The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-11-29

| the airy and well appointed dining
| room. nobody can say to a certainty.
| except that the custom has come down
from the days of the Aoors, when NO
men were slaves and never permitted
/ to eat with their masters. In these
| Spanish American countries al Gus
tombre'' (the custom) rules with iron
hand and must not be departed from by
SO much as hairs breadth. if one de-
sires TO retain a shred of responsibility.
Yet no men on the face Of the earth
are more uniformly courteous and re-
| spectful toward all women who do not
run afoul Of their prejudices than these
of Venezuela. The new woman of the
twentieth century could not show her
face here. much less her mannish ways
and costumes, without creating SEN
satiOn and perhaps getting into serious
trouble.
The cuisine of this Hotel Of Ambas-
sailors, which is judicious mOdifica-
ton of the French proprietOrs' ideas to
suit Spanish tastes, is said to be about
on par with the several other COM
| Portable hotels in Caracas. A servant
enters your room with almierzo (first
breakfast) at a preposterOusly early
| hour in the morning. The suns chart
| oteer has not yet walked; parrots free
and numerous as chickens in north
ern farm-yard are shrieking to the I'M
| iverse that dawn is near, and herd OF
| donkeys in the inevitable neighbOring
! corral are focferously answering back
that they are aware of the fact. Fur
Their sleep is impossible. and would be
unwise, no matter what your day hab-
| its may have been elsewhere. If you
have sight-essing or anything else to
| do Not only is the early morning the
most delightful portion of the day, 1t is
the only time to do business in Venez-
uela, the local world being all asleep
during the middle of the day when
North Americans are most actively en-
gagged. The almierzo consists of big
golden orange, as rich in perfume as in
tint and almost bursting with delicious
juice; a hard loaf of crusty bread about
the size Of your fist; three small
square cubes of sugar; tiny pitcher
or hot milk generally goats milk, and
cup Of strong bitter black coffee.
Much of the coffee used here is kept
with the hulls on until it is roasted, as
wanted, and is decidedly richer in aro-
ma than that which has been cleaned
for export. Sometimes you are ia
vored with dirty looking dab of pale,
tallow-like grease, which masquerades
as butter,-brought all the way from
Denmark and eagerly bought In Carac-
as, by those who are rich enough, at
dollar and upwards per pound. Since
this is an ideal grazing country and
vast herds of cattle are known to roam
the central Llanas, you wonder why
the scarcity Of butter, until somebody
explains that if cows tame enough for
dairy purposes were kept they would
inevitably furnish beef for revolution
lists.
The real breakfast, served between II
a. m. and o'clock, is a substantial
meal, hardly dstinguishable from dim
ner except in the absence Of soups and
dulcies, and perhaps little less wine.
Water is never drank at any meal in
South America, being looked upon as
blessing provided by the gods for alb
buttons only. but entirely unsuited to
the "inner-man." Claret is freely i'm
bibed at both breakfast and dinner, and
with the latter meal more expensive
wines abound Cognac is frequently
mixed with the aft er-dinner coffee by
ladies' as we'll as gentlemen, the weak
er sex also evincfng a finely cultivated
taste for the ''cigarrito con cafe"
Strange to say, all the wine used here
is imported-every drop of it, even the
INIT ton sorts, Yet the mountain
slopes of Venezuela are better adapted
to vine-culture than the sunny hills of
France and Spain. Centuries ago,
when this was colony of the mother
country, Spain forbade the growing of
vines; and though her undutiful sons
rebelled and set up for themselves some
eighty years ago, nobody has tried
grape culture-perhaps because the
peoples energies have mostly been ex-
pended in the cOngenial pastime of
"revoIuting" AS to the typical Ven
eZuelan dinner It is plentiful enough
and tolerably we'll cooked, but the
style in which it is served is barbario.
The meat is always undistinguishable
as to cut, and often as to kind tough.
stringy and unpleasant to the taste.
Cattle are never properly fattened for
the market, and the manner of slaugh-
tering Is simply infamous. The animals
are lassoed in corral and dragged out
to posts, where they are made fast for
killing. Their horns are often broken
in the struggle. eyes knocked out by
stones and their thighs cheWed by
dogs. Mad with terror, agony and rage
and suffering fortunes from thirst, they
are left standing ten or twelve hours
before their throats are cut in time for
the early morning market 1t is an ac-
tual fact that their flesh goes into the
pot or the oven while still warm with
the animal heat. In this climate each
days supply of meat must be freshly
killed, because it will purify if not
cooked in few hours. Of course such
flesh cannot be fit to eat, no matter
how disguised by garlic and red pep
per. You fall back on the vegetables,
figuratively speaking, and are speedily
filled with wonder that such fine mate
rails can be so spoiled in the cooking
Potatoes are always a soggy mess, in
distinguishable as apples of the
ground" except as their names appear
on the bill of fare. There are no better
vans in the world than those of Ven
ezuela, especially the cream" yams
ahhou