CHAPTER X.
Drive to the Balsa—Meaning of the word—A Mob of Women—Nora Creena—Magic, slipper—Description of the drive—Ferryman of the Females—Decline the office—The Suburbs—A la Balsa—Manilla, intra murales—The Mole by Moonlight—Friend in a fit—Circo Olympico—Scenes in the Circle.
Up betimes upon the morning of our second day on shore, for a drive to the Balsa. The word, in English, means pool or raft, and the road over which we drove led to a ferry over a stream, which you cross to reach the romantic village of Maraquino.
Met crowds of native women coming in from that neighborhood to commence their work at the tobacco factory. Had heard of miles of girls at Lowell, greeting with smiles the noble father of the system which gave them employment, the honorable and the honest Henry Clay, but had never anticipated meeting with so many of the sex, within a mile, in these latitudes.
The crowd was so great as to materially affect our progress. We had often to haul up to allow them to pass, and when our cochero received the order "ander" it was coupled with the caution "despacho" that he might drive carefully for fear of injuring some of them.
Did not count, but suppose there could not have been less than two thousand women in this mob; but, alas! though some were young, but few were beautiful, and, as they shuffled along, in their short jackets, and the ungainly sciar wrapped around their nether extremities, they made a display of charms by no means attractive. Their style of dress differing from Nora Creena's in this, that whilst her gown was
"Flowing free as mountain breezes,"
their substitute for that portion of woman's apparel appeared as if the strongest kind of a "mountain breeze" had wrapped it tightly round their forms, and continued to keep them enveloped in its Laocoon-like folds; and although "every beauty" was not left exactly "free" yet there could be no disputing the evidence of sinking and swelling so sweetly described by the poet, as the peculiar charm exhibited in the costume of his admired Nora. They were generally barefooted, and those whose feet were clad, had them covered with that wonderful slipper, which barely covers the extremity of the foot, and is kept in its place by the adhesion of the smallest toe to its neighbor.