CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOUSES 57 



After having dwelt in a house surrounded by a garden, 

 with open galleries on all sides, and the flimsiest of 

 jalousied windows, one feels instinctively, on seeing for 

 the first time the squares of solid walls forming the 

 blocks of buildings, each house with its single doorway 

 and its heavily barred windows, that he is visiting a land 

 of lawlessness and violence. And yet the origin of these 

 iron- barred windows is not connected with the idea of 

 resisting an assault or of being a means of protection 

 during a riot, however useful such defences may be in 

 times of disturbance now. The style of architecture 

 adopted all over Spanish-America, from Mexico in the 

 north to Chili and Argentina in the south, is essentially 

 Moorish. In the heavily barred windows and the single 

 entrance to the patio ^ we are in the presence of a system 

 of construction which answered the Mohammedan purpose 

 of secluding and keeping strict watch over the women of 

 the household. The Spanish-American has retained the 

 barred windows and the single entrance, but his women- 

 folk sit by the hour at their windows chatting with the 

 young men who pay informal calls in this manner. We 

 can imagine the scene that would take place in any 

 Moorish family if one of the ladies showed herself at the 

 window even for a few minutes. I was still musing on 

 the hold that customs once adopted continue to exert 

 on a people long after the reasons for them have ceased 

 to exist, when I reached the counting-house of the 

 Hendersons. Jesse, the younger, had gone to New York ; 

 the elder brother, Eobert, insisted on my putting-up with 

 him during my stay at Ciud ad-Bolivar. After lunch we 

 went to the Custom-house, as I was desirous of having 

 my things passed through so that we might repack and 



' An open courtyard, usually planted with shrubs and flowering plants. 



