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this motto is read aloud when the number of the ticket is announced. Few
of the inhabitants of Lima fail to buy at least one ticket in the weekly
lottery. The negroes are particularly fond of trying their luck in this
way, and in many instances fortune has been singularly kind to them.

"Eating and drinking keep soul and body together." So says the German
proverb; and it may not be uninteresting to take a glance at the Limenos
during their performance of these two important operations. The hour of
breakfast is generally nine in the morning. The meal consists of boiled
mutton (_Sancochado_), soup (_Caldo_), with yuccas, a very
pleasant-tasted root, and _Chupe_. This last-mentioned dish consists, in
its simplest form, merely of potatoes boiled in very salt water, with
cheese and Spanish pepper. When the chupe is made in better style, eggs,
crabs, and fried fish are added to the ingredients already named; and it
is then a very savory dish. Chocolate and milk are afterwards served. A
negress brings the _Chocolatera_ into the breakfast-room, and pours out
a cup full for each person. The natives prefer the froth to the actual
beverage; and many of the negresses are such adepts in the art of
pouring out, that they will make the cup so overflow with foam, that it
contains scarcely a spoonful of liquid. Chocolate is the favorite
beverage of the Peruvians. In the southern parts of the country it is
customary to offer it to visitors at all hours of the day. The visitor
is no sooner seated than he is presented with a cup of coffee, which is
often so thick that the spoon will stand upright in it. It would be a
breach of politeness to decline this refreshment, and whether agreeable
or not it must be swallowed!

The best cocoa is obtained from the Montanas of Urubamba, and from the
Bolivian Yungas. The long land transport, however, renders it very
dear, and therefore the nuts brought from Guayaquil are those commonly
used in Lima.

Dinner, which takes place about two or three in the afternoon, commences
with a very insipid kind of soup. This is followed by the _Puchero_,
which is the principal dish. Puchero, made in its best style, contains
beef, pork, bacon, ham, sausage, poultry, cabbage, yuccas, camotes (a
sort of sweet potato), potatoes, rice, peas, _choclitas_ (grains of
maize), quince and banana. When served up, the different kinds of meat
are placed in one dish, and the vegetable ingredients in another. I was
at first asto