The particular cause of discomfort for those unused to it, is the humidity that prevails throughout the greater part of the year.  The worst season for this, however, is the mid-year months when few people visit the island.  The winter months, locally known as the “invierno,” a term to be associated with our word “vernal” and not with “infernal,” are almost invariably delightful, bringing to northern systems a pleasurable physical laziness that is attended by a mental indifference to, or satisfaction with, the sensation.

[Illustration:  WATERING HERD OF CATTLE Luyano River near Havana]

The rainfall varies so widely in different parts of the island, and from year to year, that exact information is difficult.  Taken as a whole, it is little if at all greater than it is in most places in the United States.  We have our arid spots, like El Paso, Fresno, Boise, Phoenix, and Winnemucca, where only a few inches fall in a year, just as Cuba has a few places where the fall may reach sixty-five or seventy inches in a year.  But the average fall in Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, and Santiago, is little if any greater than in Boston, New York, or Washington.  A difference appears in the fact that about three-quarters of Cuba’s precipitation comes between the first of May and the first of October.  But the term “wet season” does not mean that it rains all the time, or every day, any more than the term “dry season” means that during those months it does not rain at all.  At times during the winter, or dry season, there come storms that are due to unusual cold in the United States.  These are known in Cuba, as they are in Texas, as “northers.”  High winds sweep furiously across the Gulf of Mexico, piling up huge seas on the Cuban coast, and bringing what, in the island, is the substitute for cold weather, usually attended by rain and sometimes by a torrent of it.  The prevailing wind in Cuba is the northeast trade-wind.  In summer when the sun is directly overhead this wind is nearly east, while in winter it is northeast.  The proper way to avoid such discomfort as attends humidity accompanying a thermometer in the 80s, is to avoid haste in movement, to saunter instead of hurrying, to ride instead of walking, to eat and drink in moderation, and where-ever possible, to keep in the shade.  Many of those who eat heartily and hurry always, will, after a few days, be quite sure that they have yellow fever or some other tropical disorder, but will be entirely mistaken about it.  Modern sanitation in Cuba has made yellow fever a remote possibility, and the drinking water in Havana is as pure as any in the world.