squares is enclosed by what appears to be a solid adobe wall with doors and windows. This wall extends from corner to corner, all around the square, and is from thirty to forty feet high. It stands right on the edge of the narrow sidewalk, and has overhanging eaves and balconies. This is as it appears to the stranger; but in reality it is the united fronts of the houses. The division walls, equally thick and strong, start at right angles from the inner side, and extend back to about midway the block, where another high wall separates the abutting premises. The only entrance from the street is through a very wide double door, or porton, as it is called, which opens directly on the sidewalk. A wide and well-paved hallway leads from this entrance through a second door, or porton, into a wide corridor, and thence back through an inner court to the rear of the premises. In the first corridor is a wide stairway, usually of stone or tile, which leads up to the corridors of the second story of the building, which is properly the family residence. On this second story corridor, which extends all around the four sides of the hollow square, or patio, open the rooms of the dwelling. The drawing-room and parlors open upon street balconies on one side and the patio and corridor on the other. The dining-hall is usually just opposite, on the farther side of the patio. The bed-chambers and sitting-rooms are between, on both sides of the patio. The kitchen, pantry, etc., are back of the dining-hall, and open upon a second court or patio. The style of architecture is uniform, oldfashioned, comfortable, admirably adapted to this mild and equable climate, and affords absolute privacy. When the great front door, or porton, is shut and bolted, the house is a veritable "castle," no less in reality. than by legal fiction.

There are no tenement houses as such, and few cot

tages for the poorer classes. The ground floors of the fronts of the large houses are generally subdivided into small apartments, or tiendas, which open directly on the sidewalk. In the business part of the city these tiendas are rented as shops, offices, and stores; those more remote are rented to poor families for residences. In the case last named, the room is rarely more than fifteen or twenty feet square, and has no ventilation whatever except through the open front door or a little twelve by fourteen inch window on the same side. There is neither door nor window on the opposite or inner side, for that would of course destroy the privacy of the mansion above. Neither are there any of the ordinary appliances for cooking. The same room usually serves as kitchen, dining-room, parlor, and bedroom. There are none of the ordinary arrangements for the convenience or necessities of the smallest family; and as there are no public privies, the cañoes in the public streets are sometimes used by the common people for that purpose. It seems almost incredible that such a condition of affairs should exist in a large city where there is so much culture and refinement amongst the upper classes; where even the poor classes are civil and courteous, and where the external forms of religion are so generally and so rigidly observed by all classes and conditions of people.

The sidewalks, as I have said, are rarely wide enough for two persons to pass each other. People walk single file, Indian and Chinese fashion. When two pedestrians meet, one "takes the wall" and the other the gutter; and this not unfrequently gives rise to childish contentions, such as were common in the streets of old Edinburgh three or four centuries ago. When you see two men standing facing each other in the middle of the street, each gesticulating with hat in hand, and insisting upon giving the other the narrow sidewalk, you know

at once that both feel secure in their social position. But if you happen to meet your neighbor's cook, or the butcher, or some parvenu who has not yet learned enough to imitate the manners of a gentleman, the best thing to do is to slip quietly down into the gutter, and "let the sovereign pass"!

Up to within the past few years vehicles were never seen on the public streets; for the rough cobble-stone pavements were not constructed with reference to any such modern innovations. Gentlemen went on foot or rode horseback; and when the ladies did not walk or ride horseback, they rode in palanquins borne by two lusty peons. Boxes and barrels and heavy packages of merchandise were borne through the streets on the backs of donkeys or the shoulders of porters. All building material was transported in the same way, except the long wooden beams for girders and rafters, which were dragged through the streets by oxen in the most primitive manner. During the past few years, however, two or three of the principal thoroughfares have been neatly paved with Belgian blocks or with asphalt; and a few well-to-do people now keep private carriages, though they seldom use them. Even the public omnibuses and hacks are little used except for short excursions to the neighboring towns and villages.

The tramway, or street railroad, is another innovation of comparatively recent date. As yet it is limited to one or two avenues leading out to the suburban villages, some miles distant from the city. The original plan was, I believe, to extend branch lines through all the principal streets; but in this bright and genial climate, where the atmosphere is cool and exhilarating, and where one hundred thousand people are crowded into a small space, street railways are neither a luxury nor a necessity. People prefer to walk, and would hardly ride

in street cars even if paid to do so. Indeed, walking here, at all hours of the day, is regarded as a sort of luxury and pleasant recreation; and every morning and evening the thoroughfares and parks are crowded with well-dressed people of both sexes and all ages, who walk about by the hour merely for the sake of out-door exercise. Ladies go to early mass or to vespers with the regularity of clockwork, but always on foot; or if it should happen to be raining, the older and feebler ones will go to church in their palanquins. The clergy all walk, and the family physician walks when he does not go on horseback.

The great central plaza bears the name of Bolívar,1 in honor of General Símon Bolívar the Libertador. On its southern limits stands the new capitol building, still in an unfinished state though begun thirty years ago, a plain but well-proportioned structure of white granite. On the east side is the metropolitan cathedral; and adjoining this grand old edifice, on the same side of the plaza, is the ancient palace of the Spanish viceroys, now used as shops and offices.

The cathedral is said to occupy the identical site whereon stood the first Christian chapel established in the city in 1538. This primitive chapel was built by the Spanish conqueror, Quesada, who, in addition to his military title, was a licentiate. He was a devoted churchman, but had the usual vices of his times, though none of the coarse and brutal instincts of the illiterate and vicious Pizarro. Facing the plaza from the west side is a huge old three-story building, extending clear across the square, known as the Portalis. It is one of the ancient landmarks of the city, and is now occupied as retail stores, hotels, and business offices. On the north side is the Club House and a number of fine

1 Pronounced Bo-leé-var.

stores. In the centre of the plaza is a fine bronze statue of General Bolívar, said to be an excellent likeness. The sad, thoughtful face, with deep-furrowed lines and wrinkled brow is turned, as if in mute reproach, towards the old executive mansion through a high window of which he once leaped at the dead hour of midnight, in order to escape the assassin.

The great Plaza de los Martiros ("plaza of the martyrs") is near the outskirts of the western limits of the city. The place is so named in honor of the memory of the patriots who were murdered here in a most brutal manner by General Murillo, one of the royalist chiefs in the war of independence. A few years ago it was an open common, the depository of dead cats and dogs, and frequented only by superannuated donkeys. In 1881, it was reclaimed by the city and converted into a beautiful park, in the centre of which now stands a tall granite shaft. Neither pains nor expense was spared to make it an attractive place of popular resort, but all to no purpose. People seem to instinctively avoid it. Children will not play there, and no one ever thinks of going there for a promenade. Perhaps, after all, this is not strange. Some places, like some individuals, are repulsive by reason of mere association of ideas, and around this particular spot hover the saddest of memories. During the Revolution it was a veritable Golgotha, and for half a century afterwards it was the scene of judicial murders. And it continued to be a sort of executioner's ground till the early sixties, when capital punishment was abolished by constitutional provision.

Not a great way from this tragic spot, some three or four squares to the southward, is another noted place, known as "Ninguna Parte." It is now and has been • Literally, "Nowhere."

2