It was a bright moonlight night, so bright that one might almost see to read, and the temperature the finest I can conceive, a gentle breeze rustling among the palms overhead.  I was surprised at seeing around me so many fair brows and snowy necks.  It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or perhaps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions of these ladies seem to differ several shades from those which I saw yesterday at the churches.  A female acquaintance has since given me another solution of the matter.

“The reason,” she said, “of the difference you perceived is this, that during the ceremonies of holy week they take off the cascarilla from their faces, and appear in their natural complexions.”

I asked the meaning of the word cascarilla, which I did not remember to have heard before.

“It is the favorite cosmetic of the island, and is made of egg-shells finely pulverized.  They often fairly plaster their faces with it.  I have seen a dark-skinned lady as white almost as marble at a ball.  They will sometimes, at a morning call or an evening party, withdraw to repair the cascarilla on their faces.”

I do not vouch for this tale, but tell it “as it was told to me.”  Perhaps, after all, it was the moonlight which had produced this transformation, though I had noticed something of the same improvement of complexion just before sunset, on the Paseo Isabel, a public park without the city walls, planted with rows of trees, where, every afternoon, the gentry of Havana drive backward and forward in their volantes, with each a glittering harness, and a liveried negro bestriding, in large jack-boots, the single horse which draws the vehicle.

I had also the same afternoon visited the receptacle into which the population of the city are swept when the game of life is played out—­the Campo Santo, as it is called, or public cemetery of Havana.  Going out of the city at the gate nearest the sea, I passed through a street of the wretchedest houses I had seen; the ocean was roaring at my right on the coral rocks which form the coast.  The dingy habitations were soon left behind, and I saw the waves, pushed forward by a fresh wind, flinging their spray almost into the road; I next entered a short avenue of trees, and in a few minutes the volante stopped at the gate of the cemetery.  In a little inclosure before the entrance, a few starvling flowers of Europe were cultivated, but the wild plants of the country flourished luxuriantly on the rich soil within.  A thick wall surrounded the cemetery, in which were rows of openings for coffins, one above the other, where the more opulent of the dead were entombed.  The coffin is thrust in endwise, and the opening closed with a marble slab bearing an inscription.