to keep out insects are sometimes seen, and there are always shutters and frequently expensive cur- tains. The shutters are never used, even in win- ter, to keep out cold only as a protection against wind and beating rain. Doors and windows seem, indeed, to be open night and day ; and in some streets of the cities of northern Mexico one is likely, if abroad after night- fall, to stumble over a sleeper who evidently found that his open house was too warm withal, and who therefore carried his bed to the sidewalk. Such an occurrence serves to show one how indispensable the inner court is to a Mexican family. The house would be next to useless [*93 Strange Lands near Home without this open space, which is larger or smaller, more or less beautifully furnished with flowers, trees, fountains, and statues, according to the pretensions of the home. Under the peristyle of the court, into w r hich all the rooms open, the family lives most of the time. Here the tables are spread, and here, in the very warm weather, | the cots are brought at 5Jf njght. Here visitors are ^ seated and offered fruits and the inevitable ciga- -- rette, which elderly ladies 7 > f often smoke, but younger ones, especially those of the higher class, very seldom. In the large court of the governor's house in Culiacan I saw, three years ago, one of the most beautiful trailing vines imaginable. It was called [30] A Mexican City the garambilla. It completely concealed its trellis on the under as well as the upper side. It was about six or eight feet wide ; it spanned the whole court, which must have been twenty-five feet in the center, and was one mass of dark crim- son. Hardly a leaf of the vine could be seen, even on the underside of the trellis. ;^kMM^ That particular court was unusually beautiful. It had a fountain and basin, rare ferns and water plants, and exquisite plants in costly imported vases standing upon fine pedestals. The odor of lilies, roses, heli- otropes, jasmine, and many others I could not name, beside the peerless paraiso, made the air delicious. Strange Lands near Home The visitor always -wonders why flowers in Mexico flourish in courts where the high walls exclude the sun many hours of the day. And not only are there walls, but also trees, the cocoa- nut palm being very common. Perhaps it is that as we go south vegetation cares less and less for sunlight. Standing under that great arch of the garambilla, dreamily listening to the liquid plash and flow of the fountain, one might think oneself in a land of enchantment if there were nothing to recall the miseries of the people. There seems to be no such thing in Mexico as a decent home for a wage earner. There are no courts for him, unless he chances to inhabit, with many others, one of the old mansions, now fallen to decay and ruin ; and in this court the flowers and statues are replaced by rubbish. Nothing could exceed the frugality of these people's lives. Practically they eat nothing but maize, beans, and bananas. If they drink the intoxicating liquor of the country, it does not seem to harm them. On the whole, they are very healthy. They have nothing and want little; they are polite and grave, and though they A Mexican City sometimes live to be very old, there is so little to mark their lives that often they do not know how old they are. Yet if one considers the people from the point of view of the picturesque, much of interest is to be found outside the beautiful homes of one's friends. Study, for instance, the water carriers of Mexico, donkeys and women ! The burro, or native don- key, was, until three years ago, the only " water works " that the city of Guaymas could boast of; and yet it had long had a railroad, a street-car service, and an American consulate. Guaymas, which lies in the most arid spot along the whole coast, on a beautiful harbor which seems like a volcano's crater in the midst of bare rocks, now conveys water in pipes; and so does Culiacan, but Fuerte still depends upon the classic burro. Indians are employed to lead the burro into the river, fill the two skins slung across his strong lit- tle back, drive him from house to house or from [33] Natives Strange Lands near Home court to court, and distribute the water in the great brown earthen ollas kept there for the purpose. As the burro jogs along the water is always drip- ping from the skin bags, generally from the queer sort of faucet used. This is a plug, which is placed inside and adjusts itself by gravitation. A string attached to the plug passes up through the top or mouth of the bag, and this the carrier pulls when he delivers water. The vessel rilled, all he has to do is to let go the string. It is a labor-saving contrivance dear to his heart. In the country, and in cities where the dwelling is near a well or natural supply of water, the women carry the water in ollas, shaped much like the ordinary fish globe, almost spherical, and having a more or less flaring lip about two inches wide. The pad or cushion on which the olla rests is made by rolling a towel from corner to corner and coiling it into a ring some four inches across, passing the ends one over and the other under, to make it firm and solid. The olla filled and the pad adjusted, the woman places her open hands on opposite sides of the olla, just below its largest part, raises it, straightening up at the same time, and carries it to the top of the head. It is [34] A Mexican City wonderful to see how easily and gracefully these women lift and bear such heavy burdens. It is said that the excellent health of the Mexican women, and also the robustness of their children, are largely due to carrying the olla. Physicians say that any youth, or even an adult, if not too old, may straighten a crooked spine or a stoop in the shoulders by carrying weights upon the head for a short time every day. But I do not recommend water for the first attempt ! MARIE ROWLAND. [35] A GROWING MOUNTAIN ON the coast of Central America, in the little republic of Salvador, so near the ocean that it may be seen from the decks of passing ships, is a mountain that grows. There is another remark- able fact about Izalco, as the mountain is called, for it is not only increasing in height all the time, but it is the most violent and constant of all vol- canoes. Every little while, from one year's end to the other, it spouts vast quantities of fire, lava, and ashes, which fall in a shower and wrap its sides for a thousand feet below the summit with a blanket of living coals. It is impossible to conceive a grander spectacle than is presented at night to the passengers upon ships that go that way. No one goes to bed on the steamer till the mountain is out of sight. Travelers go a long distance to see it and are always willing to admit that the journey repaid them. The mountain rises nearly seven thousand feet, and as its base is almost in the sea it looks much [36] A Growing Mountain higher. An immense plume of smoke -ascends from the crater. The incessant bursts of flame, mounting five hundred feet every little while, can be seen for more than a hundred miles in clear weather. The mountain has been called " the lighthouse of Salvador," and the shipping on the coast needs no other beacon so far as the mountain can be seen. Around the base of the volcano are productive sugar plantations, with a railway running through them. Then comes a wide strip of timber, an almost impenetrable forest. Beyond the forest, and between the timber line and the summit, is a belt of ashes and lava which is constantly receiv- ing accessions from the crater, and every few min- utes changes from a livid yellow, when the ashes are hot, to a silver gray, as they begin to cool. At night the effect is very fine. At each erup- tion there is a violent explosion, like the discharge of a thousand cannon, and afterward a terrible rum- bling is heard beneath the surface of the earth. Izalco arose suddenly from a plain in the spring of 1 770, in the midst of what had been for nearly a hundred years a profitable sugar plantation. The owner was absent on a visit to Spain at the time, [37] Strange Lands near Home and was greatly amazed on his return to discover that his farm had been exchanged, without his knowledge or consent, for a volcano. It was in December, 1769, that the peons on the plantation first noticed that something was wrong underneath. Although they were accus- tomed to slight earthquakes, they became fright- ened at the unusual rumblings and growlings in the earth. They decided to -leave the place, and got away not a moment too soon. A few days later, when some of the most venturesome went back to see how the animals were getting on, they, discovered that all the buildings had been destroyed, that great trees had been uprooted, and large craters had opened in the fields, from which came smoke and flames, though apparently there had been no great eruption. A party of shepherds, braver than the rest, decided to remain in the neighborhood and await developments; and on the 23d of February, 1770, they were entertained by a spectacle that perhaps no other men were ever permitted to witness, - the birth of a mountain. It was about ten o'clock in the morning, as they afterward said, when the grand upheaval took place. [38] A Growing Mountain First came a series of terrific explosions which lifted the crust of the earth in a pile several hun- dred feet high, and from the opening issued flames and lava, with masses of smoke. An hour or two later there was another and more terrible convul- sion, which shook the country for hundreds of miles around and did great damage in the neigh- boring towns. Rocks weighing thousands of tons were lifted high in the air, and fell several miles distant. The surface of the earth bulged up nearly three thou- sand feet, and vast masses of rocks were piled around the crater from which they issued. These terrible earthquakes continued for several days, and great damage was done in the neighbor- ing states of Nicaragua and Honduras, as well as in San Salvador. In less than two months, from a level field arose a mountain more than four thousand feet high. The discharges from the crater from that time to this have accumulated around the edges until the pile has reached nearly seven thousand feet, and it is still growing. Unfor- tunately the growth of the monster has not been scientifically observed or accurately measured. It would be difficult to measure it, for the surface of [39] Strange Lands near Home the cone, down to two thousand feet from the sum- mit, is always covered with hot lava over which no man could climb, and even if the heat could be endured, the fumes of sulphur would suffocate one. Within view of the city of San Salvador are eleven great volcanoes, one other beside Izalco being constantly active, while the others are sub- ject to occasional eruptions. The nearest peak is the mountain of San Sal- vador, which is about eight thousand feet high and shows to great advantage as it rises abruptly from the plain. It is only three miles from the city to the base of the mountain, but the sides are so broken by monstrous gorges and projecting cliffs that it is almost impossible to climb it. The summit is crowned by a cone of ashes and lava that fell there centuries ago; but since the spring of 1854, when the most serious earthquake the country has known took place, the crater has been extinct, and is now filled with a lake of clear, cold water. Lying to the seaward of the volcanoes, and not far from the city of San Salvador, is a forest of balsam trees about six hundred square miles in [40] A Growing Mountain extent, which is inhabited by a curious race of Indians. These people are little altered from their primitive condition, and are permitted to remain there undisturbed and enjoy the profits derived from the sale of balsam. The forest is full of footpaths which are so intricate as to baffle strangers who try to enter, and it is not safe to make the attempt, as the Indians, peaceable enough when they come out Strange Lands near Home to mingle with the other inhabitants of the country, violently resent any intrusion into their stronghold. They keep their common earnings in a treasure box, to be distributed by the old men among the families as their necessities require. There is a prevailing impression that the tribe has an enor- mous sum of money in its possession, since its earnings are large and the wants of the people are few. The surplus existing at the end of each year is supposed to be buried in a sacred spot with religious ceremonies. These Indians, who are temperate and industrious, are known to history as the Nahuatls, but are commonly spoken of as " Balsimos." Although San Salvador is the smallest in area of the group of Central American republics, being smaller than Massachusetts, it is the most pros- perous, the most enterprising, and the most densely populated, having about as many inhabitants as Connecticut. The natives are engaged not only in agriculture, but quite extensively in manufac- tures. They are more energetic and industrious than the people in other parts of Central America and gain wealth rapidly; but the constantly [42] A Growing Mountain recurring earthquakes and political disturbances keep the country poor. San Salvador has always taken the lead in the political affairs of Central America. It was the first to throw off the yoke of Spain. After sev- eral ineffectual attempts to gain independence, the Salvadorian Congress, by an act passed on the 2d of December, 1822, resolved to annex the little province to the United States, and provided for the appointment of commissioners to proceed to Washington and ask its incorporation in the great republic. Before the commissioners could leave the coun- try the revolutions throughout Central America had become too formidable to suppress. The five states joined in a confederacy one year after the act of annexation was passed, and the resolution was never officially submitted to the government of the United States. W. E. CURTIS. [43] A VENEZUELAN RAILWAY THERE are few more interesting engineering achievements than the little narrow-gauge railroad running to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, from its seaport, La Guayra. The distance between the two cities, as the crow flies, supposing for the moment that he could fly straight through the mountain, is only six miles; but the railway connecting them is twenty-three miles in length, and constantly twists and turns on itself. The road runs in zigzag fashion up the moun- tain to an altitude of about fifty-one hundred feet above its starting point, and then descends some fifteen hundred feet in the same manner into the valley of Caracas. Twenty-two thousand rails were used in laying the track, and of these over eighteen thousand are bent. It is jestingly said that the engineer almost died of a broken heart, because he could invent no excuse for bending the remaining four thousand. He did his best, however, and no one [44] A Venezuelan Railway who has to ride over the road, and finds himself shaken at every one of the three hundred and forty-six sharp twists which the track makes, will find it in his heart to condemn the poor man for not making a perfect job. Two passenger trains each way pass over the road daily, leaving La Guayra at half-past eight in the morning and at half-past three in the after- noon, making the journey in two hours and a half. This is a speed, exclusive of stops, of not quite ten miles an hour. Each train consists of a locomotive, a baggage car, and two or three passenger coaches about the size of a street car in northern cities. The seats run lengthwise through the car, an arrangement necessitated by the narrow gauge of the road. The fare for the twenty-three miles is two dollars and a half first-class, and one dollar and sixty cents second. The accommodations are equally bad in the cars of the two classes; the only visible difference between the two is that the first-class car is the less crowded. As we leave the little station at La Guayra, we take a serpentine course for about a mile through cocoanut groves along the sea. Why the road [45] Strange Lands near Home does not take a straight course through this first portion of the way, the constructor only knows, for the ground is level, and there are no obstruc- tions more serious than a cocoanut palm or a banana plant. After writhing along the beach for a short time, we suddenly 'make a sharp turn, and then begins the climb up the face of the mountain. Up, up, up we go, turning now to the right and again to the left, then making what seems to be an almost complete circle, now passing through a tunnel where we are nearly stifled by the hot air and gases from the engine, which sweep through the open cars, carrying with them cinders that burn holes in the clothes, or raise blisters where they touch the unprotected skin. Then we emerge from the hole in the mountain side at a place where we appear to be on the point of jumping over the precipice one or two thousand feet sheer down into the water that laps its base. We have forgotten for a moment the con- structor's passion for curves. We make two or three short turns, as if uncertain of our course, and then twist sharply round and go back the way we came. As we look down from the car [46] A Venezuelan Railway window we see the track over which we have just passed about fifty feet from us and directly beneath us. Suddenly we stop. We won- der what has hap- pened, for there is no house in sight, it would ?'" be diffi- cult indeed for any one to find a spot on which to perch a house, ^ so steep is the declivity. The only thing visible except trees and ^ rocks is a large iron pipe [47] Strange Lands near Home running over wooden supports through a small ravine ; and now we see that it carries water for the refreshment of our thirsty little engine. Six times we stop in this way in our wild climb up the mountain side, to take breath and water our engine, until we cross the highest point and begin to slide down to Caracas. In going down the mountain on either side gravity is the only pro- pulsive force employed, steam being kept up merely to work the brakes and prevent too rapid a descent. There is but one station between La Guayra and Caracas, and this the railroad people have most appropriately named Zigzag. Here the trains from opposite directions meet and pass each other. As soon as the engine has filled its boiler, it gives, one long shriek of warning, the passengers climb into the little cars, and we follow once more the giddy trail. The scenery, as viewed from the window of our car, is grand ; but in order to enjoy it thoroughly one must possess strong nerves. At our feet, a thousand meters below, we see a faint streak, which is the narrow beach on which La Guayra [48] A Venezuelan Railway lies. The houses in the town look like dice, and the men and donkeys in the streets have become invisible. Beyond, stretching away to the horizon, now vastly extended by reason of our elevation, we see the sparkling blue waters of the West Indian Ocean. A mere speck which we can hardly dis- cern on the surface of the sea is the ship which brought us to this coast, and which left for the chilly North an hour before we began our cloud- ward climb. If we turn and look ahead, we see the mountain rising up ever higher and higher, until its peak is lost in the cloud that always clings to it. The air, which was so hot and sultry on the coast, is growing more and more fresh as we ascend, and it becomes almost chilly as the cloud hugging the mountain top receives us and draws the curtain which hides from our view the beauties of nature as well as the dangers which encompass us. Dangerous as the ascent of the mountain appears to be, and really is, accidents are fortu- nately rare, owing to the constant vigilance exer- cised by the officials of the road. Landslides do occasionally take place, nevertheless, and no [49] Strange Lands near Home amount of watchfulness can prevent them, or even give warning of their occurrence. The roadbed in many places is a mere scratch in the side of the mountain, barely wide enough to permit the passage of the narrow cars. The outer rail is often laid within a few inches of the edge of the precipice, so that in looking from the window one sees nothing but the bottom of the ravine hundreds of feet below. While the road was building, it was frequently found necessary to lower men by long ropes from above until they could make for themselves a foothold by means of pick and shovel. When one realizes how much labor and money have been expended in forcing this way through almost inconceivable natural obstacles, it seems indeed a pity that such a triumph of engineering skill should be doomed to an ephemeral existence ; but already the freight and passenger traffic taxes the capacity of the road to its utmost. Work is already being rapidly pushed forward by an American company on a new route between La Guayra and Caracas, which is to pass under the mountain through a tunnel four miles in length. THOMAS L. STEDMAN. [So] ' -, [Si] AN EVENING IN A BRAZILIAN FOREST LET us wander in imagination through a Bra- zilian forest, just as the burning heat of day is passing into the cool of evening. As yet nature seems asleep, and a solemn silence reigns under the shade of the colossal forest trees, some nearly two hundred feet high; the Brazil-nut and monkey -cup trees, the king tree and the cow tree, which spread their vast cupolas of foliage over the smaller cecro- pias; tree ferns and palms which, though smaller, are some of them from fifty to a hundred feet high. By and by, as we look up into the branches of a cecropia tree, we see a hairy mass resting in the fork between a bough and the trunk and barely visible, so like is the tint of the hair to An Evening in a Brazilian Forest the lichens and dead-brown mosses which clothe the bark. This mass is a sloth, grasping the bough firmly with his clawed feet, as he sleeps through the heat of the day. It is only when the cool of evening sets in that he will wake up to feed, and move quickly along from tree to tree, grappling each branch as he goes with his twisted feet, and using his long arms and supple wrists to reach to the tips of the boughs for tender growing shoots, which he tears off and stuffs into his mouth to chew with his feeble back teeth. To see him on the ground when he has to cross an open space, you would think him a poor creature at best, for his ankles are so twisted that he can tread only on the sides of his feet. His toes are joined, and he has three on each foot, armed with long claws very inconvenient to tread upon, and his arms are so much longer than his legs that he is obliged to drag himself along on his elbows. But when once he has hoisted himself aloft again, these strange limbs serve him well. The twisted ankles enable his claws to take a firm hold of the branches, his long arms reach for his [53] Strange Lands near Home food, and his unwieldy neck, which has more joints than in other mammals, allows him to [54] An Evening in a Brazilian Forest throw his head backward to seek for food. He has no front teeth, but his sharp claws do the work instead; and his back teeth, though they have neither enamel nor roots, continue to grow up from below as they are worn away above. In this way the sloth makes the most of the primitive body that he has inherited from his ancestors, which stood very low in the scale of mammals. If he could relate the history of his forefathers, it would be an interesting one. First he would tell us that he belongs to a feeble and dying group of creatures who wander in distant parts of the world ; and that while he has two very distant relations the ant-bear and the armadillo roaming about the forests near him, we must travel across the sea to South Africa to find the other two branches of the family stem, aard-varks and pangolins. It is toward nightfall that we must look for his American compatriots as, leaving the thicker parts of the forest, we wander toward the banks of the river Amazon or some smaller stream. There we may see creeping along in the dark a large gray, hairy animal, about four feet and a half long, with black throat and shoulders and a line of [55] Strange Lands near Home thick hair along his back, ending in a bushy tail, three feet long, which drags behind him on the ground. His front feet are twisted so that he walks upon the edge instead of the sole, and his thin, tubelike, toothless snout almost touches the ground as he moves along, his threadlike tongue protruded at intervals as though to test the objects he passes. This shambling, heavy-going creature is the great ant-bear, and he is in search of ant-hills and termite (or white ant) mounds, for these animals are his chief food. He thrusts into their homes his long, flexible tongue, covered with sticky moisture, bringing out thousands at each thrust. His toothless mouth, his imperfect collar bone, and his twisted, clawed feet with united toes, all show that he belongs to the same low group as the sloth. The great ant-bear is very strong. The mus- cles of his arms and shoulders are so powerful that he can hug his enemies to death, while his strong claws once dug into the flesh never loose their hold. Therefore, although he has no teeth, he can defend himself even against the jaguar; and he does not fear to wander freely and to [56] An Evening in a Brazilian Forest rifle the ant nests of the South American forests, just as his distant relative, the pangolin, with like twisted feet and toothless mouth, feeds on termites in South Africa, protected not by strength, but by scaly armor. Then is the time that the howling monkeys make the forest resound with their cries, and croaking frogs, chirping cicadas, chattering par- rots, and yelping toucans raise a very Babel of sounds soon after sunset. It is at this hour, or perhaps later, when the evening chatter has sunk to rest, that the tatou, or great armadillo, about three feet long, begins to wander, feeding upon fallen fruits, or digging deep burrows with his long, powerful claws in search of roots and grubs. He alone of the American Edentata, or imper- fect-toothed animals, walks on the soles of all four feet, and in this, as in many other ways, he more resembles the aard-vark, or ant-eater of South Africa, than his companions in America. But all this time our dreamy sloth is waiting to tell us the history of the past, and how it hap- pens that he and his comrades have distant con- nections so far away as South Africa, and yet none in other parts of the world. If he could [57] Strange Lands near Home speak, he would boast with pride, as others have done before him, that there was once a time when his family spread far over the face of the earth ; when from India, Greece, and France, to the Mis- sissippi valley, Nebraska, and California, animals with imperfect teeth and immense claws wandered not in trees, but on the ground. This was in hot Miocene times, when they were among the highest animals living on the globe ; but as time went on, and higher and stronger creatures elephants and buffaloes, lions, tigers, leopards, and others killed them, or drove them out of the great continent, the remainder found homes in South Africa and South America. Then came the time when, cut off from the world to the north, huge ground sloths as large as ele- phants ruled supreme in South America, walk- ing on their twisted fore feet, and instead of climbing trees, tore them up by the roots to feed on their foliage. And with these gigantic animals were others, nine feet long, the ancestors of the armadillos, with armor plates not movable, but formed into a solid shield, while to complete the group an ancient form of the ant-bear bore them company. [58] An Evening in a Brazilian Forest For long ages these monsters flourished, and much later on left their bones in the bone caves of Brazil, where, mingled with more modern bones of sloth, armadillo, and ant-bear, they tell the history of the past. And then they died out; and as the great Brazilian for- ests flourished and over- spread the land, the sloth and smaller ant-bears took refuge in an arboreal life, while the great ant-bear trusted to his powerful limbs, and the armadillo to his plated armor, for protection in their nightly wanderings ; and thus they remained to tell of an ancient and once powerful race, now leading a secluded life in South American wilds. ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY. Ant-Bear [59] LIFE IN ASUNCION As soon as the big side-wheel steamer which carries you to Asuncion has dropped anchor near the shore, your valise is grasped by a sturdy female porter, who stands up to her knees in the water alongside. She promptly tosses it to another nearer the shore, who tosses it to a third, who tosses it to a fourth, who wades ashore with it. The predominance of the feminine thus made manifest is repeated everywhere in Asuncion. The terrible war in which this little country bat- tled for six years against half the continent of South America ended in a victory for Brazil, Uruguay, and the Argentine Republic, when Paraguay had no men left to fight them. The population of this city was then in the propor- tion of one man to twenty women. Although there is no such disproportion now, the female is by far the more numerous sex. Your newsboy, your bootblack, your car driver, milkman, and messenger boy, all are women or [60] Life in Asuncion girls. The city employs female street cleaners. My valise, having emerged safely from the ordeal, was borne to the hotel by a lady who wholly dis- dained the handle, and whose evident muscular power inspired me with such respect that I let her carry it on her head without venturing a suggestion. The city is built on the side of a steep hill, and in going through its streets one is either climbing, or bracing oneself to avoid rolling down into the river. Asuncion is very old. Here may be seen entire streets just as they were two hundred years ago, when these few acres now called Paraguay belonged to Spain, and the Jesuits cultivated the land and civilized the Indians. The brick and stucco houses of Asuncion are low, ugly, and monotonous. Any street is the duplicate of all others. But through these streets passes an ever-changing procession that is full of life and interest. Peddlers of all kinds are here. With this one we have an opportunity of spending all the money we have in exchange for beautiful handmade lace. Her mother taught her to make it, and the mother learned the secret from her Indian mother before [61] Strange Lands near Home her. Another is selling native pottery. Yonder comes a dark-faced cartman whipping his mule into a gallop. He has been nowhere; he is going nowhere ; but he urges on his mule with a mixture of Indian and Spanish exhortations, and sends him rushing down the hill now merely for the fun of it. Behind this latticed shutter some one is playing the guitar, and singing plaintively. In front of the government building stands a gold-laced, brass- buttoned customs official, who clearly is deter- mined that if the Paraguayan government is lacking in dignity it shall be through no fault of his. Women pass with baskets of oranges and bana- nas on their heads. The pretty little news girls are as energetic as their brothers in other cities. They are accustomed, however, to come and ask one gently if he will please to buy a paper, which appears to answer the purpose quite as well as bawling a list of names in one's car. Now and then a street car rumbles past, drawn by three mules hitched tandem. And finally comes an old creature with gourd cups for drinking mate. [62] Life in Asuncion Mate, sometimes called by barbarous outsiders " Paraguay tea," is the popular drink of the entire southern part of South America. The herb from which it is produced is native to Paraguay. The growing plant somewhat resem- bles catmint. The dried leaves are put into a gourd cup, hot water is poured in, and the tea thus made is sucked through a long silver tube. Vast quantities of this product are exported from Paraguay. Should you ever call at a house in South America, you will no doubt be offered a chair and a cup of mate simultaneously. The rural Paraguayan at home presents a commendable example of humble content. He realizes the fact that he was placed as he is by a power greater than he, and he is not so bigoted as to take it upon himself to meddle with his own condition. Hence his condition is primitive. He lives in a thatched mud house a short distance from the city, and raises vegetables. The native does not attempt to cultivate most varieties, because, as one of them explained to me, the soil is of such a peculiar quality that the weeds grow rapidly and destroy the plant ! [63] Strange Lands near Home The manioc, which is the principal vegetable of the country, resembles in form the parsnip and in flavor the chestnut. It is the Paraguay sub- stitute for the potato. It is very nutritious, and as it thrives in spite of weeds it is deemed worthy of cultivation. Besides manioc, the peasant farmer grows tobacco, sugar cane, bananas, oranges, and yerba mate. He has never tried to cultivate anything else. He never will try. His life is an eloquent demonstration of how little will be accomplished by the poor mortal who is contented. When the farmer has anything to sell he, or more frequently she, loads it upon a donkey and walks behind the donkey to town. These women and donkeys throng all day the region of the market. Both have voices 'of an unpleasant quality. In truth, the sum of what one hears and what one smells in that hot, crowded mar- ket place is balanced only by the quaintness of what one sees. The quaintness of the peasant woman begins with the stone jug which she carries on her head, and extends to her feet, which are pigeontoed. This trace of Indian ancestry is confirmed in her [6 4 ] Life in Asuncion face, which has that half- African, half- Indian cast distinctive of the tribe of the Guaranys. As she marches through the streets with the long, swinging stride that has carried her ten miles this morning to the city, she wears, wrapped in loose folds about her head and the upper part of her body, something which much resembles a cotton sheet. This garment is a model of sim- plicity, and I recommend it to dress reformers. There is never any danger of getting it on wrong, for it has no sleeves nor openings of any kind, and one way is as good as another. Beside this, a cotton skirt is all that is required to complete the costume. The wearer does not think so, however, for she adds a cigar. This is not only a part of the costume, but a most indis- pensable part of it. As the woman sits in the market of a hot afternoon the white drapery may fall back from the head and shoulders, and the stone jug may have been removed to fill with water; but I have never yet been able to find a native woman or girl who was not smoking an enormous cigar of an inexpensive brand. It is pleasing to see these pretty figures closely clad in white, with just a glimpse of the dark eyes [65] Strange Lands near Home and olive face enveloped in drapery, and the bare feet below. I mean to say that it might be pleas- ing if a large and malodorous cigar were not added to this picture. That destroys all the poetry. These are the only people in South America who do not smoke cigarettes. A citizen of Bue- nos Ayres, for instance, would lose his standing in society if seen with a cigar ; but here tobacco is cheap, while rice paper is dear, and the cigarette is rarely seen. [66] Life in Asuncion The customary hour of rising in Paraguay is decidedly early. The city is awake and astir on the streets by five o'clock; at six the pub- lic schools are in session. School is closed for the day at eleven. Then breakfast is taken, the only previous repast having been an early cup of coffee and a roll, and at midday, just as the sun is beginning to beat down hotly on the pavements, the population retires from sight. You might better endeavor to transact business at two o'clock in the morning in Asuncion than at that hour during the day. This little space of burning sun is sacred to slumber. It is a most sensible custom. One dodges the heat, and it slips by unthought of. There is not a case of sunstroke on record. And so, partly because they run away from the heat instead of fighting it with ices and cooling drinks, and also perhaps because they never have to battle with the question, " Is this day hot enough for you ? " each Paraguayan emerges from his siesta cool and smiling at four or five of the afternoon, and takes up the burden of his business, which is not a very heavy one, anyway. [67] ' Strange Lands near Home On the whole, they suffer a good deal less from tropical weather than do those unfortu- nates who pass a weary summer in New York or Philadelphia. Dinner comes at seven, and then the long, cool evening, the loveliest part of the day. As we stroll through the moonlit streets we encounter groups of white-robed figures, and catch snatches of music, and the night seems alive with the murmur of voices. Now it is u Buenas noches, Senorita? and again it is a gentle " Adios, Senor" from some burdened balcony; and so the day is ended. CHARLES H. PRATT. [68] THE CARNIVAL IN LIMA THE merry season of Carnival is prepared for by all Peruvians several weeks in advance of the eventful period. Numberless cascarones, which are hollow shells, generally made of stearin or wax molded in forms of tiny cannon, bunches of grapes, fish, and other articles, are filled with diluted Florida water. The cook saves all eggshells whole by blowing their contents out for culinary purposes, and then fills them with scented water. In many families bushels of cascarones are laid away for Carnival warfare, and a thriving trade is worked up each year by manufacturers of the missiles thrown in the three days given over to the sports and license of the season. The Sunday previous to Ash Wednesday opens the Carnival, and the exercises begin on that day soon after morning mass. About noon every house seems converted into a fortress, the inmates constituting the belligerents. [69] Strange Lands near Home Senoras, sefioritas, and children hiding on bal- conies, peering out from behind screens, darting suddenly from strange places on the roofs, pelt cascarones at the passers-by, and the sticky pieces of shell, fastening themselves upon the face, hair, and clothing of the victims, make them look like animated pieces of papier-mache. The sweetness of the accompany- ing showers of delicate perfume hardly compen- sates f r the ru de- ness. The cautious pedestrian, during Carnival, takes the middle of the street, and with an umbrella off the spring, ready to fly open in any direction, he thinks himself well protected. Suddenly some powerful syringe throws out a stream of water from an unsuspected source, and the sparkling drops fall around him in showers. His [7o] The Carnival in Lima scowls and other demonstrations of displeasure avail nothing, and he has only to pass on to encoun- ter, perhaps, a still more formidable drenching. Carnival Fun in Lima This amusing sport forms itself into a kind of thermometer, measuring the heat of temper in different individuals. The natives enjoy the fun thoroughly, running the gantlet with unequaled Strange Lands near Home skill, pelting back their tantalizing tormentors, when they get a chance, and, with their spirits on the crescendo, reach a height of enjoyment a less excitable people can hardly understand. One evening, when the Carnival had just begun, we were sitting in our hall by an open door, as we felt the need of a little fresh air after the heat of the day. Several friends had gathered round us, and we were trusting to luck for our protection, when almost before we were aware of it we were objectively engaged in the Carnival. We were reluctant to defend ourselves, as it was Sunday, and made a retreat as quickly as possible, thoroughly perfumed with Florida water administered by stran- gers passing, as well as by friends standing near. Very early next morning our young people awoke in a high state of excitement over the expected festivities. Enough water lay secure in cascarones in our house to cause a deluge on a small scale. I soon saw that a general demorali- zation of the family had taken place, and that our patience would have to be maintained through much tribulation. Before the hour for breakfast the clothing of all the children was thoroughly soaked, and soon after breakfast they were saturated again. The Carnival in Lima At eleven o'clock this wild sport was, by an accident of the play, shifted to a neighboring native house, all the family taking an active part. The throwing of water was not confined to the garden; rooms handsomely furnished and halls richly carpeted were thrown open regardless of the damage that would result from the play. The actors, dressed in bathing costumes, employed their skill and inventive faculties for many an hour and surprised each other with all manner of curious ways of applying the water. The Carnival had resolved itself into a mimic battle. According to the custom of the country, after the conflict was over and the participants had changed their clothing, the lady of the house served luncheon, over which a truce was estab- lished for a few hours. Tuesday night being the last of the Carnival proper, the excitement reaches its greatest height. Foreigners as well as natives, completely drawn under the influence of the absurd custom, enter into the sport with energy. Collected on the bal- conies and tops of the flat-roofed houses, they not only drench one another, but throw bucketfuls of [73] Strange Lands near Home water upon unfortunate persons passing by on the pavement. Those who think themselves safe in passing at a distance are reached by the aid of a hose. Bright-colored paints are also brought into requisition. Some idea of the utter abandon of everybody at this time may be gained from the following incident: A day or two before Carnival a young lady anticipated the occasion by playing a little trick upon her dentist. He was putting a neat filling of gold into a tooth, one of those delicate and difficult pieces of work of which a dentist is so proud, and was performing the most delicate part of his task, when the young lady, suddenly bringing her hand up to his ear, burst a cascarone into it ! He said it sounded like a thunderclap. The water ran down his ear and neck; his nerves received a shock as from an electric battery. The job of dentistry was spoiled, the work had to be done over again, and the father had an increased bill to pay. As this was Car- nival fun he was obliged to laugh and make the best of it. MARIA LOUISE WETMORE. [74] AN ODD CITY IN THE ANDES To reach Quito from the sea one must ride several days on muleback. The highway to the capital is not yet completed and only a bridle path crosses the breast of Chimborazo at a height of fourteen thousand feet, so that the journey is one of great hardship and discomfort. Freight for the interior of Ecuador is carried upon the backs of mules or men, who travel twelve or fourteen hours a day and take two or three weeks for the journey. There are no hotels, but only filthy lodging houses, in which a neat or nervous traveler would be very uncomfortable. There was no telegraph line until a few years ago, and it was useless most of the time at first, for the people cut down the poles for firewood, and stole the wire to repair their harnesses and panniers with. Having once reached the capital of the Incas, one finds oneself rewarded for all hardship and exposure, for the scenery is grander than can be [75] Strange Lands near Home \ found elsewhere, and the ancient ^.. v j c *ty * s so quaint and queer that it ^' seems like entering another world. Quito is at least two hundred years behind the times in almost every feature of civilization. There are no newspapers, and there is only one printing office, which is [76] An Odd City in the Andes conducted by the government for the publication of official documents. The city is so far removed from the rest of the world that the inhabitants seldom leave it, and people from outside do not often go there. Quito is without a decent hotel, although there arc forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, and strangers who want to be comfortable are com- pelled to visit merchants, officials, or others to \vhom they have letters of introduction. There is not a carriage or a wagon in the place, and only a few carts of the most primitive pattern, which look like the pictures one sees of those used in the time of Moses. The history of Quito has never been written, but the traditions make it as old as Jerusalem or Damascus. The Incas have traditions of a mighty nation called the Quitos, who lived there before their fathers came, but of whom the world has no other knowledge. All we know is that Pizarro found a magnificent capital of a mighty empire extending three thousand miles and as thickly settled as China or the interior of Europe, with beautiful palaces of stone, full of gold and silver and gems ; but it was all destroyed. [77] Strange Lands near Home The walls of the palace of Atahualpa, the last of the Incas, whose pathetic story Prescott has told in The Conquest of Peru, now inclose a prison, and a gloomy convent stands upon the site of the famous Temple of the Sun. Decay and dilapidation, poverty and ignorance, filth and depravity, are the most conspicuous features of life in Quito, but the people are as proud as if they had all the good things of the world, and think they have a grander city than London or New York. They know no better, and perhaps it is well that they do not. The only portion of the population that seems to be prosperous consists of the buzzards, the scavengers of the town, and as all the filth and refuse is thrown into the street, they have plenty to do. The men stand idly around the street corners, wrapped in their ponchos, for it is cool in the shade, and repulsive-looking beggars reach out their hands for alms to those who pass by. The women are seldom seen in the streets except on feast days or early in the morning when they go to mass, and then they keep their faces so covered that it is impossible to tell one from another, [78] An Odd City in the Andes i Soldiers are numerous, usually barefooted and wearing uniforms of ordinary white cotton sheet- ing. Peons half naked, and children entirely so, sleep or play in the sun, and Indian women clad in somber black glide to and fro with their mantas drawn over their heads, or sit in the market place selling fruits and vegetables. Peddlers are numerous, and their shrill cries afford amusement to strangers. Water carriers are always to be seen going to and from the fountain in the plaza with great jars of clay, holding half a barrel, on their backs. There are no pipes or wells to supply the houses, and all the water used by the families has to be brought by the servants or purchased from the public carriers at so much a gallon. The city is traversed by deep ravines that are arched over with heavy masonry, on which the houses rest. All the streets are narrow, and car- riages, if there were any, could scarcely pass one another. The sidewalks are in proportion to the streets, and one wonders what they were made for, as two people could not possibly go abreast or pass each other upon them. It is even difficult for one man to keep both feet upon the sidewalk [79] Strange Lands near Home without rubbing the whitewash off the walls of the houses, and the inhabitants, who are never guilty of any unnecessary exertion, have aban- doned the effort and walk in the road. The roofs of the houses, which are made of curved tiles, like sewer pipes cut lengthwise, reach over the pavements two or three feet, and water spouts project still farther. Few of the houses have windows looking upon the street on the ground floor, but are lighted from the inner courts. The second-story windows open upon balconies, where the ladies spend a good part of their time watching the passers-by and chatting with their neighbors. Many of the houses, particularly those in the center of the city, are large, and were once fur- nished with luxury and elegance, but are no longer so. The walls are thick, and the rooms are large. The lower floors are occupied by the servants and as stables for the horses and cattle, while the family live in the rooms above. There is only one entrance, through which everybody and everything that enters the house must go, and at night it is closed with great oaken doors securely barred. There is no gas, but a [80] An Odd City in the Andes law requires each householder to hang a lantern over his door with a lighted candle in it. When the candles burn out at ten or eleven o'clock the streets are dark. The policemen carry lanterns and long pikes, and when the clocks strike the hours they call out u Sereno / serenof" which means that all is well. Therefore, the police- men are called Serenos. There are no fixed prices for anything in the stores. If you ask the cost of an article, the merchant will reply, " How much will you give for it ? " If you name a sum, he will then ask twice or three times as much as you offer, and chaffer with you. The women in the market will sell nothing by wholesale. If potatoes are six cents a pound, every pound will be weighed out separately, no matter whether you buy two pounds or a bushel. There is no money smaller than the cuartillo (two and one half cents) so the change is made in loaves of bread. On his way to market the buyer stops at the baker's and fills his basket with bread to make change with, so many rolls to the penny. Very few people have money, and those who have lack confidence in their neighbors, so everything [Si] Strange Lands near Home has to be paid for in advance. If you go to a market woman and tell her you want such and such vegetables, she asks for your money. When you give it to her she hands you what you have bought. If you order a coat at the tailor's or boots at the shoemaker's, you have to pay for them in advance, for they may not have the means to get the materials at the wholesale store, and have no credit. The landlord at the hotel or at the boarding house where you are staying comes every morning before he goes to market and asks you to pay your board for the day. Otherwise he could not buy food. At the entrances of most of the houses are effigies of saints with candles burning before them, and all who enter must take off their hats and cross themselves. Service is going on in the churches almost continuously, and the air is filled with the clangor of bells from morning till night. No lady of quality goes to church without a servant, who carries her prayer rug. There are no pews or seats in the churches, but the floors are marked off in squares, which are rented like sittings. The servant lays the prayer rug down, the lady kneels upon it during her [82] An Odd City in the Andes devotions, and at the close of the service the servant comes again to take it away. Servants always go in droves. When you hire a cook you take her husband and the rest of her family to board, and they bring their dogs and rabbits, their pigs, their" chickens, and all their other property with them. The husband may be a peddler or a blacksmith, or he may be a soldier, but he continues to live with his wife when she goes out to service. The children of the family may be used for light duties, such as going on errands or watching the baby, and no extra pay is expected ; but for every servant you hire you may depend upon having a dozen or more extra mouths to feed. Sometimes the cook's relatives come to visit her, and half a dozen men, women, and children may stay a week or two. They also must be fed and taken care of; but this is not so much trouble and expense as it might seem, for they are satis- fied with beans, corn bread, and a little potato soup to eat, and sleep on the floor of the kitchen or on the straw in the stable. There is not a stove or a chimney in all Quito. The weather is seldom cold enough to require a [83] Strange Lands near Home fire for heating purposes, and all the cooking is done with charcoal on a sort of shelf like a black- smith's forge. There must be a different fire for every pot or kettle, and generally two persons to attend them, one with a pair of bellows and the other to keep the pots from tipping over, for they are made with rounded bottoms like a ginger-beer bottle. No laundry work is ever done in the house, but all the soiled clothes are taken to the nearest brook, washed in the cold running water, and spread upon the stones to dry in the sun. Very little water is used for drinking, for bath- ing, or for laundry purposes. There is a national prejudice against it. The people have a notion that water is unwholesome ; that it causes dyspepsia if too much is taken into the stomach, and that a fever will result from too free use of it upon the skin. Women seldom wash their faces, but wipe them with cloths, and then spread on a sort of plaster made of .magnesia and the whites of eggs. When a person arrives from a journey, particularly if he has come from a lower to a higher altitude, he will not wash his face for several days for fear that the opening of the pores of his skin will result in cold and fever. [84] An Odd City in the Andes There are many doctors in Quito, and some of them are men of skill. There are drug stores, also, but when you go to one of them for medi- cine you are expected to take with you a bottle or a cup to bring it home in. The druggist has no stock of bottles, and never furnishes them to his customers. The reason for this is that all bottles have to be brought up the mountains on the backs of men, and are therefore very expensive. The Indians constitute the laboring population, and they carry all their burdens on their backs. They do not seem to have any strength in their arms. A broad strap is passed around the forehead to sus- tain the load, and another around the shoulders. When on a journey they generally take a slow trot, which they can keep up for hours without tiring, even under the weight of a hundred pounds. They never laugh or sing, have no sports, no games, no tales, but are sullen, morose, stupid, and submissive to all sorts of cruelty and oppression. The Spaniards have been hard masters, and three hundred and fifty years of cruel persecution and oppression have crushed out the spirit of the poor son of the Inca so that he no longer smiles. W. E. CURTIS. [85] THE LAND OF THE LLAMA To a traveler in search of experience I should recommend a visit to Bolivia. Although the set- tled portion of that republic is almost as inacces- sible as the interior of Africa, the journey thither is full of interesting experiences. First, there is the voyage from New York to Aspinwall, which in the summer season is comfortable and pleasant; next the trip by rail over the famous Panama road across the Isthmus, when one of the commodious vessels of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company is taken, and the traveler lives a sort of picnic life for the next three weeks, until the port of Mollendo is reached. The waters of the South Pacific are always smooth, the weather is always fair during the dry season, the scenery is sublime, the tempera- ture is never too hot nor too cool, for so long as you remain under the awnings the breezes from the ocean or the Andes temper the tropic heat. [86] The Land of the Llama The ship stops at all the ports along the coast, often dropping anchor two or three times a day, and giving the passenger an opportunity to go ashore and inspect all the quaint towns and vil- lages, each one of which ordinarily offers some new and novel adventure. I can suggest no more agreeable or interesting voyage than that between Panama and Valparaiso. Mollendo is about two thirds of the way. There passengers for Bolivia leave the ship and take a railway, which was built and is still managed by an enterprising Boston Yankee. The conveniences of travel by this line have not reached so high a state of perfection as are found on lines which run between New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, but it is a great improve- ment upon muleback riding over a thirsty desert and through the dizzy passes of the Andes. This railroad is remarkable for running nearer the stars than almost any other railway, for where it passes over the western range of the Andes, into the great basin of the southern continent, the track is fourteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-five feet above the sea, and the only higher point at which a wheel was ever turned by steam is where [87] Strange Lands near Home another Peruvian railway tunnels the Andes. No other long road can show an equal amount of excavation or such massive embankments, and the engineering difficulties overcome in its con- struction were enormous. Along the side of the track, for a distance of eighty-five miles, is an iron pipe, eight inches in diameter, which conducts water from the springs in the mountains for the engines, and for the use of the people who dwell in the desert. On the other side of this desert is the city of Arequipa, whose name signifies the place of rest, although it is more subject to earthquakes and political revolutions than is any other place in Peru. To reach La Paz, the former seat of govern- ment and capital of Bolivia, one must cross Lake Titicaca, a strange and bottomless sheet of water. One of its islands was the legendary Eden of the Incas, and around its shores cluster the prehistoric cities which the brutal Spaniards destroyed. On this lake there is a steamer, at least, that is what the people call it, although it would amuse a North American shipwright and usually excites a nervous apprehension in the minds of timid travelers. [88] The Land of the Llama If one does not care to board this unique craft, or if one wishes to depart from the regular route of travel and make a cruise among the ruined cities of the Incas, one can hire what is called a "balsa," a curious combination of raft, flatboat, and catamaran, which is propelled by a large sail made of skins and by long poles. Reaching the southern point of the lake one must make the rest of the journey, wherever one may be going, on muleback along the ancient highway of the Incas, which was constructed cen- turies before the conquest and is perhaps the most remarkable of the many remains of that remark- able race. The Spaniards have not repaired it since they have had control of the country, more than three hundred and fifty years, but it is still in a good state of preservation, and is continually trodden by parties of travelers, battalions of troops, and droves of llamas, often thousands in number, laden with the products of the forests and mines of Bolivia. As the camel is to the people of the deserts of Asia and Africa, so is the llama to those who dwell in the Andes, a faithful, patient, and endur- ing beast, without which the inhabitants would be [89] Strange Lands near Home utterly helpless, for mules and horses can neither survive the climate nor climb the mountain trails. The llamas one sees in Bolivia are as much unlike the animals shown in the zoological gardens as the tiger in the jungles of India is unlike his namesake that growls and yawns in a circus cage. Their bodies are covered with a soft, thick, gray wool like that of the merino sheep ; their giraffe- like necks are proudly and gracefully curved ; their eyes are large, lustrous, and intelligent, with an expression of constant inquiry; their ears are shapely, and quiver continually as if to catch the first sound of approaching danger. The llama is to me a fascinating study. While he is docile, obedient, and enduring, there is always an air of suspicion or distrust about him, and a silent dignity that forbids an intimate acquaintance. He carries his load of one hundred pounds of ore, or coca, or cinchona, or other merchandise up and down the precipitous pathways where no other beast of burden can go, and where it is difficult for man to follow. But when he is overloaded he resents it and lies down. No amount of coaxing, or bullying, or beating can get him to his feet until the surplus is removed from his back, when [90] The Land of the Llama he rises solemnly and marches off with his load. He will carry a hundred pounds but no more, and his cargo is packed in sacks or panniers, one half on each side. Therefore, all freight subject to this mode of transportation must be packed accordingly, and limited to packages of fifty pounds. When frightened, llamas always cluster in groups, with their tails together and their heads out to meet the enemy ; and their only weapon of defense is their saliva, which, when angry, they squirt through their teeth in showers. A drop of this saliva, falling in the ear, or eye, or mouth, or on any part of the body where the skin is broken, will instantly produce a most painful irritation and often dangerous sores. The llama drivers keep away from the heads of their animals as carefully as a man does from the heels of a mule. When the llama lies down he folds his long slender legs under him in some mysterious manner, and chews his cud with an air of abstract contemplation and absolute content. The kids afford excellent food, but the bodies of the old llamas are masses of muscle, tendon, and gristle that are tough and rank. They live to a great age, subsist upon almost anything in [90 Strange Lands near Home the shape of food, and have as powerful a diges- tive apparatus as a goat or an ostrich has. The droves of llamas are followed by queerly clad natives, who utter a singular sort of whistle which the animals seem to understand and obey. One driver is usually sufficient for a hundred or more, for they need no more attention than sheep, and travel night and day till they reach their destination, when they are released from their burdens and turned into corrals. In these elevated regions, as I have said, it is difficult for either horses or mules to exist, the air being too thin for them. Horses are seldom seen, and mules are kept only for the accommo- dation of the traveler; their nostrils are split so as to make it easier for them to breathe. When a horse is brought into the high altitudes of the Andes the blood starts from his mouth, ears, and nose, and men are often affected in the same way. The disease is known as sirroche, and some- times is fatal. The natives, having been born and bred at this great elevation, are no more affected by the rarity of the atmosphere than the negroes of the Brazilian swamps are by ihe heat. The Land of the Llama The population of Bolivia is somewhat more than two millions, of whom three fourths are descendants of the race over which the Incas ruled, for the pol- icy of extermination was not enforced in the Boliv- ian provinces as it was farther northward in Peru and Ecuador. Of the remaining one fourth, or five hundred thousand people, the greater part are of Spanish descent. The mixed bloods of white and Indian are called Cholos, but this term has come to have a more comprehensive meaning, and is used to designate the entire laboring class, like the word " peon " in Mexico. The Cholos are small of stature, but muscular of frame, quiet, stoical, and secretive of disposi- tion, industrious, obedient, intelligent, and ingen- ious, but degraded in their habits and entirely ignorant of the outside world. They are capable of enduring great fatigue, and are especially remark- able for making long journeys with a peculiar swinging trot which carries them six or eight miles an hour. They can travel for several days in suc- cession through the mountain forests and over the desert sands, without rest or food except the dried coca leaf, which they chew constantly, mixed with a little potash made of the skins of potatoes. [93] Strange Lands near Home These runners are called chasquis, and before the conquest used to carry the edicts of the Incas to the people. Their speed and endurance amazed the Spaniards, who could not conceive how infor- mation from the Inca could be spread over a territory four thousand miles long in a few weeks. A curious phenomenon which always attracts the attention of strangers who visit the villages of the Chiquitos, a tribe of this race, is that their hair does not whiten or grow gray with age, but turns from black to a copper-red color. The settled portion of Bolivia, which lies in the great basin between the two ranges of the Andes, is called the Valley of the Desaguadero, and within its limits are the populous cities and nine tenths of the inhabitants. Except in La Paz, and one or two other of the larger cities, none of the comforts and conveniences of modern civilization can be found. The people are in almost every respect one or two hundred years behind the age. There is a compulsory education law, but the Congress that passed it, and every succeeding Congress as well, has forgotten to provide schools, so that it cannot be enforced. [94] The Land of the Llama There are no manufactories. Every Cholo is his own weaver, tailor, and shoemaker, and the aristocrats wear clothing imported from France. The ladies wear the latest Paris fashions, and the men the finest imported fabrics, silk hats, and patent-leather shoes. All the wealth of the nation is confined to a few families who are immensely rich. The aristocracy furnish the politicians, the professional men, and the civil and military officers of the government. The merchants are mostly Germans, with a good many Jews; the hotel keepers, bakers, etc., are Frenchmen and Swiss ; and the dentists and pho- tographers are invariably from the United States. The city of La Paz itself is far from being an attractive place. The only evidence of enterprise it possesses is the Alameda, a broad promenade, with stone benches, from which one can get a glorious view of some of the grandest mountains in the world. The complete name of the place is La Paz de Ayacucho, and it means " the peace of Ayacucho," being so christened in 1825 in honor of the victory of the Bolivians under Bolivar, which established their independence of the crown of Spain. [95] Strange Lands near Home The town resembles all others of Spanish con- struction, and has a noble mountain stream run- ning through the center, which is crossed by several massive bridges. The cathedral is large and imposing, being built of solid blocks of stone. More than forty years were spent in its erection. No derricks or other machines were used, but as fast as a course of stone was laid, earth was banked up against the walls inside and out. Upon this incline the next course of stone was rolled into place, and so on, till the church was completed and the roof was laid upon the earth that had been carried within the walls. Then it became necessary to dig it out, and it took thirteen years to do so, although hundreds of men and llamas were employed in the task. Every ounce of the dirt had to come out of the windows or doors. The public buildings are not impressive, and were formerly monasteries. There is a university of some pretensions, and there are one or two good schools, but most of the young men are sent to Chile or to Europe to be educated. W. E. CURTIS. [96] THE ARGENTINE CAPITAL PEOPLE who have never traveled often think of each separate portion of the earth as quite unlike all other parts. Spain is to them a land of jin- gling castanets and dark-eyed sefioritas, and South America is rilled with forests of palm trees, droves of wild cattle, and horsemen forever scouring the plains. When one goes abroad, however, one finds that even in Spain there are many things which are not so very Spanish, just as some parts of South America are not strikingly South American. It is a certain shock at first to find that we must search a little there for the old winding streets, and the arched stone entrances under which, in every sketch and description, picturesque men and women have grouped themselves in bold and striking poses. Buenos Ayres is, in fact, so cosmopolitan that its own scenes are a mixture of those of every other country. Although its language is Spanish, there [97] Strange Lands near Home are more Italians than Spaniards in the city. There are also thousands of English and Ger- mans, and life is no longer the old dreamy life of the South. Thus one of the things most peculiar to the American visiting Buenos Ayres is its lack of peculiarity. Through its narrow streets run the same street cars which he sees at home. Ameri- can telegraph and telephone wires form networks overhead, and there is nothing very novel about the dry goods and the furnishing stores. The Rio de la Plata, on the southern bank of which the city stands, is now the center of a great European trade. It is one hundred miles wide at its mouth, and, like most rivers of such large dimensions, it is extremely shallow. Standing at any hour of the day on the busy water front of Buenos Ayres in the midst of hurry- ing cartmen and noisy muleteers, one looks out across an apparently endless expanse of dull brown \\akT. Far away in the distance are myriads of masts, just showing above the water line. Com- ing from them toward the shore are flat-bottomed lighters, propelled sometimes by clumsy square sails, sometimes by little steam tugboats, to within [98] The Argentine Capital perhaps half a mile of the land; and from these the goods are carried to the shore in immense carts, drawn by shivering horses which pull and plunge through the shallow water. Every few weeks comes a howling pampero from the plains, a huge storm of wind, which often has sufficient force to drive the shallow water out two miles into the river, leaving vessels which an hour before had been calmly riding at anchor now standing high and dry upon the sand. There they must wait until the following day, when the wind goes down, the water comes back, and they are afloat again. For miles along this river front there extends a quaint old street, Paseo de Julio by name, meaning the " Walk of July." It presents a curious picture. Here are sailors of all nationalities, strolling up and down in noisy groups, and peddlers crying all manner of wares, always in a most dismal voice. Along this street wander immigrants, just landed from their ships, peering into some of the many cheap restaurants, the interiors of which are hid- den by curtains of cigarette smoke. There is much tinsel display. Bands in gaudy uniforms march back and forth. One hears occasionally [99] Strange Lands near Home faint sounds of laughter and song. Groups jostle one another as they pass. Not until late at night do these scenes and sounds cease. Rembved only four blocks from the Paseo de Julio is the street most distant from it in character, Calle Florida, the avenue of fashion. Overhead are arches of lights stretched across at frequent intervals, and through it, crowds of quite an oppo- site sort from those met on the Paseo drive in carriages or lazily saunter on foot. The typical Argentine judges his fellows first of all by their dress, second, by their personal beauty, and last, according to their intelligence. These distinctions are closely observed. Years ago it was customary for a peon, or labor- ing man, to give to the caballero, or gentleman, the inside of the walk in passing. Many foreigners have come to the city, and although the line between the two classes is as distinct as of old, this law is no longer observed. As there is no other law to take its place people turn to the side which suits their fancy, and one is kept constantly dodging to avoid collisions. The business man of Buenos Ayres is at all times well dressed; but in the evening it is his [100] The Argentine Capital delight to array himself in added finery, exchange his pointed shoes for those of patent leather, and with kid gloves and cane wander forth to gaze and be gazed upon. A white flower is always worn in the coat lapel. Hence, throughout the streets during the evening hours, one finds pretty Italian girls selling these flowers. In their presence haughty Spanish dons lose all their haughtiness, and willingly pay fifty cents for a single flower when with it comes a smile. After a few years of flower selling at such prices, the flower girl may journey back to her Italian home, bearing with her enough money to support her, in her unambitious way, for the rest of her life. In other departments of trade the relation of these two peoples is the same. The Spaniard carelessly pays the money, the Italian gladly receives it; the one is by nature the grasshopper, the other the ant to earn and save. Away back in the good old unprogressive days, when trade and prosperity had not yet broken in upon the lethargy of the Argentine Republic, houses throughout the city were built far apart, with long stretches of idle ground between; but [101] Strange Lands near Home within the last ten years times have changed, and these pieces of land have many times doubled in value. Thus it happens that between the old buildings new ones have been built, smaller than the old sometimes, often much larger; in every case of entirely different appearance and style. As one passes through the streets one may see a quaint old moss-covered one-story house nestling close under the side of a large new one, through the ever-open door of which one catches glimpses of richly decorated walls and costly furnishings within. Only next beyond may be a bustling little grocery, piled high with cans and bales and bundles, while but one door farther removed is another house of the ancient sort, where the senora dozes all day in her rocking-chair in the sun, and the chickens and children play together in the cool and vine-decked patio. Thus neigh- borhoods are destroyed; the richest and the most lowly often dwell side by side, thrown together by the chance and change of upstart prosperity. These South American houses are only one or two stories high, square and flat roofed, with their [102] The Argentine Capital brick surfaces plastered over with cement and afterward painted a uni- form dull brown or a faint blue. As they stretch away in this fashion in end- less repetition, it is impossible for one of them to give any idea of its owner's taste or situation. Strange Lands near Home The patio, or inner court, is the place about which all the rooms are arranged, and in which center all the occupations of the day. Practically, it is the dooryard, around which is the house itself, and the patio thus becomes the family work and pleasure ground. One seldom finds pale or puny children here. Shut in from all the world without, the patio is nevertheless open to the full beauty and health- giving power of sunshine and sky and breeze. Instead of a cooking stove, one finds in every Argentine kitchen a rectangular brick structure about three feet in height, with a flat top, reach- ing frequently quite across one end of the room. On the side are openings a foot square and per- haps eighteen inches deep. Along the top is a row of round holes the size of a saucepan. Thus constructed, the stove is ready to receive in its side openings some charcoal, which is soon blown into a white heat by a tiny bellows or a fan of plaited straw; then over the circular apertures are placed various covered pots and dishes, and the pit c hero begins to simmer, or the stew of rice and garlic sends up little puffs of steam, a pot of coffee is set steeping, and soon the air is filled with a wonderful combination of savory odors. [104] The Argentine Capital The national dish, which comes into play during native feasts and holidays, is a large shoulder of beef, fastened upon a spit and slowly turned until done Ja^^g^^f^ before an ^"5* open fire. Vr"^ No indul- : - ^ gence can 5j--_ carry such ^- unchecked ^ happiness to the Argen- tine's heart as when, hav- ing driven with his fam- ily out into the park or country, and having kin- dled a fire, he superintends the preparation of such a primitive meal. Eaten with tortilla, a fried mixture of flour, pepper, eggs, and every variety of edible vegetable, [105] Strange Lands near Home and combined with the pure air of the pampas and well-whetted appetites, the simple meal takes on wonderful attractions. The holiday ended, the family returns to the city. The citizen of Buenos Ayres has not time for many such holidays now; but he likes to indulge in them sometimes as a reminiscence of the happy, idle, dreamy days that were. CHARLES H. PRATT. [106] LOST AMONG BUBBLES WHILE spending a few weeks shooting in Labrador early in a recent autumn, I had an adventure which was so singular that I am sure the like of it has never come within the experi- ence of any one else. I was living at the house of a fisherman who had a little hut among the rocks at the foot of a great cliff. From this place I could pass, at low tide, to the east or west of the cottage for a con- siderable distance along the coast. The coast was a series of bights or coves, all open to the ocean, but nearly every one sheltered at the side by a long reef of rocks which ran far out into the sea. The point always protected the cove, and made it smooth when the wind blew up or down the coast. During such a gale myriads of sea birds seek the sheltered side of the reef and dive for small univalves which cling to the rocks. Strange Lands near Home One morning I took my dog to a cove which I knew would contain many sea birds. It was sur- rounded, save for the front, by high cliffs, and at one side a high ridge of rock ran out into the sea. It was blowing a gale, and throngs of ducks floated under the lee side of this point, as the water there was smooth. As I lay on one of the shelves of this reef, I noticed that a constant stream of foam passed across from the windward side of the point, where the sea was chafing and churning against the rocks, to the little cup-shaped cove beyond. Great masses of this foam, lighter than thistle down, had already gathered in the shelter; and as a flaw from the gale touched it, the mass quiv- ered from end to end. What a mass it was! I could hardly believe my eyes as I stood among the rocks and looked across at it. It was probably about an acre and a half in area but how deep I could not tell, though I was sure that it must have been forty feet deep at the back of the cove, and not less than ten feet anywhere. The mass was not white, but yellowish, though whenever the sun burst through the scudding [108] Lost among Bubbles clouds the bubbles all along the top gleamed in rainbow colors. Still more foam came drifting across the reef, settling on the top and rolling along to find a level. Great masses of foam like this are common in the far north. They disap- pear in a few hours after the storm which causes them, leaving nothing but a soft, greasy paste on the rocks. This great, unstable, quivering mass had an unaccountable fascination for me. I was seized with a strong desire to go down and into it ; and that was just what I did, leaving my dog beside my gun on a small patch of sand. Now, as I have said, the cove into which this froth was heaped was closed round with straight cliffs except for a little opening in front through which the sea ran gurgling in a harrow channel. I had to jump across this channel; and then I found eight or ten square feet of bare beach, from which the foam rose slantingly backward. The bubbles were of all sizes, some of them being no larger than a grain of shot, some of them more than an inch in diameter. The dog jumped across to where I stood and looked into my face, wondering what I was about, [109] Strange Lands near Home I ordered him back, and he turned away very unwillingly. I first thrust my hands and arms into the heap, and it became nothing in my grasp. Of course all the bubbles had air in them, and I was sure that I ran no risk of suffocation in plunging into the mass. Ducking my head I went in, under a mass fully forty feet high, advancing carefully lest there should be holes or rocks in the way. It seemed to me as if I were moving the whole mass in the cove, and very likely I was. I put the bubbles away from my face and opened my eyes ; before the foam closed down again I noticed a faint light. But my attempt at breathing was not comfortable. When I inhaled, a number of bub- bles went into my mouth and broke there, but the air they contained was pure and went into my lungs. I then found it best to hold my hand across my mouth, straining the air between my fingers. As I drew in my breath many bubbles pressed against my hand, and I could feel the tiny soft explosions. I had walked thirty or forty paces when I shouted again and again. My voice seemed very [no] Lost among Bubbles low, but I could hear a million bubbles quivering round me and above me. Wherever I was sure the ground was level I walked on rapidly, fling- ing my arms about me. In spite of the air in the bubbles, the sensa- tions I experienced were not agreeable, and a dull pain came into my head. The light I had noticed on opening my eyes was dimmer, and I supposed I was near the cliff at the back of the cove. Having had my novel experience, I turned about to go back, taking, as nearly as I could judge, the way by which I had come. Walking as rapidly as possible for three or four minutes, I supposed that I must be close to the spot where I had entered. But evidently I was not, for the hard face of the cliff stopped me. Then I turned and walked along the edge of the cliff toward the opening; but presently a great rock rose in my way. In my confusion while groping to feel for the cliff I inhaled numerous bubbles, so that a salt, slimy paste began to form in my mouth. It did not take me long to realize that I had lost my way, and that my predicament was one not to be envied, [in] Strange Lands near Home So, with my left hand over my mouth and my right extended, I crossed and moved in every direction that I thought likely to bring me out. Several times I fell by stumbling against large stones, and my knees and arms were badly bruised. The pain in my head, meantime, grew worse, and there was a strange buzzing in my ears. After I had been in the place about fifteen minutes, the weariness grew so great that I was obliged to sit upon a stone. I now thrashed the pressing bubbles from my face with both my hands and found some relief in the larger quan- tity of air that I was able to inhale. But how was I to get out? It was only too certain that if I found the place of egress, it could be only by accident. What were they saying, all those thousands of bubbles that pressed around and above me, so soft, so evasive, but so persistent and so numer- ous ? For there came into my ears the strangest din of small sounds that the ear of mortal ever heard. Sometimes it was like the crying music that you hear in a seashell; again, it seemed as if a myriad voices were whispering mockeries in [112] Lost among Bubbles resentment of my intrusion upon their domain. I flung up my hands and dispersed the crowding tormentors, but they settled down upon me immediately. Though my senses were becoming dull and benumbed, it was very clear to me that my situa- tion was serious. It occurred to me that some of the coast people might have seen my dog and gun, and that they would make search for me. So once more I cried out. As before, the sound seemed nothing, though it made the mass all about me quiver and tremble violently. There was no human voice in response; but once I thought I heard the faint barking of my dog. I nerved myself for another trial, count- ing my chances of success. Alas ! they were small. I stumbled on and on and, as usual, went against the cliff. Turning again, I set out in the opposite direction, becoming more confused all the while. My heart was beginning to sink, and I longed to lie down, with this vast covering above me, and go to sleep. Nevertheless I stum- bled on and on, not knowing whither. Then my foot touched something soft, which moved. Then ["3] Strange Lands near Home the thing, whatever it was, rose and touched me upon the body. Then it barked. It was my dog. The dear brute jumped about in the wildest excitement, continually darting away from me and then returning. Stooping, I laid my hand upon the dog's neck, and said as loudly as I could, " Home, Jack ! On, boy ! " This was just what he needed. He set off at once at a rapid walk, with my hand still upon his neck. He led me by the most devious ways, around great rocks, gently across great holes, over level places, till it seemed to me as if I had traveled miles. Then a great flash came upon my eyes. It was the honest light of day, and I was saved. EDMUND COLLINS. BITTER COLD THOSE who will take the trouble to look at a map of the western continent will see that two great rivers empty into the North Polar Sea from America, the Mackenzie on the west and Back's Great Fish River (or Back's River, as it is often shortened) on the east. Neither of these large streams runs a long distance within the polar regions before emptying into the Arctic Ocean, but each is covered with ice throughout the greater part of the year. In fact, one of them Back's River is open only about three months of the year, and is really within, or very near, the cold- est part of the north polar zone, the north pole itself not excepted. At the mouth of this river are rapids so swift and long that Lieutenant Back of the British navy, who discovered and survey.ed the great stream over half a century ago, called them the " Dangerous Rapids." So swift are they that even during the severest cold, that puts six or ["5] Strange Lands near Home eight feet of ice on the still lakes, they do not freeze over, but remain open the whole winter. This water, coming in direct contact with such extreme cold in the air, sends out dense masses of vapor, which, freezing almost instantly, becomes so thick that one cannot see through it. Near by it looks white, like light smoke, but at a dis- tance it seems perfectly black, not unlike the smoke from burning pine or pitchy matter. Standing on the leeward side of one of these open rapids, and turning the face upward, one could feel the fine, gritty, frozen vapor falling on it like a shower of light sand in a desert storm, but cutting the cheeks like so many razors in the intense cold. And this fine frozen vapor falling on the hard marblelike snow was like sprinkling powdered resin over it, as far as sledging was concerned. The runners, even when coated with ice, stuck as if they had been wax itself. The breath of the people walking along was converted into the smokelike vapor, until they, and the dogs, too, for that matter, looked like so many little puffing locomotives. So thick was this vapor from two score of dogs and half as many people, that when they halted to rest in a [n6] Bitter Cold small basinlike valley, it would accumulate around them, and in less than half an hour it would hide them from sight as effectually as would a thick fog. This little patch of vaporous fog, however, made their presence just as certain as if they had been seen. In fact, an Eskimo hunter locates by their vapor herds of reindeer and musk oxen many miles away. We left Back's River shortly after Christmas and ascended the high hills of the eastern bank. Cold as it had been on the river, for we had not seen it warmer than sixty degrees below zero during that time, it became colder as we climbed into the hills, and one afternoon our thermometer crawled down to minus seventy-one degrees, or one hundred and three degrees below the freezing point. The air was as quiet as if it had been frozen to death. Nevertheless, merely walking through it made it cut the nose and cheeks the only part of the body exposed as a good wind would have done at any other temperature. It was not very disagreeable, however, until after we had reached camp that evening. Then a light wind, the merest breath of air, came up from the south, Strange Lands near Home and it made us all work hard at the building of the snow houses to keep from freezing to death. When the shelter was ready we were lively enough in spreading down the reindeer skins that made the bed, and in crawling in between their warm folds. At this low temperature the sun took on a brick-red look and the sky around it had a cold, cheerless, frozen-out appearance. At night how the stars did glisten ! They would twinkle in a series of brilliant flashes, winding up with a snap that made you feel sure they had gone out; but the next instant they would be at it again, appar- ently brighter than ever. This intensely cold weather is sometimes accom- panied by calms which make it quite bearable. On the other hand, a slight wind will make it intolerable. One morning the thermometer at eight o'clock showed us that it was sixty-eight degrees below zero ; but as it was calm and quiet we loaded our sledges for a short day's journey to the igloo of an Eskimo, where we could buy rein- deer meat for our dogs. We were just starting when a wind sprang up that was like a razor blade. The dogs trotted [118] Bitter Cold and we ran the whole way, except for one short rest, until we reached the welcome snow house. At the end of the journey the thermometer showed that it was warmer by thirteen degrees. I told this to the Eskimos with me, but I think from the glances they cast at one another that they did not believe me. It might be possible that the world was round and turned over every day with- out mak- i ng the polar bears slide off the slip- pery ice- i ^ bergs, but nothing would persuade these simple people that when their arms and legs were frozen and their noses nipped by the frost it was really less cold than when they were comfortable and warm. FREDERICK SCHWATKA. ["9] THE PLAY OF ESKIMO BOYS IT might seem at first sight that the desolate arctic regions would not be a favorable place in which to enjoy the sports common among boys in lower latitudes, but my experience has shown me that the Eskimo boys have about as many plays as do the children of the temperate zones, and more than those of the tropics. The bright, keen cold of the polar regions produces something of the same quality in its children, and although the popular belief is that Eskimo children are stupid and sluggish, I found them as bright and active as those of more favored climes. Any difference in the nature of their sports is easily accounted for by the different advantages they enjoy. Even the smallest of them may often be seen driving a team of puppies harnessed to a musk-ox horn ladle or a walrus tusk, which represents a sledge, and belaboring the tiny animals with a toy whip until they certainly do not enjoy the play, however much it may please the small boy, [120] The Play of Eskimo Boys In this early play both boys and puppies receive lessons that assist them in later life in matters that are anything but play. The toy harnesses used on the puppies are usually made by the little girls, with some assistance from their mothers now and then, and thus all the work may be considered a sort of cold-weather kindergarten, where the children are taught something useful for after life. In a little while the ladle or the walrus tusk is replaced by a miniature sledge, and before long the young Eskimo is able to take a sledge ride on his own account ; but like other boys the world over, he finds less pleasure in sledging as soon as it becomes useful work. Still, whether man or boy, the Eskimo never loses his love for a swift ride over the frozen snow behind a fine team of dashing dogs. Often the boys play with the dogs, but seldom in the manner that youngsters in the United States romp with a favorite Carlo or Prince. The Eskimo dogs do not enter into the spirit of that kind of game, because they have so much hard work to do. The Eskimo boy often takes advantage of the dogs' ravenous appetites to get a little fun out of [121] Strange Lands near Home them. These animals are fed only every second or third day, and as a consequence they are usually hungry. The boy picks up a stone or other small object and holds it aloft, and the dogs, thinking he has something to eat, eagerly press around him in a dense mass, with heads and ears erect, awaiting his disposal of it. He then hurls it as far as he can, and much enjoys the swift race as they fly like arrows after the supposed piece of food. It is really singular how very many times these poor hungry brutes will allow themselves to be duped in this way for the pleasure of some mis- chievous urchins. I think I have seen them repeat this performance over and over again a score of times before a single dog ceased to take the deepest interest in the proceedings, and to run like mad every time the chip or stone was hurled far out on the snow. During the season when the snow is on the ground, and especially if a light snow is falling, some person who has been out of doors near the snow houses may report that a flock of ptarmigan or snow-white arctic grouse is near by. During such weather these birds, if alarmed, are not likely [122] The Play of Eskimo Boys to take to the wing but trust to running, and so the boys of the Eskimo village turn out and hunt them with bows and arrows. Before white men brought firearms among these northern nomads they used bows and arrows, the natural hunting implements of savages nearly all over the world. Now the use of the bow and arrow is confined almost altogether to the children in their sports and plays, and in a ptarmigan hunt they employ these simple weapons. The youngsters can often get within twenty or thirty feet of the birds, which run along on the ground with a waddling gait that suggests so many overfed farm ducks, and from time to time some boy with a good bow and a well-directed shot brings down one of the ptarmigan amidst much rejoicing. After a while the ptarmigan grow shy under this constant shower of arrows, and if the boys press them too hard, they take to flying; then the boys' fun is finished. On favorable days I have known two or three boys to be led a mile or two away from the village in this sport, and to secure two or three birds apiece. This was in the late Strange Lands near Home autumn or early winter, when the birds were very fat and exceedingly averse to flying. Of other hunting sports in which the boys sometimes indulge, I know of none which they enjoy so much as spearing ducks in the summer; and this, too, they have almost to themselves, as the men do not care to waste time and ammuni- tion on such small game unless they have nothing else to do. The duck spear is a curious weapon with three barbed prongs radiating at equal angles from the shaft of the spear. These prongs are not at the end of the spear, but about one third of the way back from the front end. The shaft being of wood the weapon will float, and when it strikes a duck the prongs, of thin, elastic musk-ox horn or walrus ivory, spring back and " ride over " the bird's body and then hold it with the barbs. If the prongs were at or near the end, the harpooned duck might escape by dragging the weapon after it " end on," which would be comparatively easy; but as they are near the middle, it has to drag the spear through the water at right angles to its line of flight. This exhausts it in a few seconds, and the boy can pick it up. The time for spearing The Play of Eskimo Boys ducks is in the summer when they are molting, or shedding their feathers, and cannot fly, so their only way to escape is by diving and swimming. The boys, seeing a flock of ducks near by, take their spears and get into their sealskin canoes, or u kayaks," as they call them, and give pursuit. The ducks swim away as the boys approach, and if overhauled will try to escape by diving. They can go much faster in this way, but it exhausts them more rapidly as they cannot breathe under the water. When the ducks have once begun diving it is the object of the boys to press them and allow them as little breathing time as possible when they appear above the water. The most avail- able duck is selected and two or three of the boys devote their energies to its capture. If the bird is nearly exhausted by its divings in every direc- tion to escape, it will allow the boat to approach very near, and the boy soon catches it between the shaft and one of the prongs of the spear, when its fate is settled. In the early fall, before the young eider ducks have learned to fly, the boys catch them by scores on the shallow inland lakes on the shores of Strange Lands near Home which they have been hatched. On one of my sledge journeys two boys of the party must have killed nearly two hundred ducks one after- noon, and would probably have extended their barbarous sport if it had not met with our disapproval. Yet my experience among Indian boys makes me feel safe in saying that they far exceed the Eskimo lads in heartless cruelty when indulging in those plays that give a chance for its exercise. I have known Indians to take a fiendish delight in torturing small birds and animals they had captured, their eyes glistening with enjoyment in direct ratio as the creature suffered. I never saw anything more than thoughtless cruelty in the Eskimo lads. Of all the games that the white men have intro- duced among them or played before them, there is none that pleases them so much as the simple game of dominoes, which they will play by the hour. They often make exact duplicates in wal- rus ivory of the domino sets brought north by the white men. FREDERICK SCHWATKA. ["6] CHAMPION AMCftOFT LIBRARY THE HOME OF THE ICEBERGS Bancroft Library THE birthplace of icebergs is on the coasts of Greenland. This great land mass stretches away twelve hundred miles toward the pole. It might be named a continent, since it has an estimated area of five hundred and twelve thousand square miles, and thirty-four hundred miles of coast line. The whole interior of Greenland is covered by an immense ice cap, many hundred feet in thick- ness. The sun's rays, falling on the snow at the summits of the mountains, partially melt it into a granular mass. The valleys receive the drainage from these granular snow fields, and the cold con- verts it into a solid mass of ice a glacier. The great weight of snow acts as a propelling power from behind, and forces the icy stream con- stantly onward toward the coast, which it lines with an enormous crystal precipice. At last the front of the glacier is forced by the propelling power behind it into the sea, and into deeper and still deeper water. It begins to feel the action of Strange Lands near Home the waves and tides which wear away its base, and great cliffs of ice overhang the ocean. Now let us witness the birth of an iceberg. A lofty cliff of ice, thus overhanging the water, has been for some time showing signs of insecurity. Great caverns have been excavated in its base; deep fissures are discernible in its face. Sud- denly, with a roar far louder than thunder, the ice mountain snaps asunder, the detached mass comes grinding, crashing down, and a cloud of spray dashes high into the air. The young iceberg dives as it touches the waves, rises slowly, sways and tumbles to and fro, but at last secures its balance. Its front is one hundred and fifty feet above the waves, but there is eight times as much bulk beneath as above the surface, so that its weight may be millions of tons. The berg is scarcely launched into life before it begins to feel the influence of the great arctic current that is rushing southward through Baffin's Bay and Davis Strait. Borne on the bosom of this stream, it starts on its long voyage of six or possibly twelve months. At last the berg reaches southern latitudes and a warmer clime. What the fury of tempests and [128] / f [,29] Strange Lands near Home the blows of the billows could not accomplish, the silent rays of the sun and the action of the warmer air begin slowly to effect. The iceberg becomes relaxed in the joints. Streamlets are trickling down its sides. Its constitution is shaken. Great crags ever and anon fall from it with a sullen plunge into the ocean. Now it becomes top-heavy, reels and turns over. Woe to the vessel that is near when this takes place ! Rocky fragments embedded in its upturned base are exposed to the light. The berg presents a completely new front and sum- mit, which have been sculptured by the waves, and it is no longer recognizable as the same tow- ering monster that left the portals of the North months before. It is now in a state of unstable equilibrium, and frequently turns over with a hoarse roar. All sailors know the dangers of icebergs in this con- dition. They call them " growlers," and give them a wide berth. Shorn of its glories, and greatly reduced in size, the berg still holds on its course and approaches the Banks of Newfoundland. Now it enters the warm water of the Gulf Stream, and its dissolution The Home of the Icebergs is at hand. Cascades are streaming down its sides. Caverns are worn through its center. Small lakes are formed on its summit. Rents and fissures are con- stantly widening. Finally it bursts, with an explosion like thunder. Its shattered remains are scattered far and wide and speedily melt in the warm waters. The berg is no more. Such is the life history of an iceberg. When it reaches a certain stage, and its cohesive powers are relaxed, when it becomes " rotten," as the [131] Strange Lands near Home sailors say, it is especially dangerous. Then a slight cause will make it explode, and it bursts into ten thousand fragments, raising huge billows which might swamp a vessel. The concussion of the air from the firing of a gun, or even the noise made by a steamer, has been known to cause such an explosion. Sometimes a berg has projections, or spurs, underneath the water, stretching far out from its base. A vessel that ventures too near may strike on one of these unseen ice reefs. Such an event happened in July, 1890. A steamer with tourists on board who were anxious to have a near view of a large berg approached so close that she struck on one of its jutting spurs. The shock and the weight of the heavily laden vessel broke off the spur, and at the same time a huge cliff of the berg, many hundreds of tons in weight, fell into the water behind the steamer with a fearful roar. A great wave lifted her stern, and with a vio- lent plunge she seemed to be going down to the bottom. It was a trying moment for those on board, but the good ship slowly came up, her deck covered with ice fragments, and cataracts of water The Home of the Icebergs streaming from her on all sides. After many convulsive tossings on the disturbed waters she righted and managed to get out of that dangerous neighborhood. It was an extremely narrow escape. [^33] Strange Lands near Home There are many berg-producing glaciers on the Greenland coast. The largest known the Hum- boldt was reported by Dr. Kane as extending forty miles along the coast, and as presenting a perpendicular front three hundred feet high. The glacier, which has been measured, is eighteen hundred feet wide and nine hundred feet thick, and it advances at a rate of forty-seven feet a day. Sir John Ross once saw a berg two and one fifth miles broad, two and one half miles long, and one hundred and fifty-three feet high. He calculated that the entire mass weighed fifteen hundred million tons. In the southern hemi- sphere much larger bergs have been seen, towering seven hundred to eight hundred feet above the waves. M. HARVEY. [i34] PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY OF PROPER NAMES, FOREIGN WORDS, ETC. The pronunciations are, with a few exceptions, those of Webster's International Dictionary EXPLANATION OF DIACRITICAL MARKS a, e, I, 6, ii, long ; S, e", 6", less prolonged ; &, 8, i, 6, u, short ; a, , j, o, u, obscure; far, last, fall, care; term; food, foot; furl; 6 as in for; oi as in oil; ow as in cow; ch as in chin; g as in get; n as in linger, link; ng as in sing ; th as in thin; th as in thine; zh = z in azure ; N = French nasal ; ii = French u ; K = German ch. Aard-vark (ard' vark) Adios (a'dyfcs') Africa (af' ri ka) Alameda (a la ma' da) Alamos (a' la mos) Amazon (am' a zon) America (a meV I ka) Andalusia (an da loo' sh^ a or an da loo the' a) Andes (an' dfe) Antilles (an til' lez) Arab (ar 7 ab) Arctic (ark'tik) Arequipa (a ri ke x pa) Argentine (ar'jentin) Ash Wednesday (ash w6nz' di) Aspinwall (Ss x pin wal) Asuncion (a soon' s^ on') Atahualpa (a ta hwal' pa) Ayacucho (I a koo' ch5) Babel (ba'bgl) Back (bak) Baffin's (baf mz) Bahama (ba ha' ma) Balsa (bal' sa) Balsimo (bal' se mo) Benito Juarez (ba n6' to hoo res) Bolivar (b51 ^ varO Bolivia (b6 Hv' I a) Boston (b6s' tpn) Brazil (bra zil') Brazilian (bra zil' yan) 135] Strange Lands near Home Buenas noches (boo Sn' as no' chas) Buenos Ayres (bwa' nos i' rlz) Burro (boor 7 ro) Caballero (ka bal lya' ro) California (kal I fdr' rii a) Calle (kal' lya) Caracas (ka ra' kas) Carlo (kar' 16) Carnival (kar' m val) Cascarone (kas ka ron') Castile (kas teT) Chasqui (chas ke') Chile (che' la) Chimborazo (chim' bo ra' zo) China (chr na) Chiquito (ch^ ke r to) Cholo (cho' lo) Christmas (kris' mas) Columbus (k6 lum' bus) Connecticut (kon n6t x I kut) Cortes (k6r' t^z) Cuartillo (kwarte'lyo) Cuba (ku' ba) Culiacan (koo It a kan') Damascus (da mas' kiis) Davis (da x vis) December (de" sgm' ber) Desaguadero (d&s a gwa da' ro) Ecuador (6k wa d5r x ) Eden (6' de.n) Edentata (6 d6n ta' ta) El Fuerte (61 f weV ta) English (In' gllsh) Eskimo (es x ki m6) Europe (u x rup) February (f6b' ru ^ ry) Florida (flor 7 1 da) France (frans) Frenchman (french' man) Fuerte (f wer' ta) Garambilla (ga ram beT ya) German (jer x man) Greece (gres) Greek (grek) Greenland (gren' land) Guaranys (gwa ra nes x ) Guaymas (gwl' mas) Haiti (ha' tl) Hebrew (he' bru) Hispaniola (his pSn ycV la) Honduras (hon doo' ras) Humboldt (hum' bolt or hoom'- bolt) Inca (In' ka) India (In' dl a) Indian (In' dl an or Ind' yan) Isabel (Iz' a b61) Isabella (Iz a b61' la) Isaiah (t za' ya) Italian (I tar yan) Izalco ( thai' k6) Jerusalem (je, roo' sa 16m) Jesuit (J6z' 6 It) Joaquin Miller (wa ken' mil' ler) Kane (kan) Pronouncing Vocabulary Labrador (l&b ra dor') La Guayra (la gwi' ra) La Paz (la path') Latin (lat'In) Leon (la on') Lima (16' ma) Llama (la' ma) London (lun'dun) Mackenzie (ma kSn' zi) Manta (man' ta) Massachusetts (mSs a chii' sets) Mat( (ma' t&) Mexican (m6ks'ikan) Mexico (mgks' I ko) Miocene (mi' 6 sen) Mississippi (mis Is Ip' I) Mollendo (mol ySn' d5) Montezuma (mon te, zoo' ma) Moses (mo' zSz) Nahuatl (na' watl) Nebraska (ne bras' ka) Neptune (n6p' tun) Newfoundland (nu' fond land') New York (nu ydrk') Nicaragua (ne ka ra' gwa) Oceanus (o se' a niis) Olla (ol' ya) Pacific (pa sif' Ik) Pampero (pam pa' ro) Panama (p&n a ma') Paraguay (pa ra gwi' or pa' ra gwa) Paraguayan (pa ra gwi' an) Paraiso (par a g' s5) Paris (par' Is) Paseo de Julio (pasa'ft da hoo' Patio (pa' to n) Peru (p roo') Peruvian (p^ roo' vl an) Philadelphia (fll a deT fl a) Pizarro (pi z5,r' 6) Plaza (pla' za) Poncho (pon' ch5) Porto Plata (p5r' to pla' ta) 1'ortuguese (p6r' tu g6z) Prescott (pr6s' kgt) Puchero (poo cha' rS) Quito (ke' to) Rio de la Plata (r6' 6 di la pla'ta) Ross (ros) Salvador (sal' va d5r x ) Samana (sa ma na') San Salvador (san sal' va d5r') Santo Domingo (san' t5 do m6n' gS) Sargasso (sar g5s' 6) Schwatka (shwof ka) Sefior (si nyftr 7 ) Sefiora (si nyo' ra) Seilorita (sinyorg'ta) Sereno (s6r a' n5) Sinaloa (sin a lo' a) Sirroche (ser ro' cha) Spain (span) Spaniard (span'ygrd) Spanish (spin' Ish) Swiss (swls) Strange Lands near Home Te Deum (te' de' urn) Valparaiso (val pa ri' so) Terra firma (ter' ra fer' ma) Venezuela (ve"n e, zwe' la) Titicaca (tit ka/ ka) Turk's (turks) Watling (wot' ling) Yerba (yer'ba) Uruguay (oo roo gwi' or u roo- gwa) Zigzag (z