Every man in turn was called by name, and answered in a loud voice, "I praise God!;" then saying how much he had earned in the day, for the Administrador to write down.

"Juan Fernandez!"-- "_Alabo a Dios, tres reales y medio_:" "I praise God, one and ninepence." "Jose Valdes!"-- "I praise God, eighteen pence, and sixpence for the boy;" and so on, through a couple of hundred names.
Then came, not unacceptably, a little cup of pasty chocolate and a long roll for each of us.

Then Don Guillermo and our host talked about their mutual acquaintances in Mexico, and we asked questions about sugar-planting, and walked about the boiling-house, where the night-gang of brown men were hard at work stirring and skimming at the boiling-pans, and ladling out coarse unrefined sugar into little earthen bowls to cool.

This common sugar in bowls is very generally used by the poorer Mexicans.

The sugar-boilers were naked excepting a cotton girdle.