70 THE FATIIEK-MOIHER. 



tined for lodging travellers ; and, as our travellers often 

 experienced, infinitely valuable in a country where the 

 name of an inn was unknown. 



The missionary of San Fernando was a Capuchin, a 

 native of Aragon, far advanced in years, but strong and 

 healthy. His extreme corpulency, his hilarity, the in 

 terest he took in battles and sieges, ill accorded with the 

 ideas we form of the melancholy reveries and the con- 

 templative life of missionaries. Though extremely busy 

 about a cow which was to be killed next day, the old 

 monk received Humboldt and Bonpland with kindness, 

 and permitted them to hang up their hammocks in a 

 gallery of his house. Seated, without doing anything, 

 the greater part of the day, in an arm-chair of red wood, 

 he complained bitterly of what he called the indolence and 

 ignorance of his countrymen. The sight of Humboldt's 

 instruments, and books, and the dried plants of Bon- 

 pland drew from him a sarcastic smile ; and he acknow- 

 ledged, with the naivete peculiar to the inhabitants of 

 those countries, that of all the enjoyments of life, without 

 excepting sleep, none was comparable to the pleasure 

 of eating good beef 



In the village of Arenas, at which they next arrived, 

 lived a labourer, Francisco Lozano, who presented a curi- 

 ous physiological phenomenon. This man had suckled 

 a child with his own milk. The mother havins^ fallen 

 sick, the father, to quiet the infant, took it into bed, and 

 pressed it to his bosom. Lozano, then thirty -two years 

 of age, had never before remarked that he had milk: 

 but the irritation of the nipple, sucked by the child, 

 caused the accumulation of that liquid. The milk was 

 thick and very sweet. Astonished at the increased size 



