national colors of Olancho in flags and streamers. In front of
them sat officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of
Valencia, in white duck suits and Panama hats, toying with
tortoise shell canes, which could be converted, if the occasion
demanded, into blades of Toledo steel. In the streets were
priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and ragged ranchmen with
red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, and negro women, with
bare shoulders and long trains, vending lottery tickets and
rolling huge cigars between their lips. It was an old story to
Clay and King, but none of the others had seen a Spanish-American
city before; they were familiar with the Far East and the
Mediterranean, but not with the fierce, hot tropics of their
sister continent, and so their eyes were wide open, and they
kept calling continually to one another to notice some new place
or figure.

They in their turn did not escape from notice or comment. The
two sisters would have been conspicuous anywhere--in a queen's
drawing-room or on an Indian reservation. Theirs was a type that
the caballeros and senoritas did not know. With them dark
hair was always associated with dark complexions, the rich
duskiness of which was always vulgarized by a coat of powder, and
this fair blending of pink and white skin under masses of black
hair was strangely new, so that each of the few women who were to
be met on the street turned to look after the carriage, while the
American women admired their mantillas, and felt that the straw
sailor-hats they wore had become heavy and unfeminine.

Clay was very happy in picking out what was most characteristic
and picturesque, and every street into which he directed the