The bathing arrangements are quite odd. The sharks are so numerous that it is dangerous to bathe in the surf, and nobody cares to have his legs bitten off; so a semicircular pen of piling has been erected, at government expense, reaching about a hundred feet into the sea. Through this piling the surf beats fiercely. The pen is divided in the centre by a high wall, one side being for the ladies and the other for the gentlemen. At the shore end is a miniature castle of stone, likewise divided into two rooms, with a row of benches around the wall, and hooks over them on which to hang clothes. Everybody bathes _au naturel_; bathing-dresses are unknown. You pay five cents for a ticket, and ten cents for a sheet, which is used as drapery and as a towel, and then undress. The attendant hands you the sheet when you are stripped, and, concealing your nakedness with that protection, you climb down the stone stair-way, hang your sheet over the railing, and plunge in. The water is glorious, warm and salty, so dense that it will almost bear you on the surface, and deep enough to swim and dive. When you have had enough of it, you climb up the stairs, seize your sheet and throw it around you, and sit on the bench until you are dry enough to resume your clothes. Some of the more modest ladies, or, they say, those who have no charms to display, wear in the water a sort of night-dress made of towelling, but the pretty ones wear nothing but smiles--not even a blush. During the day everybody stays in-doors after the bathing-hour, which is about nine o’clock in the morning. The fashionable get up about eight o’clock, drink a cup of coffee, eat a roll, go to mass, saunter down to the bath, and return in time to dress for breakfast, the most elaborate meal of the day, which is served about eleven o’clock. The menu offers soup, fish, game, steaks, sweetmeats, and wine. Then the people loll around till dinner, which comes after five o’clock in the afternoon, and is a repetition of the breakfast, except that roasts are served instead of steaks. After dinner everybody goes to the grand promenade along the beach. The band plays, the ladies are gayly dressed, the gentlemen twirl their canes, admire their small feet in the moonlight, and chatter like a lot of magpies. The promenading and gossiping are kept up until midnight, except twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, when there is dancing at the hotel or at some one of the private residences. The season lasts from October, when the rainy period ends, until April, when it begins; but families from Caracas and other cities seldom remain at Macuto more than three or four weeks. The charge at the hotel is four dollars per day--about three dollars and a quarter in American money. If some one would build a first-class American hotel here, and provide the comforts that are found in the States, it would be a paying investment; and I would not wonder if a subsidy would be paid by the Government.