or Cadiz! There hangs our smelling-bottle _bota_, now a pleasure of memory; it has had its day, and is never again to be filled in torrid, thirsty Spain, nor emptied, which is better. This _Bota_, from whence the terms _Butt_ of sherry, _bouteille_, and bottle are derived, is the most ancient Oriental leathern bottle alluded to in Job xxxii. 19, “My belly ready to burst like new bottles;” and in the parable, Matt. ix. 17, about the old ones, the force and point of which is entirely lost by our word _bottle_, which being made of glass, is not liable to become useless by age like one made of leather. Such a “bottle of water” was the last among the few things which Abraham gave to Hagar, when he turned out the mother of the Arabians, whose descendants brought its usage into Spain. The shape is like that of a large pear or shot-pouch, and it contains from two to five quarts. The narrow neck is mounted with a turned wooden cup, from which the contents are drunk. The way to use it is thus--grasp the neck with the left hand and bring the rim of the cup to the mouth, then gradually raise the bag with the other hand till the wine, in obedience to hydrostatic laws, rises to its level, and keeps always full in the cup without trouble to the mouth. The gravity with which this is done, the long, slow, sustained, Sancho-like devotion of the thirsty Spaniards when offered a drink out of another man’s _bota_, is very edifying, and is as deep as the sigh of delight and gratitude with which, when unable to imbibe more, the precious skin is returned. No drop of the divine contents is wasted, except by some newly-arrived bungler, who, by lifting up the bottom first, inundates his chin. The hole in the cup is made tight by a wooden spigot, which again is perforated and stopped with a small peg. Those who do not want to take a copious draught do not pull out the spigot, but merely the little peg of it; the wine then flows out in a thin thread. The Catalonians and Aragonese generally drink in this way; they never touch the vessel with their lips, but hold it up at a distance above, and pilot the stream into their mouths, or rather under-jaws. It is much easier for those who have had no practice to pour the wine into their necks than into their mouths, but their drinking-bottles are made with a long narrow spout, and are called “_Porrones_.” [Sidenote: THE BOTA--WINE.]