The plant called _yerba_, the growth of Paraguay and the Brazils, is the tea of Buenos Ayres. They drink it out of a small globe, to which a tube is fixed, nearly as long as our tobacco-pipe; it is called the matté-pot, and the beverage drawn from the yerba, is the _matté_. These pots are generally of silver; and they hand them from one to the other, in drinking--a practice not the most cleanly. When I first saw the tubes in the ladies' mouths, I conceived they were smoking. Matté has not a bad flavour, but nothing equal to tea. It is reported by some to be pernicious to the teeth. In visiting parties it is always handed round. It carries such an idea of the tobacco-pipe, that I do not much admire seeing these matté-pots in the hands of ladies. The general time of meals in Buenos Ayrean families is pretty nearly as follows:--They have _matté_ the first thing, which they often take in bed; at eight or nine, they have what we should call breakfast, beef-steaks, &c.; dinner at two and three; _matté_ at six and seven, followed often by a supper. The fashionable London hours of breakfasting at one and two in the afternoon, and dining at eight and nine in the evening, have not travelled to this quarter of the globe yet. They drink wine out of tumbler glasses. The _siesta_, or afternoon nap, is not so regularly taken as formerly: they have got more into the habits of business, and cannot afford time for sleeping in the day; and it does away with the remark, that, during _siesta_ time, nobody is to be seen in the streets, but Englishmen and dogs. The _siesta_ has its regular season; it is supposed to begin with the summer season, in October, and end at the close of the summer, or passion week. The plodding and industrious world cry out against this practice, as encouraging sloth; but I think a nap after dinner, in warm latitudes, both refreshing and conducive to health. Houses are not provided with the convenience of bells: their servants are summoned either by calling, or making a noise upon the tables. At meals, the servants and slaves are in attendance at the table. They retire to rest, in winter, at ten or eleven; in summer, later, as at this season they enjoy the cool of the evening from the azoteas, or from seats near the windows. A walk in the streets on a fine summer's night is not uninteresting, from the number of ladies walking and at the windows. Evening is the time devoted by ladies to shopping. A night previous to a holiday or Sunday, the shops are crowded. In families of respectability, which have unmarried daughters, weekly _tertulias_, or public dances, are often held during the winter, which, they say, are for the purpose of shewing the young ladies off, and getting them husbands: as I am not in the secret, I only give it as I hear it.