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We embarked our collection of plants, our instruments and our monkeys; and, the weather being delightful, we hoped to make a very short passage from the mouth of the Rio Neveri to Cumana: but we had scarcely reached the narrow channel between the continent and the rocky isles of Borracha and the Chimanas, when to our great surprise we came in sight of an armed boat, which, whilst hailing us from a great distance, fired some musket-shot at us.
"Come, boys," cried he, "knock off from drinking, or you'll hardly go through your facings, if required." "Only one glass more, sergeant," cried Perrico. "There is still a pleasant tinkle in the borracha." And he shook the large leathern bottle which held the supply of wine. "Only one more, then," said the sergeant, unable to resist the temptation, and holding out his glass.
It was a thing of shreds and patches a true book of Spain; the chapters, like her bundle of unamalgamating provinces, were just held together, and no more, by the common tie of religion; yet it was strange and richly flavoured with genuine borracha.
He procured for us, in the centre of the town, a house which, though perhaps too lofty in a country exposed to violent earthquakes, was extremely useful for our instruments. We enjoyed from its terraces a majestic view of the sea, of the isthmus of Araya, and the archipelago of the islands of Caracas, Picuita and Borracha.
Writers on Spain, long resident in the country, acquire a borracha twang, a smack of the pig-skin, a propensity to quaint and proverb-like phrases, characteristic of the land they write about. The peculiarity is perceptible in the books before us; in both of them the racy Castilian flavour reeks through the pages. And first to begin with the most worthy as regards Mr. Ford's "Gatherings."
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