HOMEWARD BOUND — SOUTHWARD. 285 



language. It is the custom of many travelers and becomes 

 natural. It gives one a chance of airing what little he knows ; 

 or rather, of ventilating the much he don't know. But when, 

 after thirty years, the writer revises what he wrote in his youth, 

 he notes how tame were his smart expressions, how vapid his 

 attempts at high-flown description, and how silly his efforts to 

 impress his readers with his lingual lore. So now I " put 

 away childish things " and try to expunge all pedantry, and 

 " call a spade a spade." I gathered one piece of informa- 

 tion, however, that it is one thing to study a language to 

 what you think is proficiency, and another to put it into 

 practice, but I must admit that a few foreign terms and 

 phrases, mixed in, tone up an article and give the writer a 

 reputation for smartness. So I hope the reader will not meet 

 with many non-understandable words or phrases. 



To look at this town, with its low, white buildings, its 

 thatched huts, its tropical vegetation, and its swarthy people, 

 one could easily imagine himself in some country on the 

 Barbary coast, and not in progressive North America and a 

 free republic, and I was much amused and interested in what 

 I saw during my short stay there. 



From the 'plaza and its odd sights I ascended the side of a 

 rocky hill overlooking the town, as well as the bay and its 

 shelter of capes and islands. The lower side of the hill was 

 dotted with straw huts, the lazy owners of which were swing- 

 ing in their hammocks or seated on the ground smoking, 

 while their women were grinding corn and baking the dough 

 therefrom on flat stones set at an angle before an open fire, 

 their naked children the meanwhile rolling in the sand or 

 playing with the gaunt pigs and dogs of the town. Buzzards 

 as big as turkey -gob biers were seated around on projecting 

 rocks, looking pensively on the congenial scenes around, and 

 so tame that they would allow us to come within a few paces, 

 when they would flap their wings, and with a disagree- 



