A few miles farther brought us out of the wooded to the cleared land, where is the hamlet of Teleman, famed for its delicious oranges. Although nearly sundown, and cloudy, the thermometer stood at seventy-eight degrees. We found lodging at the house of Don Pablo, a fine-looking old man with a heavy gray beard. His little home was in the midst of orange and coffee trees close on the road, and only a light rail kept the too familiar cattle out of the house. We had no long time to look around before dark; but our comida was good, and the coffee grown there was very fine. The hospitable Don Pablo pointed to a pile of oranges on the floor and told us to help ourselves, which we did freely. Another Spaniard came in soon after we were settled, and I had the best chance I had ever had to exercise my “book Spanish.” I surprised Frank, and myself as well, obtaining from these two agreeable men a great deal of information about our road and the country generally. The room was certainly as strange a one as I had ever slept in,—a table in one corner, with a mahogany bench fifteen inches wide before it (on this bench a small child slept all night, without pillow or covering); two hammocks; a bedstead with mosquito-netting; piles of coffee, oranges, and other small matters; a shrine of tinsel containing two images, before whose dingy holiness a sardine-box lamp burned luridly; meat in strips hung from the roof. The chickens had all gone under the bed for the night; and when it was time for the featherless bipeds to roost also, our host and his women retired into the dark inner room, after assigning me the bed and Frank one of the hammocks, while the stranger took the other and soon settled himself comfortably. The bed certainly was not luxurious, and the pillow had seen better days; but I rigged up a cleaner head-rest with a towel, and was comfortable enough. Not so Frank, who was unused to hammocks; and before I was quite asleep I heard his whisper, asking if there was room to take him in; and as the bed was large, his hammock was deserted. We were up at four; and as it was still quite dark, the sardine-box lamp was again lighted, and we drank the delicious coffee grown in Don Pablo’s garden, while a little _muchacha_ drove out her chickens from under the bed. The clouds promised rain; but we had none all day, in spite of the predictions of both host and guide.