DUST AND DULNESS. 
41 
Chap. III.—B. S.] 
Tlie houses of Leon are nearly all but one story 
high, and built of sun-dried bricks, or adobes , and 
somewhat in the Moorish style, there being a large 
square yard, in the centre of the houses, surrounded by 
a broad verandah, on to which all the rooms open out. 
There are no glazed windows, but merely iron bars, 
and wooden shutters inside, which are generally closed 
in the middle of the day to keep out heat and dust. 
For seven or eight months of the year the dust is a 
terrible nuisance, tremendous clouds of it being raised 
as soon as the wind sets in about nine o’clock in the 
morning, and densely covering everything inside the 
houses. The yards, or pateos, are, in some instances, 
neatly kept as gardens, where one finds a few plan¬ 
tain, orange, pomegranate, soursop, and mango-trees, 
as well as roses, cockscombs, gomphrenes, frangipanis, 
jessamines, and Polianthes tuberosa; highly-scented 
flowers seeming to be those most cultivated. During 
the dry season these plants require constant irrigation, 
the water being obtained from deep wells, of which 
there is generally one in every yard; but this water 
is not thought to be fit to drink, river-water being 
used for that purpose, and this is carried on the heads 
of women to every house, at a ten times greater an¬ 
nual expense than we incur for our copious supplies 
in London. 
Leon is an extremely dull place, as far as amuse¬ 
ments are concerned. The men who can afford it keep 
a horse or a mule, and take a ride early in the morn¬ 
ing, or after four o’clock in the afternoon, showing off 
their horsemanship and fancy saddlery; but as the 
