After a very interesting traverse of the streets of the town, we at
length came in sight of the domicil which Mr. Bedrick had hired. It
was a massive-looking, prison-like structure, two stories in height, with
a stone battlement surmounted at the angles by huge urns of a brown
color. The windows were very tall and deep set, and protected by iron
bars like those of a prison. The lower ones had no glass, but inside
shutters instead. The house was of brick stuccoed, and once painted
a bright lemon color, but it had become dark with age, and in every
crevice grew little ridges of black moss. The outside had altogether
a very venerable and antiquated appearance, and to our eyes seemed as
if it had borne the storms and suns of at least five centuries; but the
true age of the building was less than a hundred; the climate here producing
in a short time the effects which in a more northern latitude are
more slowly brought about.

The house, or castle before which we now paused, was situated half
way between the corners of the square, and opposite a very handsome
edifice which was occupied as a boarding-house, or hotel for naval officers,
and other strangers. Our next door neighbor on the right, was
a little Portuguese cobbler in iron spectacles, who came to his door to
take a look at our cortege; and the neighbor on the right was an old
Brazilian beldame who made cigars. Between these two our domicil
stood. Its front exhibited a huge door of solid Paraguay oak twelve
feet high, and made with a small gate or wicket in it for one person to
pass through at the time. On either side of the door, was a tall, narrow-grated
window, half-curtained with cobwebs. Above was a row
of four long and narrow windows that opened upon an iron balcony.
These windows opened to the floor of the balcony, and had two-leaved
glass doors. Over these was a heavy cornice, surmounted by the battlements
and urns, as I have before described.

Having reached the front of this mansion, we paused to take a survey
of it and of the neighborhood, while the old man fumbled for the
key to unlock the prison-like door to let us in. Our arrival attracted
some attention. Negroes, driving by mules laden with brick, stopped
to gaze; soldiers halted to inspect us; and from the blinds or jalousies
of the dwellings across the street, we caught glimpses of sparkling eyes,

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that we guessed belonged to fair Montevideans. It took the old gentleman
some minutes to turn the massive lock; for the house having
long been vacant the wards had got rusty, as well as the whole exterior
of the edifice. There we stood, gazing and gazed upon, each of us
with a bundle in our hands, and behind us, six stout, nearly naked
Africans, carrying the soda-fountains. We formed quite a respectable
and odd-looking procession.

At length, Hewitt having put his hand to the key and given the old
man his aid, the bolt yielded, and the door turned shriekingly upon its
hinges. It opened into a dark, cheerless apartment, paved with large
square brick, which were here and there sunken, and with bare plastered
walls stained with mould. The ceiling was full sixteen feet in
height, and the naked rafters were visible in all their architectural
mystery. The room was about twenty feet square, contained a window
twelve feet tall, and grated, looking upon the street, and a door on the
back side. Not an article of furniture, not a shelf, not a board was in
it. Walls and floor were alike naked and desolate. The air, too, was
chilly and damp, and I felt a chill come over both my heart and body
as I entered and looked around me. It was for all the world like taking
possession of a prison. We looked at each other and exchanged
glances of blank dismay.

`Never mind,' said Fairfax in a whisper, `we have our fortunes in
our own hands, and can quit the old man when we choose; so let us
hang on and see him through. We shall have amusement, if nothing
more.'

`Come my lads,' said the old man, rubbing his hands together, partly
from chilliness and partly from excitement, `stir round and open the
window-shutters, and let's try and make things look cheerful!'

Things had need to look cheerful, for gloom and desolation dwelt
there without rivalry. We opened the broken shutters and let in a
broad glare of light from the sun, which only served to show more vividly
the wretchedness of the place.

`Things will look different by and by. I have already spoken for a
carpenter to come,' said Mr. Bedrick bustling about. `We shall have
a counter and shelves and fixings up here in no time!'

`Is this to be the shop?' I asked him.

`Yes. There isn't a better stand in the city. It is right on the main
street that leads from the public square to the quay, and within five minutes'
walk of both. The barracks are on the next street round the
corner, and the French, English and American Consuls live just above
us half a square. The street that runs west next to us leads directly
to the chief gate of the city; and taking all in all, I consider that we
shall make money yet out of our detention here. It's an ill wind that
blows no body good!'

Here the old hypocrite, who thought he had thrown dust into our
eyes so as effectually to blind us to the truth, rubbed his palms together
and chuckled, and began to stir about, ordering the negroes where
to set down the priceless soda-fountains, cautioning them to beware of
denting them against the bricks, though the ebony fellows could not

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understand a word of English save `Dam!' which they emphatically
used in reply to every word he said.

`Here you darkies,' said the old man, `place this one under the
window!'

`Dam, dam!' answered the negroes.

`Set it down carefully!'

`Dam, dam, dam!' was the reply in a loud tone; and so we had it
for a few minutes a strange chorus, for each of the half dozen seemed
to try to show his superior knowledge of the English language over his
fellows, by using the word oftener and louder than the rest. The old
man got fairly roused and irritated, and returned their `English' with
a round of oaths that would greatly have edified them had they been
able fully to appreciate their meaning.

They were at length paid and sent off, when Radsworth and I left
the `shop' to take a cruise round the premises. We passed through
the rear door into a room smaller, but similar to the front one, with
dark, stuccoed walls, a brick floor, and naked rafters blacked and festooned
with cobwebs. It contained a large grated window and door
looking into a small court. We went into the court or patio, which
was about thirty feet long and eighteen wide, with a broken pavement
up-grown with long grass. In the centre was a circular cistern, upon
the verge of wihich we saw two green and black lizards basking in the
sun. At our approach they darted down inside and concealed themselves
in the crevices. Around the court were several large old earthern
jars, not unlike those described in the Forty Thieves. These
stood against the stuccoed walls of adjacent houses, which formed the
boundaries of the court. In the walls on one side were two windows
high up from the ground and grated; they had also glass doors through
which the festoon of a rich crimson curtain was visible. Another side
of the court, a door was let into the wall which showed that the court
could be entered from that house. On the third side was a high brick
wall defended by iron spikes. On climbing up a lime tree which grew
by the cistern, we overlooked it, and saw in the court beyond an old
woman seated upon a door-step clad in a red petticoat with a yellow
handkerchief tied about her grey locks smoking a cigar. Her skin
was wrinkled only as an old Portuguese woman's can be, and was as
swarthy as an Indian's. She saw us, and flashing her dark glittering
eye at us, she shook her five fingers at us, and poured forth a volley of
unintelligible jargon, which doubtless contained more curses than blessings.

Having thus taken a survey of the lower ground premises, we discovered
and mounted a flight of stairs which ascended to a balcony on
the outside of the rear of the house. This balcony was a sort of platform
boarded and protected by a strong iron rail. It was six feet broad,
and made a fine promenade. From it opened four windows into the
body of the house. The glass doors were shut, but only latched, and,
opening one of the halves, we entered an apartment that extended the
whole breadth of the rear of the house. It was very different from the
one below. Its floor was of smooth boards, its walls white, and around
it run a very elaborate ornamental cornice in stucco. The

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windowframes were ornamented with carved work, and altogether, the room
had an imposing air. It did not contain, however, an article of furniture,
save the half of a cigar box. We passed through the saloon, for
such it might be called, from its height and dimensions, and entered
the front room over that which had been selected for the `shop.' It
was half the size of the `saloon,' having but two windows fronting the
street. It was a fine chamber with fine ornaments about the windows
and doors; but like the rest it was chilly and desolate. To the right
of it a door led into another room the same size, which also had two
windows upon the street, the two rooms taking up the whole front of
the house as the `saloon' did the rear. The four windows were protected
by double glass doors and barricaded; but on opening the doors
I found that the iron frame-work or grating revolved on hinges also.—
It had a padlock by which it could be locked on the inside; and doubtless
had often been used by some jealous Spanish husband to keep his
cara esposa safe from the wiles of wandering cavaliers.

The window led us upon a balcony similar to that in the rear, but
with a more elegant railing around it. I stood upon it gazing up and
down the narrow street, which looked like one of those I had seen in
old pictures of Spanish or Italian towns. It was straight and narrow,
with sidewalks only before the best houses; and all along as far as the
eye could reach were the ranges of balconies and lines of urns surmounting
the battlements. From some of the windows of the balconies
projected long window shades of green, yellow or scarlet striped
chintz, forming a sort of roof between the windows and the sun to protect
from its rays the ladies who sat within it. These presented, from
their number and variety of colors, a very gay and novel appearance.—
Indeed, all was novelty to our eyes. Every thing around us was different
from any thing in our own New England. The faces, the costumes,
the carriages, the houses, the trees, the sound of voices, the very atmosphere
were different. It seemed as if we had been but yesterday in Boston
and to-day wafted by some magic power into the bosom of these
strange scenes. The voyage seemed as a night's sleep—a vacuum—a
long monotonous dream! We seemed to have laid down to sleep in Boston
harbor, to awake from a dream of water and winds in the Portuguese
city of Monte Video! There was no gradual transition. It was
sudden and as novel as it was abrupt. Our minds were filled with wonder
and curiosity; and as we looked around us we seemed to be gazing
upon some old picture which had suddenly become animate and moving
with life. It must be remembered, too, that we were scarcely eighteen,
an age when the heart and soul drink in novelties as the young plants the
dews.

The streets were thronged with people. Negroes with naked limbs,
and shining shoulders, and soldiers, in flashy uniforms and ferocious
mustaches predominated; and not a few of the latter were Africans;
for it was the system of Don Pedro to enlist blacks in his armies, who
made excellent troops. They are at first domestic slaves, whom he
makes free on condition that they join the army for life. The poor negroes
readily embrace this new bondage, believing that they are free,
when it is only a new and more rigorous form of slavery. We saw

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passing the balcony a knot of British naval officers who had just come ashore,
and also moving up and down the street were many captains of merchant
vessels, and not a few tars in blue jackets and duck trowsers. Now and
then we could see a rich citizen go by wrapped in his velvet cloak and displaying
his jewelled fingers. There were no females save negresses, in
red or yellow turbans, brass bracelets on their naked arms and ancles, and
dressed in short white petticoats and some gay-colored spencer. The
only vehicles were a sorry-looking cart, the body of poles fastened together
with withes, and drawn by mules, some with red ribbon tied to
the tips of their ears. The mules and negroes did most of the carrying.

Seeing upon the roofs of the houses several persons who seemed to
be enjoying the air under awnings stretched over them, we thought we
would try and see if we could find a way to our roof. By going round
the balcony to the other side we came to a flight of steps in the wall
which led us to the roofs. It was perfectly flat and covered with a
cement of fine gravel. It was spacious and enclosed by battlements
three feet high, which were the continuation upward of the four external
walls of the house. At the four corners were four large earthern urns,
five feet in height. The area of the roof was intersected by low walls,
which were the extension of the dividing walls between the rooms below,
so that the roof was divided into compartments answering to those
in the story underneath. In these cross walks were openings to pass
freely from one to the other over the roof. The roofs adjacent to our
own were also flat and only separated from ours by the low battlements;
and so all along the street, both up and down, we had a prospect of flat
roofs, battlements and urns, a singular and picturesque scene, and one
which we gazed upon with emotions novel and pleasing.