him I explained that I wanted a blue pill.
Hereupon he took down a book of prescriptions,
and set to work to find out how to
make it. After some search, he began
compounding the pills with pestle and mortar. As I
had no great faith in his knowledge, I thought I
would take a peep at the book, which was in
Spanish, for, to quote a certain advertisement, " I
could read and write Spanish, though I could
not yet speak it." What was my horror,
when I discovered that the apothecary was
making me up a pill for leprosy! " Oh!" I
exclaimed, "by-the-by, I think I won't trouble you
to compound that pill for me;" and, snatching
up a box, labelled "Brandreth's Pills," I
paid him for it, and walked off, too glad to
escape. This German had, no doubt, failed in
some other métier, and had taken up a trade
in drugs without knowing much about them.
Before I left America I saw empirics more than
enough.

After experiencing the disagreeables of the
sea-shore promenade at La Guaira, I took to
climbing the mountain for a constitutional. So
disinclined are the Venezuelans to exercise,
that I had the greatest difficulty in persuading
a friend to accompany me. He was a very
handsome, tall, well-made fellow, and the son
of an Englishman, but, having been bom in
the country, had much of the Creole
indolence in his nature. We used to ascend about
twelve hundred feet, and for that distance there
was a succession of forts; one of these, the
Cerro Colorado, completely commanded the town.
These forts now lie in ruins, having been taken
by the revolutionary forces in 1859. They had
three columns of one thousand men each, and
came down from the heights to the attack.
About one hundred and fifty men were killed on
both sides, and the dead were all buried in one
common grave. The man who fought best in
the whole force engaged, was a gigantic negro
artilleryman on the side of the aristocrats, who
occupied the forts. He did a good deal of
execution with his gun, which, even after he was
wounded in many places, he continued to fire.
At last he was struck on the back by a large
ball from a swivel-gun, while he was in the act
of re-loading his cannon. When they came to
collect the corpses for interment he was
found still breathing, and was taken to a
doctor, from whom I heard the whole story, and
who assured me that, though tetanus
supervened, the negro recovered from his wounds.
"This," said the medico, "was the only case
of recovery from lock-jaw that I have ever
witnessed."

After toiling up the mountain by a steep
zigzag path, we used to descend a ravine, in which
flows a rivulet dignified by the name of the Rio
de la Guaira. This stream is usually about ten
inches deep, but sometimes is swelled by the
rains into a formidable torrent. Thus, in 1810,
it swelled suddenly, after a heavy rain in the
mountains, to a stream ten feet deep, and swept
away property to the value of half a million of
dollars, as well as many persons, of whom forty
were drowned. There is a sickly yellow-feverish
smell in this ravine; nevertheless, numbers of
people bathe in the pools it forms at every
broad ledge of rock. One of these pools is
called the Consul's Bath, owing to a piece of
scandal in which an English Lurline was
concerned. Of the three routes to Carácas from
La Guaira, the shortest, but most difficult and
dangerous, passes for some distance up this
ravine. It is called the Indian's Path, and is
actually that which was used by the Indians
before the Spanish conquest. Between it and
the present coach-road is the road which was
in use when Humboldt visited the country.
I was anxious to make trial of all three,
but being invited to breakfast at the
Rincon, or Corner, a pretty country-seat beyond
Maquetia, I determined to go by that road
first.

It was nine A.M., on the 10th of July, when
I left La Guaira, accompanied by my friend
and Juan. The sun was terrifically hot, but the
prospect of being jolted over the chaotic road to
Maquetia being more terrible still, we resolved
to walk to the Rincon, and let the coach, which
we had engaged for our exclusive use, pick us
up there. The said coach appeared to be
considerably smaller than the smallest four-wheeled
cab in London, and was so vamped up, and
moved so heavily, and with such a flapping of
doors, that I quite agreed with Juan, when he,
unconscious of a pun, called out to the driver
to get on with his vampiro. We walked, as I
have said, to Maquetia, and turned gladly out
of its dirty streets up a lane bursting with
flowering shrubs, which led to the Rincon.
Presently, we were aware of two female figures
ahead of us, the figures evidently of two young
and well-shaped Creole ladies. Before long, one
of them dropped a kerchief and a prayer-book,
which I picked up, and found they belonged to
la Señorita Trinidad Smith. Not being used to
Spanish nomenclature, Trinity struck me as a
curious Christian name, but my friend told me it
was nothing to what I should meet with. Thus
Dolores, or Pangs, is a most favourite baptismal
appellation; and even Dolores Fuertes, Strong
Pangs, is not uncommon. These strange
christian appellations sometimes yield a
curious sense when added to certain proper
names. C. gave me, as an instance, the
case of a lady christened Dolores Fuertes,
who married a gentleman named Battiga, thus
the whole name stood Strong Pangs of the
Stomach.

The Rincon is a pretty little country-house,
very like an Indian bangla, at the foot of a deep
ravine in the mountain. All around were trees
and shrubs in profusion, so that it was really
"life in the bush." On my proposing to take
a walk in the garden, the lady of the house
said, very naïvely, that there were a great
many snakes there, particularly rattlesnakes: an