Men eat there as though it were the only solace of their life, and women also. Probably it is so.

They never talk at meals. A man and his wife may interchange a word or two as to the dishes; or men coming from the same store may whisper a syllable as to their culinary desires; but in an ordinary way there is no talking. I myself generally am not a mute person at my meals; and having dined at sundry tables d'hôte, have got over in a great degree that disinclination to speak to my neighbour which is attributed-I believe wrongly to Englishmen. But at St. Thomas I took it into my head to wait till I was spoken to, and for a week I sat, twice daily, between the same persons without receiving or speaking a single word.

I shall not soon forget the stout lady who sat opposite to me, and who was married to a little hooked-nosed Jew, who always accompanied her. Soup, fish, and then meat is the ordinary rule at such banquets; but here the fashion is for the guests, having curried favour with the waiters, to get their plates of food brought in and put round before them in little circles; so that a man while taking his soup may contemplate his fish and his roast beef, his wing of fowl, his allotment of salad, his peas and potatoes, his pudding, pie, and custard, and whatever other good things a benevolent and well-fee'd waiter may be able to collect for him. This somewhat crowds the table, and occasionally it becomes necessary for the guest to guard his treasures with an eagle's eye; -hers also with an eagle's eye, and sometimes with an eagle's talon.

This stout lady was great on such occasions. "A bit of that," she would exclaim, with head half turned round, as a man would pass behind her with a dish, while she was in the very act of unloading within her throat a

whole knifeful charged to the hilt. The efforts which at

first affected me as almost sublime as dinner went on.

ridiculous advanced to the There was no shirking, no

half measures, no slackened pace as the breath became short. The work was daily done to the final half-pound of cheese.

Cheese and jelly, guava jelly, were always eaten together. This I found to be the general fashion of St. Thomas. Some men dipped their cheese in jelly; some ate a bit of jelly and then a bit of cheese; some topped up with jelly and some topped up with cheese, all having it on their plates together. But this lady she must have spent years in acquiring the exercise-had a knack of involving her cheese in jelly, covering up by a rapid twirl of her knife a bit about an inch thick, so that no cheesy surface should touch her palate, and then depositing the parcel, oh, ever so far down, without dropping above a globule or two of the covering on her bosom.

Her lord, the Israelite, used to fight hard too; but the battle was always over with him long before the lady showed even a sign of distress. He was one of those flashy weedy animals that make good running for a few yards and are then choked off. She was game up to the winning-post. There were many animals running at those aces, but she might have given all the others the odds of a pound of solid food, and yet have beaten them.

But then, to see her rise from the table! Well; pace and extra weight together will distress the best horse that ever was shod!

Over and above this I found nothing of any general interest at St. Thomas.

R

CHAPTER XVI.

NEW GRANADA, AND THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA.

Ir is probably known to all that New Granada is the most northern of the republics of South America; or it should rather be said that it is the state nearest to the isthmus, of which indeed it comprehends a considerable portion; the territory of the Gulf of Darien and the district of Panamá all being within the limits of New Granada.

It was, however, but the other day that New Granada formed only a part of the republic of Columbia, the republic of which Bolivar was the hero. As the inhabitants of Central America found it necessary to break up their state into different republics, so also did the people of Columbia. The heroes and patriots of Caracas and Quito could not consent to be governed from Bogotá; and therefore three states were formed out of one. They are New Granada, with its capital of Bogotá; Venezuela, with its capital of Caracas, lying exactly to the east of New Granada; and Ecuador-the state, that is, of Equator-lying to the south of New Granada, having its seaport at Guayaquil on the Pacific, with Quito, its chief city, exactly on the line.

The district of Columbia was one of the grandest

appanages of the Spanish throne when the appanages of the Spanish throne were grand indeed. The town and port of Cartagena, on the Atlantic, were admirably fortified, as was also Panamá on the Pacific. Its interior cities were populous, flourishing, and, for that age, fairly civilized. Now the whole country has received the boon of Utopian freedom; and the mind loses itself in contemplating to what lowest pitch of human degradation the people will gradually fall.

Civilization here is retrograding. Men are becoming more ignorant than their fathers, are learning to read less, to know less, to have fewer aspirations of a high order; to care less for truth and justice, to have more and more of the contentment of a brute,—that contentment which comes from a full belly and untaxed sinews; or even from an empty belly, so long as the sinews be left idle.

To what this will tend a prophet in these days can hardly see; or rather none less than a prophet can pretend to see. That those lands which the Spaniards have occupied, and to a great extent made Spanish, should have no higher destiny than that which they have already accomplished, I can hardly bring myself to think. That their unlimited fertility and magnificent rivers should be given for nothing; that their power of producing all that man wants should be intended for no use, I cannot believe. At present, however, it would seem that Providence has abandoned it. It is making no progress. Land that was cultivated is receding from cultivation ; cities that were populous are falling into ruins; and men are going back into animals, under the influence of unlimited liberty and universal suffrage

In 1851 emancipation from slavery was finally established in New Granada; and so far, doubtless, a

in short, all

And the re

As far as I

good deed was done. But it was established at the same time that every man, emancipated slave or other, let him be an industrial occupier of land, or idle occupier of nothing, should have an equal vote in electing presidents and members of the Federal Congress, and members of the Congress of the different states; that, men should be equal for all state purposes. sult, as may be supposed, is not gratifying. am able to judge, a negro has not generally those gifts of God which enable one man to exercise rule and masterdom over his fellow-men. I myself should object strongly to be represented, say in the city of London, by any black man that I ever saw. "The unfortunate nigger gone masterless," whom Carlyle so tenderly commiserates, has not strong ideas of the duties even of selfgovernment, much less of the government of others. Universal suffrage in such hands can hardly lead to good results. Let him at any rate have first saved some sixty pounds in a savings-bank, or made himself undoubted owner-an easy thing in New Granada-of a forty-shilling freehold !

Not that pure-blooded negroes are common through the whole of New Granada. At Panamá and the adjacent districts they are so; but in the other parts of the republic they are, I believe, few in number. At Santa Martha, where I first landed, I saw few, if any. And yet the trace of the negroes, the woolly hair and flat nose, were common enough, mixed always with Indian blood, and of course to a great extent with Spanish blood also.

This Santa Martha is a wretched village-a city it is there called-at which we, with intense cruelty, maintain a British Consul, and a British post-office. There is a cathedral there of the old Spanish order, with the choir removed from the altar down towards the western door;