I have spoken of the bad coffees served as “esencia,” but have not said enough about the chocolate, which I never found carelessly prepared. Perhaps the best is prepared entirely at home; that is, the beans of cacao are carefully roasted, as coffee might be, and the shells removed by rubbing in the hands. The metatle then serves to crush the oily mass, as corn is prepared in tortilla-making; sugar is added, and enough cinnamon or vanilla to flavor the crushed cacao, which becomes pasty by grinding, and may be run into moulds, or simply dropped on some cool surface to harden. These chocolate-drops are dissolved in boiling milk as wanted, and the whole churned to a froth. Prepared in this way, chocolate is much better than the cake chocolate of the manufacturers. An ancient recipe was much more complicated than this, and although I have never tried it myself, I venture to give it to my readers. It is this: “One hundred cacaos,—treating them as has been described,—two pods of chilli, a handful of anis and orjevala, two of mesachasil or vanilla (this may be replaced by six roses of Alexandria, powdered), two drams of cinnamon, a dozen each of almonds and filberts, half a pound of white sugar, and arnotto to color it.” This mixture must of course be whipped to a froth. Perhaps the people of Guatemala are as cleanly as others; but according to our observation the common practice was to allow the dogs to lick the dishes, which received no additional washing. It was the custom also at the table d’hôte in the hotels to finish a meal by filling the mouth with water and spurting it on the tiled floor. Once, when we stopped at a way-side house to get some coffee, the señora made a little fire out of doors, put the coffee in a very black pot to boil, and, after fanning the reluctant fire with her straw hat, threw herself on the ground near by to rest and smoke her _puro_. When the pot was near to boiling, she reached out her bare leg and tested the temperature of the contents with her toe, as a Northern cook might have used his finger. Frank was scandalized; but, after all, it was merely a matter of taste. PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATION.