balloon! Such burning white walls, such an
intolerable patch of intense blue, must a prisoner
by name Poerio have seen in Naples, in the old
bad Bourbon time.

There was nothing prison-like about our
patio, however. It was as full of life as our
bedrooms were full of fleas. The oddest court-
yard!—the most antique—the most grotesque.
I used to liken it to that pound into which
Captain Boldwig's keepers wheeled Mr.
Pickwick while he got into that sweet slumber
produced by too much milk-punch. It was strewn
with all manner of vegetable and pomicultural
refuse, great leaves of plantains, cocoa-nut
shells, decayed pine-apples, exhaused melons,
and husks of Indian corn. Havana is a great
place for oysters, and the four corners of the
pound were heaped high with votive offerings of
ostracism. Nor to the pound was there wanting
the traditional donkey. He would come
strolling in three or four times a day, either
bearing a pile of Indian corn about the size of
an average haystack on his back, or with
panniers full of oranges slung on either side of
him. Occasionally a Pepo or a José, or some
other criador, would come to unload him.
Oftener he would unload himself, by rolling
over on the ground, and tumbling his oranges
about in all directions; then a fat negress would
emerge from the kitchen and belabour him about
the head with a ladle; then he would slink
away to the cool grot where the horse lived, to
confer with that animal as to any provender there
might be about, and compare notes with him as to
the growing depravity of mankind in general and
Cuban costermongers in particular. By this
time his master would arrive with a sharp
stick, or else the big bloodhound that lived in
an empty sugar-cask, and so zealously licked all
the plates and dishes either immediately before
or immediately after they came from the table—
I am not certain which—would become alive to
the fact of there being a donkey in the camp,
and run him out incontinent.

How they managed to get rid of all those
oranges I really do not know. I had a dozen
or so brought me whenever I felt thirsty, and
I dare say the other guests at El Globo were as
often thirsty and as fond of oranges as I; and
there were a good many, too, cut up in the course
of the day for the purpose of making sangaree
and orange-toddy; but even after these draughts
the residue must have been enormous. You
were never charged for oranges in the bill.
They were as plentiful as acorns in a forest,
and you might browse on them at will. In the
streets, at every corner and under every archway,
sits a negress who sells oranges, so they
must have some monetary value, however
infinitesimal; but if you bestow on her the
smallest coin recognised by the Cuban currency
you may fill your hands, your pockets, and your
hat too, if you choose, with the golden fruit.
When the Cuban goes to the bull-fight, he takes
with him a mighty store of oranges tied up in a
pocket-handkerchief, just as we, when boys, used
to buy a pound of gingerbread-nuts, more as a
precautionary measure than because we were
sweet-toothed, on entering the confines of Greenwich
Fair. Some of these oranges the amateur
of the bull-fight eats; but the major part he
uses as missiles, and pitches into the ring, at a
cowardly bull or clumsy toreadores. There is
positively a verb in the Spanish dictionary
signifying to pelt with oranges.

I mentioned the existence of a kitchen just
now. It was a hot and grimy den, not much
bigger than the stoke-hole of a locomotive; and
there was a charcoal stove there, I presume; but
the real culinary business was done in the patio.
As to go forth during the noonday or afternoon
heats is considered next door to raving madness;
and as you necessarily spend much time within
doors; and as you feel too lazy to read, or write, or
paint, or sew—what a blessing sewing-machines
must be in Cuba: before their introduction most
of the needlework was done by Coolies—and as
you cannot be always smoking, or dozing, or
sipping sangaree; and as billiards are out of the
question, and as gambling—the real recreation in
all tropical climes—is immoral, there are certain
hours in the day when time is apt to hang heavy
on your hands, and you don't know what the
deuce to do with yourself. An infallible pastime
to me was to lean over the gallery and watch
the dinner being cooked in the patio. It has
been said that a wise man should never enter
his wife's dressing-room, and it has been like-
wise remarked that if we entered the kitchen of
the Trois Frères half an hour before dinner, we
should see such sickening sights as would cause
us to lose all our appetite for the banquet served
in the cabinet particulier up-stairs. We must look
at results, says the sage, and not at the means
employed to bring them about. But these
sententious caveats should not apply, I think, to
the cooking that is done in a patio—in the
open, and under the glorious sunshine. There
was a rollicking, zingaro-like freedom in
thus seeing your meals prepared in broad
daylight. Why did they cook in the court-
yard? Because the kitchen itself was too
small, or because the gary sun came to the
assistance of the charcoal embers and did half
the cooking himself. I was told lately, and
gravely, too, at Seville—though the tale may be
very likely one of the nature ordinarily told to
travellers that—on the fourteenth day of July
in every year there takes place in la Ciudad de
las Maravillas an ancient and solemn ceremony
in honour of Apollo—a kind of sun-worship, as
it were: a culinary person, white-aproned and
white-nightcapped, sets up a stall in La Plaza
de la Magdalena, and produces a frying-pan, a
cruse of oil, and a basket of eggs. Two of the
eggs he breaks; sluices their golden yolks with
oil, and then with an invocation to the sun-god,
holds the pan towards the meridian blaze. In
forty-five seconds the eggs are fried. You must
take these eggs and the story too with a grain
of salt; but I can only repeat that Seville is a
city of wonders, witness the two angelic sisters
who, no later than the year 1848, sat on the
weathercock of the Giraida, and spinning round