somewhat extensive structure, begun in 1774 and completed about twenty years later.  A little further to the west, at the mouth of the Almendares river, stands a little fort, or tower, called Chorrera, serving as a western outpost as Cojimar serves as an eastern outpost.  Both were erected about the year 1650.  On the shore generally north of Principe was the Santa Clara battery, and between that and La Punta, at the foot of the Calzada de Belascoain, stood the Queen’s battery.  From any modern point of view, the system is little more than military junk, better fitted for its present use as barracks, asylums, and prisons than for military defence.  But it is all highly picturesque.

In the beginning, most of the buildings of the city were doubtless of wood, with palm-thatched roofs.  In time, these gave place to rows of abutting stone buildings with tiled roofs.  Most of them were of one story, some were of two stories, and a few “palaces” had three.  The city within the wall is today very much as it was a century and more ago.  Its streets run, generally but not accurately, at right angles, one set almost due east and west, from the harbor front to the line of the old wall, and the other set runs southward from the shore of the entrance channel to the shore of the inner harbor.  Several of these streets are practically continuous from north to south or from east to west.  But most of them are rather passage-ways than streets.  The houses come to their very edges, except for a narrow strip hardly to be classed as a sidewalk, originally left, presumably, only for the purpose of preventing the scraping of the front of the building by the wheels of passing carts and carriages.  It is a somewhat inconvenient system nowadays, but one gets quite used to it after a little, threads the narrow walk a part of his way, takes to the street the rest of the way, and steps aside to avoid passing vehicles quite as did the carriageless in the old days.  One excellent way to avoid the trouble is to take a carriage and let the other fellow step aside.  Riding in the coche is still one of the cheapest forms of convenience and entertainment in the city, excepting the afternoon drive around the Prado and the Malecon.  That is not cheap.  We used to pay a dollar an hour.  My last experience cost me three times that.

[Illustration:  CUSTOM HOUSE, HAVANA Formerly Franciscan Convent Begun 1574, finished 1591]

Much of the old city is now devoted to business purposes, wholesale, retail, and professional.  But there are also residences, old churches, and old public buildings.  On the immediate water-front, and for many years used as the custom house, stands the old Franciscan convent, erected during the last quarter of the 16th Century.  It is a somewhat imposing pile, dominated by a high tower.  I have not visited it for a number of years and do not know if its interior is available for visitors without some special introduction,