either go home or meet at some friend’s house, where they all sit in the front room on the ground-floor, with the windows wide open to the street, from which they are separated only by a few perpendicular iron bars.  Yankee rocking-chairs and cane chairs are placed abreast of these windows, and facing each other like lines of sentinels; there they chat, smoke cigars, or suck their fingers, according to their sex and fancy.  Occasionally a merry laugh is heard, but I cannot say it is very general.  Sometimes they dance, which with them is a slow undulating movement, suited to a marble floor and a thermometer at eighty degrees.  At a small village in the neighbourhood I saw a nigger hall,—­the dance was precisely the same, being a mixture of country-dance and waltz; and I can assure you, Sambo and his ebony partner acquitted themselves admirably:  they were all well dressed, looked very jolly and comfortable, and were by no means uproarious.

You must not imagine, from my observations on the fair tenant of the Volante, that this is a land of beauty—­far from it:  one feature of beauty, and one only, is general—­good eyes:  with that exception, it is rare; but there are some few lovely daughters of Eve that would make the mouth of a marble statue water.  Old age here is anything but attractive, either producing a mountainous obesity, or a skeleton on which the loose dried skin hangs in countless wrinkles.  But such is generally the case in warm climates, as far as my observation goes.  Any one wishing to verify these remarks, has only to go on the Paseo a little before sunset upon a Sunday evening, when he will be sure to meet nine-tenths of the population and the Volantes all in gayest attire.  The weather on my arrival was very wet, and I was therefore unable to go into the country for some days; but having cleared up, I got my passport and took a trip into the interior.

[Illustration:  “EL CASERO,” THE PARISH HAWKER IN CUBA.]

The railway cars are built on the American models, i.e., long cars, capable of containing about forty or fifty people; but they have had the good sense to establish first, second, and third-class carriages; and, at the end of each first-class carriage, there is a partition, shutting off eight seats, so that any party wishing to be private can easily be so.  They travel at a very fair pace, but waste much time at the stopping-places, and whole hours at junctions.  By one of these conveyances I went to Matanzas, which is very prettily situated in a lovely bay.  There is a ridge, about three miles from the town, which is called the Cumbre, from the summit whereof you obtain a beautiful view of the valley of the Yumuri, so called from a river of that name, and concerning which there is a legend that it is famous for the slaughter of the Indians by the Spaniards; a legend which, too probably, rests on the foundation of truth, if we are to judge by the barbarities which dimmed the brilliancy