Our
friend, seeing our astonishment, laughed, and told us that the poor
whites were very glad to borrow the burial-horse and box, to furnish
their own funerals.
Dinner was served at four o'clock, quite informally, in the one
sitting-room of the house. A black girl brushed off the flies with a
paper fly-brush, and another waited on table. The dinner was excellent;
but I have already given so many bills of fare in these letters, that I
will content myself with mentioning the novelty of a Cuban
country-dish, a sort of stew, composed of ham, beef, mutton, potatoes,
sweet potatoes, _yuca_, and yams. This is called _Ayacco_, and is a
characteristic dish, like eel-soup in Hamburg, or salt codfish in
Boston;--as is usual in such cases, it is more relished by the
inhabitants than by their visitors. On the present occasion, however,
it was only one among many good things, which were made better by
pleasant talk, and were succeeded by delicious fruits and coffee. After
dinner we visited the vegetable garden, and the well, where we found
Candido, the rich negro who had saved six hundred dollars, drawing
water with the help of a blind mule. Now the philanthrope of our party
was also a phrenologist, and had conceived a curiosity to inspect the
head of the very superior negro who had made all this money; so, at his
request, Candido was summoned from the well, and ordered to take off
his hat.
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