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As I parted from the frank, beautiful Spanish girl, she smiled and
said pleasantly and with an arch manner,

`Senor Americano, if you don't care to bow to the Host, you should
keep within doors when it passes. You have been very rash. You had
better bend the knee than lose a life!'

`Had you, fair Senorita, been the bearer of the sacred wafer I would
willingly have bent the knee, but to you, not to the wafer.'

She laughed and shook her taper finger at me slightly frowning, yet
looking pleased at the bold compliment.

`Adios, senor,' she said hastily, turning from me and re-entering the
drawing-room.

`Vaga usted con Dios!' I responded, and left the patio fully persuaded
I had left my heart behind. But young men between eighteen and
twenty-one, have a good many hearts. At least, they are often deluded,
as it were, by echoes, and it takes them a good while to find out
where really the true heart is.

Upon gaining the street I was unable to find my friends, and so walked
on alone, though not without casting many a look back to the balcony.
She was upon it, and I thought looking after me; but I was
not certain of it, and the idea clearly shows how far I had gone in that
foolish vanity, which is peculiar to the beardless lover. I lingered a
moment at the corner to see if she did not waive her fan, or give me
some sign of recognition, but in vain. So I laughed at myself, and
pursued my way resolved to think no more of her; for what had I, a
soda-shop boy, to do with falling in love with a Spanish beauty belonging
to one of the first families in the city.

At the corner was a pulperia, or grocery, and I bethought me after
passing it a few steps, to return and inquire of the proprietor who
dwelt in the large casa which I had left. The man was seated in his
door, rolling a broad leaf of tobacco into the shape of a cigar. He
was smoking a palpillito, and singing a Portuguese battle song. Upon
his head was a red woollen cap. His dark features stood out beneath
it in bold relief.

`Who lives in that house with the verandah, senor?' I asked in Spanish,
for I had found by experience that the Portuguese well understood
this language while I could make out pretty well their Portuguese.

`That, senor, is the house of Don de Noris,' answered the pulperio,
with courtesy, pausing with his cigar half made, and looking towards
the house.

`Is it a Spanish family?' I asked.

`Si, senor. Don Diego is one of the old Spanish citizens. He is
a rich muchissimo rico. He would have been glad to go up to Buenos
Ayres, but the Governor General keeps him here; for he knows that he
would give his money to help the patriots?'

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`Then he is held as a sort of prisoner?' I asked.

`Yes, but he has liberty to go where he will so that he goes not beyond
the walls; which he would find it hard to do,' added the Portuguese
with a smile.

`I see ladies upon the balcony. Are they his daughters?' I modestly
inquired.

`Don Diego is not married,' answered the man. `He has two sisters
and a neice that form his household.'

`The neice is what age?'

`About seventeen, and a great beauty she is, too, and all the Brazilian
cavaliers are dying for her; but she won't look at them. I dare say
she has a lover among the patriots!'

This idea caused my heart to feel a sudden pang, and a sensation of
an unpleasant kind passed over me. I felt no more desire to ask further
questions, and thanking my talkative informant, I left him to finish
rolling up his tobacco leaf, and wondering if she really had a lover
in the patriot camp. I at length came to the conclusion that she had,
and I resolved that if we ever met, I should hold him as an enemy.—
But at this crisis, the reflection of my situation in Montevideo as a bartender,
made me smile and feel angry at the same moment, and dissipated
at once all my ambitious love dreams.

A horrible discord of musical sounds, now suddenly burst upon my
ear, accompanied by a sort of Indian pow-wow-ing. Looking down a
narrow street, up which the uproar came, I saw an open space between
the foot of the lane and the walls, near which I had strayed, and filling
it, were throngs of Africans, who seemed to be in the height of enjoyment.
As I had seen nearly every other feature of the carnival, I
thought I would be a looker-on here. So traversing the short street
that terminated in the square I entered it. It was a space of about an
acre and a half of hard, well-tramped earth. At least two thousand negroes
were gathered there. They were dressed in the most fantastic
style and in every color of the rainbow. After a general survey to see
what was going on, I at length saw that they were divided into some
score or more of groups, each surrounding a party of dancers. I passed
from one to the other. One of the circles contained about a dozen
negroes of both sexes dancing with the most extraordinary outlay of
muscular exertion and physical activity to the music of banjos (skins
drawn tightly over a hollow log and thumped with a mallet,) congo castinets,
and other instruments, as rude in their construction at they were
noisy. Every group had its banjo and castanets, and these being assisted
by a continual pow-wow of voices, the uproar of noises diabolical
may easily be conceived. I never before heard such infernal
sounds. The dancers, some of them, were nearly naked, exhibiting
barbarously tattooed bodies. One fellow bad the sun, moon, and any
quantity of stars tattooed upon his breast and back. Some of the
women's faces looked as if a hot gridiron had been placed upon them.
They were all, too, such hideous Guinea-nigger looking heathens! I
noticed that the dances, features and costumes of nearly every group
were dissimilar, and upon inquiry was told by a complacent Spaniard
who was looking on and smoking, that the negroes were from as many

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tribes in Africa, as I saw groups assembled there. He informed me
that the poor slaves retained here in their land of bondage, in a great
degree, their distinction of tribes, and that on holidays they met together
to perform their dances, which perhaps, said he, are heathenish
rites.

Having obtained this information, I looked on with greater interest,
and once more made the round of the place, comparing the looks of
one tribe, with those of another. With this view, I was enabled without
difficulty, to observe a wide difference between the tribes. The
Congo negroes were short, flat footed with long heels and ape-like
arms, and as bandy-legged as baboons. They were hideously ugly,
with noses flattened to the face and enormous lips. The Mangoes
were tall, well-formed, black as a polished boot, had prominent features,
and looked like men of fierce dispositions, while the females
were rather good looking, with fine eyes and teeth. The Mandangoes
were generally lazy, with sleepy eyes, square heads, and a brick brown
color of the skin. They also had beards, which the other two tribes
had not. I noticed in particular the negroes from the Gold coast.—
They looked not unlike the Creek Indians, only blacker; but their
hair was long and but slightly crisped, and their profiles bold and strong,
some of the men having beak-like noses and high, bald foreheads.—
One of them had quite a martial air. He stood looking on with an
aspect of stern indifference. I set him down for a chief, both on account
of his appearance and a sort of deference which the rest paid
him. He was full six feet in height, finely formed, and leaned upon a
long staff. Upon his head was bound a scarlet handkerchief, and he
wore an open shirt of blue and red calico, over white trowsers rolled
up to the knees. He was a black Apollo in symmetry and noble physical
developments.

Some of the old women which were seated on the ground beating
hollow sticks together, looked like old she devils, wrinkled, grey, haggard,
and their naked paps hanging down like ponches a foot long.—
They kept up a see-sawing with their bodies, and uttering all the time
a monotonous ye-yah-yeaw that was doleful enough for music to dance
by. The dances were generally mere tramps of the feet, varied with
fantastic and uncouth gestures. One party seemed to me to do nothing
but pad round in a ring at a sort of lock step, yelling a shrill note
at every foot fall, while the sweat ran down their naked bodies like rain.
And such an odor. It would have taken a river of Cologne to have
purified the atmosphere. I breathed by a sort of internal process so
as not to inhale the surcharged atmosphere. It is a curious fact that
some of the negro tribes do not exhale that peculiar pungent odor
which seems to be the native atmosphere of the individual African.—
I saw subsequently some negroes of tribes near Timbucto that emitted
none of this from their skins. These are selected as domestic slaves,
for the olfactories of the inhabitants of the country are quite as sensitive
as ours. Some of the negroes, however, of one tribe in particular,
the name of which I fortunately forget, for if I had kept it in my
memory it would have carried an odor with it, some of this tribe will
render an apartment uninhabitable by merely passing through it. But

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if I say more upon this dark subject, I fear that the reader will have to
fumigate my paper before he can proceed farther.

Leaving then this scene of African revels, where no `sweet south
breathes upon a bank of violets,' I pursued my way along the inside of
the walls, which rose massive and strong on my right. From the top,
the sentries were looking down into the square and watching the dances.
I passed the gate out of which I had sallied with the cavalry, and
then entering the street of San Pedro proceeded towards the centre of
the town. I came soon upon a lively portion of the street, which contained
some of the best houses, and met maskers with music going before
them who made themselves merry at the expense of the passers-by,
I saw many beautiful ladies upon the verandah, which were gay with
awnings and decorated with flowers and streamers of silk. As I turned
into the street where our `shop' was situated, I saw quite a movement
of people near it, while loud peals of laughter proceeded from
them. As I came near, I beheld three or four officers belonging to the
frigate Doris, then laying in the outer roads, scaling a balcony filled
with ladies.

I forgot to say, and I will do it here, that one of the great causes of
sport on the carnival days is colored eggs. The yolks are removed,
the shells dyed blue, green, yellow, red or parti-colored, and filled with
rose water the ends sealed up, and boys and girls go about selling them
by scores. They are bought by every body, though in many families
where there are roguish girls, they are prepared at home; and the
sport is, for the ladies to pelt the gentlemen with them from the balconies
as they pass along the streets. If any gentleman thus bombarded,
can succeed in scaling a balcony in face of the brisk fire from half
a dozen handsome ladies, who are supplied with amunition from baskets
held by slaves, they are entitled to a kiss.

Directly opposite to our shop was the residence of an old Spanish
merchant, Don Pedro Lamas, who had three pretty daughters who were
much visited by the English and American navy officers. They were
of the ages of seventeen, nineteen and twenty-one. I knew them by
sight, indeed, had formed a sort of eye, smile and bow acquaintance
with them when they were on their balcony or promenading the roof,
and we upon ours. Once they had despatched a slave for soda, which
I laughingly sent; but as they did not send a second time, I rightly
judged that not a globule of effervescence was in the glass when it
reached them. Their curiosity was satisfied. But to the cause of the
excitement which I now witnessed in the street.