The next morning allowed us to accomplish our transit to the desired land of Havana.  We pass the custom-house, where an official in a cage, with eyes of most oily sweetness, and tongue, no doubt, to match, pockets our gold, and imparts in return a governmental permission to inhabit the Island of Cuba for the space of one calendar month.  We go trailing through the market, where we buy peeled oranges, and through the streets, where we eat them, seen and recognized afar as Yankees by our hats, bonnets, and other features.  We stop at the Cafe Dominica, and refresh with coffee and buttered rolls, for we have still a drive of three miles to accomplish before breakfast.  All the hotels in Havana are full, and more than full.  Woolcut, of the Cerro, three miles from the gates, is the only landlord who will take us in; so he seizes us fairly by the neck, bundles us into an omnibus, swears that his hotel is but two miles distant, smiles archly when we find the two miles long, brings us where he wants to have us, the Spaniards in the omnibus puffing and staring at the ladies all the way.  Finally, we arrive at his hotel, glad to be somewhere, but hot, tired, hungry, and not in raptures with our first experience of tropical life.

It must be confessed that our long-tried energies fall somewhat flat on the quiet of Woolcut’s.  We look round, and behold one long room with marble floor, with two large doors, not windows, opening in front upon the piazza and the street, and other openings into a large court behind, surrounded by small, dark bedrooms.  The large room is furnished with two dilapidated cane sofas, a few chairs, a small table, and three or four indifferent prints, which we have ample time to study.  For company, we see a stray New York or Philadelphia family, a superannuated Mexican who smiles and bows to everybody, and some dozen of those undistinguishable individuals whom we class together as Yankees, and who, taking the map from Maine to Georgia, might as well come from one place as another, the Southerner being as like the Northerner as a dried pea is to a green pea.  The ladies begin to hang their heads, and question a little:—­“What are we to do here? and where is the perfectly delightful Havana you told us of?” Answer:—­“There is nothing whatever to do here, at this hour of the day, but to undress and go to sleep;—­the heat will not let you stir, the glare will not let you write or read.  Go to bed; dinner is at four; and after that, we will make an effort to find the Havana of the poetical and Gan Eden people, praying Heaven it may not have its only existence in their brains.”