Returning to our inn, we dined, and as the sun grew low, we strolled out to look at the town.  It is situated on a clear little stream, over which several bathing-houses are built, their posts standing in the midst of the current.  Above the town, it flows between rocky banks, bordered with shrubs, many of them in flower.  Below the town, after winding a little way, it enters a cavern yawning in the limestone rock, immediately over which a huge ceyba rises, and stretches its leafy arms in mid-heaven.  Down this opening the river throws itself, and is never seen again.  This is not a singular instance in Cuba.  The island is full of caverns and openings in the rocks, and I am told that many of the streams find subterranean passages to the sea.  There is a well at the inn of La Punta, in which a roaring of water is constantly heard.  It is the sound of a subterranean stream rushing along a passage in the rocks, and the well is an opening into its roof.

In passing through the town, I was struck with the neat attire of those who inhabited the humblest dwellings.  At the door of one of the cottages, I saw a group of children, of different ages, all quite pretty, with oval faces and glittering black eyes, in clean fresh dresses, which, one would think, could scarcely have been kept a moment without being soiled, in that dwelling, with its mud floor.  The people of Cuba are sparing in their ablutions; the men do not wash their faces and hands till nearly mid-day, for fear of spasms; and of the women, I am told that many do not wash at all, contenting themselves with rubbing their cheeks and necks with a little aguardiente; but the passion for clean linen, and, among the men, for clean white pantaloons, is universal.  The montero himself, on a holiday or any public occasion, will sport a shirt of the finest linen, smoothly ironed, and stiffly starched throughout, from the collar downward.

The next day, at half-past eleven, we left our inn, which was also what we call in the United States a country store, where the clerks who had just performed their ablutions and combed their hair, were making segars behind the counter from the tobacco of the Vuelta Abajo, and returned by the railway to Havana.  We procured travelling licenses at the cost of four dollars and a half each, for it is the pleasure of the government to levy this tax on strangers who travel, and early the following morning took the train for Matanzas.

Letter XLVIII.

Matanzas.—­Valley of Yumuri.

Los Guines, April 18, 1849.