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184 puerile exhibition, and the better classes regarded it merely as an occasion for meeting acquaintance.

In the evening we went to the theatre, which opened for the first time. A large building had been commenced in the city, but in one of the revolutions it had been demolished, and the work was abandoned. The performance was in the courtyard of a house. The stage was erected across one of the corners; the patio was the pit, and the corridor was divided by temporary partitions into boxes; the audience sent beforehand, or servants brought with them, their own seats. We had invitations to the box of Señor Vidaurre. Carrera was there, sitting on a bench a little elevated against the wall of the house, and at the right hand of Rivera Paz, the chief of the state. Some of his officers were with him in their showy uniforms, but he had laid his aside, and had on his black bombazet jacket and pantaloons, and was very unpretending in his deportment. The first piece was Saide, a tragedy. The company consisted entirely of Guatimaltecos, and their performance was very good. There was no change of scenery; when the curtain fell, all lighted cigars, ladies included, and, fortunately, there was an open court yard for the escape of the smoke. When the performance was over, the boxes waited till the pit was emptied. Special care had been taken in placing sentinels, and all went home quietly.

During the week there was an attempt at gaiety, but all was more or less blended with religious solemnities. One was that of the Novena, or term of nine days' praying to the Virgin. One lady, who was distinguished for the observance of this term, had an altar built across the whole end of the sala, with three steps, decorated with flowers, and a platform adorned with looking-glasses, pictures, and figures, in the centre of which was an image of the Virgin richly dressed, the whole ornamented in a way impossible for me to describe, but that may be imagined in a place where natural flowers are in the greatest profusion, and artificial ones made more perfect than in Europe, and where the ladies have extraordinary taste in the disposition of them. When I entered the gentlemen were in an ante-room, with hats, canes, and small swords; and in the sala the ladies, with female servants cleanly dressed, were on their knees praying; in front of the fairy altar was one who seemed a fairy herself; and while her lips moved, her bright eye was roving, and she looked more worthy of being kneeled to than the pretty image before her, and as if she thought so too.

In regard to my official business I was perfectly at a loss what to do. In Guatimala all were on one side; all said that there was no Federal Government; and Mr. Chatfield, the British consul-general, whose opinion I respected more, concurred, and had published a circular, denying its existence. But the Federal Government claimed to be in