Our day usually began with an excursion to the bathing beach. The first trip was made in an antediluvian hack, the only vehicle in the city; after that we rode our little Dominican ponies, Arabians with the _paso Castiliano_, a sort of delicious canter, the best imaginable gait for a warm climate. The bathing place was a beautiful little basin under a beetling crag; the sands were fine and gold-colored, the water warm as the Lido in August. We might not venture to swim outside this basin on account of sharks. On the way home we halted at a coconut grove, where a tall, barefoot boy swarmed up a palm tree and brought down fresh green coconuts, still cool with the night’s dew. He bored a hole in the rough outer shell with a gimlet; the fresh coconut milk glug-glugged into the tiny calabash I carried at my saddlebow, and I drained a draft that is the nearest thing to nectar I have known. There were often guests at the eleven o’clock breakfast, where many native dishes were served. We came to like the cassava bread, the rice cooked in coconut milk, the fried plantains, and the orange wine. The cuisine was a combination of Creole and Spanish cookery, much to my liking. The long table was spread in the open corridor with the big columns, between which swung gilded cages with bright plumed birds and porous earthenware jars in which our drinking water was cooled. Ice was a luxury, reserved for great occasions. Every day some of our new friends sent a basket of wonderful strange fruit, sapotes, custard apples, caweelias, endless varieties of bananas; the best of these I have never seen since,--a tiny yellow kind, called the fig banana. After breakfast came the Spanish lessons; indeed these went on most of the day, for our young friends could speak no other language and we were soon all chattering like magpies. In the evening Papa read Don Quixote aloud, so it was in a truly Spanish atmosphere that I first learned to love the great Don and all his company. At four o’clock, when the sea breeze sprang up, the horses were brought round and the whole party rode out into the country, attended by a large escort. Whatever else our Dominican friends lacked, they had plenty of time to devote to us. There was always at least one Cabinet officer in our group of cavaliers. Our longest expedition was to the little town of San Cristoval, five hours distant from the capital. We started at four in the morning by bright moonlight and rode through the sleeping town. At the city gate a sentinel challenged: “Who goes there?” “_Amigos._” “What is your errand?” “We escort the _convita_ of American visitors to San Cristoval.”