some cazique with an unpronounceable name, we might have thought the thing in keeping, and passed on without ceremony; but a Viscomte was not to be treated so lightly, and we turned and bowed profoundly to the short lady behind the counter, who rose and courtesied with equal profundity. We reached the beach just as the sun was setting, where we found our mate with the yawl: “An’ it bates any city ye’ve seen, I’ll be bound! It’s pier number one, is this blessed spot of dirt where ye are just now; may be ye don’t know it! And yonder hen-coop is the custom-house, be sure! and that dirty clout is the Nagur King’s flag, bad luck to it! and it’s meself who expects to live to see the stripes and forty stars to back ’em, (divil a one less!) wavin’ here! Hurrah for Old Zack!—an’ it’s him that can do it!” It was clear that our mate, who had not looked at a bottle during the whole voyage, thought a “d’hrap” necessary to neutralize the miasma of San Juan. “Perhaps ye know what ye’r laughing at, my dark boy; an’ it’s meself that’ll be afther givin’ ye a taste of the way we Yankees do the thing, savin’ the presence of his honor here,” said the mate, dashing his hat on the ground, and advancing a step toward my new acquaintance, who recoiled in evident alarm. We interposed, and the mate cooled at once, and shook hands cordially with the colored gentleman, although he spoiled the amende by immediately going to the water’s brink and carefully washing his palms. While this scene was transpiring, a ghostly-looking individual, wan with numberless fevers, approached us. He was dressed in white, wore a jacket and a glazed cap, and upon the latter, in gilded capitals, we read “POLICE.” He took off his cap, bowed low, for he was used to it, and said that Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul General presented his respects to the gentlemen, regretted that, being confined to his house by bodily infirmity, he could not wait on them in person, and hoped that under the circumstances the gentlemen would do him the favor to call upon him.