Yankee rocking-chairs and cane chairs are placed abreast of these windows, and facing each other like lines of sentinels; there they chat, smoke cigars, or suck their fingers, according to their sex and fancy.

Occasionally a merry laugh is heard, but I cannot say it is very general.

Sometimes they dance, which with them is a slow undulating movement, suited to a marble floor and a thermometer at eighty degrees.
At a small village in the neighbourhood I saw a nigger hall,--the dance was precisely the same, being a mixture of country-dance and waltz; and I can assure you, Sambo and his ebony partner acquitted themselves admirably: they were all well dressed, looked very jolly and comfortable, and were by no means uproarious.
You must not imagine, from my observations on the fair tenant of the Volante, that this is a land of beauty--far from it: one feature of beauty, and one only, is general--good eyes: with that exception, it is rare; but there are some few lovely daughters of Eve that would make the mouth of a marble statue water.

Old age here is anything but attractive, either producing a mountainous obesity, or a skeleton on which the loose dried skin hangs in countless wrinkles.

But such is generally the case in warm climates, as far as my observation goes.