Ch.XVIL] FREE HOSPITALITY. 311 



covered that he actually did not know himself where it 



V 



was, but was seeking for another man to show him. "We 

 at last arrived at the house of this man, but he was 

 ajbsent. A boy showed us a small piece of the limestone. 

 It was concretionary, and I learnt from him that it 

 occurred in veins. I was vexed about the time we had 

 lost, and the extra work we had given the poor mules ; 

 my only consolation was that as we rode back I 

 picked a fine new longicorn beetle off the leaves of an 

 overhanging tree. 



"When we came to settle up with our host he proposed 

 to charge us twenty-five cents, just one shilling, or four- 

 pence each. They had given us a good dinner and put 

 themselves to much inconvenience to provide me with a 

 bedstead, and this was their modest charge. Nor did 

 they make it with any expectation that we would give 

 more. It is the universal custom amongst the Mestizo 

 peasantry to entertain travellers ; to give them the best 

 they have and to charge for the bare value of the pro- 

 visions, and nothing for the lodging. "We could so de- 

 pend upon the hospitality of the lower classes that every 

 day we travelled on without any settled place to pass the 

 night, convinced that we should be received with welcome 

 at any hut that we might arrive at when our mules got 

 tired or night came on. The only place in the whole 

 journey where we had been received with hesitation was 

 at the Indian house a day's journey beyond Olama. 

 There the people were pure Indians, and other circum- 

 stances made me conclude that the Indians were not so 

 hospitable as the Mestizos. 



"We finally started about nine o'clock and rode over 

 dry savannahs, where although there was little grass I 



