_ My fellow-countrymen and their visit
to the town was the principal topic of conversation. They regarded
their English neighbours as strange and dangerous creatures, who took
no solid food, but subsisted on a mixture of rum and gunpowder (which
was the truth), and who were armed with deadly engines called revolvers,
invented specially for them by their father the devil. The day's
experience convinced me that the English colony had some excuse forits
existence, since its periodical visits gave the good people of
Tolosa a little wholesome excitement during the stagnant intervals
between the revolutions.
At night we all turned into a large room with a clay floor, in which
there was not a single article of furniture. Our saddles, rugs, and
_ponchos_ had all been thrown together in a corner, and anyone wishing
to sleep had to make himself a bed with his own horse-gear and toggery
as best he could. The experience was nothing new to me, so I soon made
myself a comfortable nest on the floor, and, pulling off my boots,
coiled myself up like an opossum that knows nothing better and is
friendly with fleas. My friends, however, were evidently bent on making
a night of it, and had taken care to provide themselves with three or
four bottles of rum. After conversation, with an occasional song, had
been going on for some time, one of them--a Mr. Chillingworth--rose
to his feet and demanded silence.
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