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Updated: May 11, 2025
This retreat in the autumn of 1832 was the scene of a prodigious exhibition of courage and energy on the part of another Italian woman, Dona Louisa Carlota de Borbon. Ferdinand VIL, his mind weakened by illness, and influenced by his ministers, had proclaimed his brother Don Carlos heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his own infant daughter.
They had a small patch of land that Carlota Juanita tilled and on which was raised the squaw corn that hung in bunches from the rafters. Down where we live we can't get sweet corn to mature, but here, so much higher up, they have a sheltered little nook where they are able to raise many things.
Following up his idea, the mischievous Ensign continued to diversify the graver pursuit of prosecuting his own suit with Juana, by impressing Carlota and the Major with the idea that each was disposed to think favourably of the other.
First came Juana, who, scarcely touching the Major's offered hand, lit on the pavement like gossamer; then Carlota descended, and making, in her trepidation, a false step near the bottom, came so heavily on the Major, that they rolled together on the stones.
Of these pleasant days in Cuernavaca she writes in a letter to her daughter: "I have a little plant from the garden where Carlota lived, which I think is a climbing syringa.
But whenever this happened, Carlota, instead of half-smothering a laugh, as a mischievous English girl would, ten to one, have done, sat most patiently till the Major and his steed came to an understanding, and would greet him, as they moved on again, with a good-natured smile, that won her, each time, a higher place in his estimation.
At a little distance from Algeçiras is the river Palmones, called by the English the Second River. This was crossed by a floating bridge, pulled from shore to shore by a ferryman warping on a rope extended across. They had just reached the opposite bank of the stream, when Carlota noticed two horsemen galloping fast along the road they had just traversed.
Then the door was thrown open, and a man, standing in the doorway, asked in Spanish, "Who is there?" In a few words I explained my presence, adding that I was short of food and should be glad to purchase a little. "Enter, senor," he invited, and, as I did so, "Carlota," he said to one of two well-grown girls who sat by the woman, "Carlota, give your seat to the caballero."
Behind Frank came Major Flinders, clean shaved, and with jack-boots and regimental coat restored to something like their pristine splendour: by his side rode another lady, the Señorita Carlota, Juana's aunt, somewhere about thirty years old, plump and merry, her upper lip fringed at the corners with a line of dark down, quite decided enough for a cornet of eighteen to be proud of a feminine embellishment too common for remark in these southern regions, and, in the opinion of some connoisseurs, rather enhancing the beauty of the fair wearers.
"Ahem! why, you see, Major," whispered Owen, "she wouldn't come alone couldn't manage it at all, in fact, without the knowledge of her aunt, who sleeps in the next room; so I persuaded Carlota to come too, and gave her a sort of half promise that you would take care of her."
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