Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/31

CH. I.] furnished principally with tin and brass articles which I had obtained from the warehouses of the European merchants. I asked the child what metal the tin was: she answered, as I expected, Plata; I then asked her, shewing her a brass saucepan, what she thought that was: she answered, Oro. Although my little friend had this matter-of-course notion of the elegance and splendour of life, there was nothing in her mother's dwelling to correspond with the magnificence of her ideas. A long, dirty, wooden table, so high that, when seated, you were enabled to eat off your plate without raising your hand or stooping, and a bench to correspond, formed the whole of the furniture of the apartment.

Two or three dishes well dressed in the Spanish fashion, some excellent fruit, and a bottle of English port-wine, made the evening pass off very pleasantly; when the table and form were each of them cleared to perform the office of bedsteads.

After breakfast I took leave of Don