It was between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the land breeze had done blowing, and the usual interregnum of calm, previous to the commencement of the sea-breeze, had taken place--the broad bay lay like a huge mirror, varied indeed by the long and regular undulations of the swell from the main ocean, which, though perhaps sufficient to discompose a landman's stomach, would not affect that of a sailor, who would probably testify under oath, that the water was "just as smooth as a mill-pond." The pelican, that grave and contemplative bird, sat on the rocks near the water's edge, with his neck coiled up and stowed away in some recess in his capacious crop, the fish forgetting, or sailed on lazy wings across the bay, to seek some sequestered spot to doze away the time, and digest his huge breakfast--the graceful white crane of Mexico was wading about, flapping her wings, to drive the small fish into shoaler water, where she might pick them up at her leisure--the gaudy Spanish ensign, resembling three flannel petticoats, two red and one yellow, hung lifeless by its staff, as though said petticoats had just got through a hard day's washing--a soldier, with a paper segar in his mouth, was lounging backwards and forwards on that part of the parapet of the battery next the sea, while another, his counterpart, was "doing military duty" in the same soldierly manner on the quay opposite. I may as well explain to the reader now as at a future time, that every collection of houses in South America, however small, has an open space in the centre, called the Plaza; and an American Spaniard could no more conceive of a town or village without such plaza, than he could form one of Mr. Locke's abstract ideas of a horse, which ceases to be an abstract idea the moment it becomes invested with a body, head, legs, mane, tail, saddle, bridle, belly-band, or crupper.