cries for Cerveza Inglesa were incessant. She
was troubled in her mind one afternoon,
when we had a chopping sea on, and sent
for one of the Sisters of Charity; but I am
sorry to say that nurse and patient did not
agree, and that the good sister was speedily
dismissed with unhandsome epithets. Sister
Egyptiaca being of Irish extraction, fresh from
an orphanage in New York,—whence she was
going, good little creature, in perfect peace and
contentment, to risk her life in the fever-baled
wards of a New Orleans hospital—and speaking
nothing but English, and the old lady only
talking Spanish, may have had something to do
with their misunderstanding. However, the old
lady is all right now. She is very voluble; she
has given the steward a golden ducat; and
he has kindled a match for her, and she has
begun to smoke a cigarette. It is reported
that the oaken casket with the brass clasps
is full of diamonds. The stewardess says,
she always kept it under her pillow during
the voyage. She looks a rich old lady;
comfortably quilted with ounces, moidores, and
pieces of eight. I connect her in my mind
with a huge sugar estate and teeming gangs of
negroes. I would rather be her overseer than
her slave, I think.

It is worthy of remark, as another element in
the transformation we have undergone, that our
talk is now all of a metallic coinage. Five
days ago, nobody had anything but greenbacks.
The stewards won't look at greenbacks now.
Five days ago, the passenger who had hoarded
a silver dollar was quite a lion; he who had an
English sovereign hanging to his watch-chain
was made much of; and one thin, dry New
Englander, who was absolutely the owner of an
American gold double eagle—the handsomest
coin in the world—kept it in a wash-leather
case, like a watch, would only exhibit it on
pressing solicitation, and, I am led to infer, made
rather a good thing of it by taking the precious
piece forward, and allowing the hands to smell
it at five cents apiece. But what cared we for
paper money now? Piles of gold suddenly
made their appearance. Little bills for stimulants
were paid in five-dollar pieces bearing the
effigy of Isabella Segunda. For the first time
in my life I saw that numismatic parallel to
Brobdingnag and Lilliput—to dignity and
impudence—the gold dollar, which is about the
size of an English silver penny, and the gold
doubloon, or ounce, which, to the dazed and
delighted eye of the possessor,looks as large as one
of King Crœsus's chariot-wheels, but is in reality
about the diameter of a crown-piece, and is
worth three pounds ten shillings sterling. They
say Havana is the dearest city in the world;
and I cannot help thinking that the costliness
of living there is mostly due to the fact of the
ounce being held to many intents and purposes
the financial unit. It is the Creole sovereign.
If you stay at a friend's country-house and his
body-servant has saluted you, you give the man
an ounce; if you bet on a cock-fight, you bet an
ounce; if a torreador has won your approbation,
you send him an ounce; if the prima donna at
the Tacon takes a benefit, you purchase a stall
and pay an ounce—or as many ounces as your
admiration for the prima donna prompts you to
disburse. A whole lottery-ticket—an intiero,
as it is called—costs an ounce. If you hire a
calèche and two horses for the day, the driver
very coolly demands an ounce for his fare: in
short, I should imagine that the only wild
animal in Cuba must be the ounce. "I call
that man a gentleman," I once heard a German
settler in Havana remark, "who can afford to
lose at monté or tressilio, every day of his life,
four or five ounces." Four or five ounces!
Ingots and goldbeaters' hammers! to what a
Tom Tiddler's ground had I come!

I went on deck, where everything was noise,
bustle, and transformation, and where they
seemed already to be taking in oranges, bananas,
and cocoa-nuts, as a return cargo. The skipper
only remained untransformed. He wore the
same fluffy white hat, the same long-skirted
bottle-green coat with the same blue-black velvet
collar, and the same shepherd's-plaid trousers
in which he had loomed imposingly on the
paddle-bridge of his ship, foot of pier Number
Something, New York city, five days since.
He had a heart of oak, this skipper of ours, and
I believe was an excellent seaman and navigator;
but I could never divest myself of the impression
that he had been concerned in dry goods, or
even a wooden mummy factory, before he had
taken to going down to the sea in ships. He
had made, I dare say, fifty trips to Cuba, but he
couldn't speak Spanish yet. He pressed the
doctor into his service, to act as interpreter in
a slight dispute with the health officer. "Ain't
posted up in his lingo," he unaffectedly
remarked.

I looked over the side, and drank in a
spectacle the most gloriously picturesque I had ever
beheld. I have travelled a good deal; but
there are many spots, even on the map of Europe,
which to me are still terra incognita. I have
never been to Naples; I have never been in
Old Spain. Looking out upon the crowded
port ot Havana, I was reminded irresistibly of
the market-scene in Masaniello—the Morro
Castle doing duty for Vesuvius. We were close
upon a quay swarmed with sunburnt varlets in
red nightcaps, in striped nightcaps, in broad
flapping straw hats, and some with silken
kerchiefs of gay colours twisted round their heads.
Nearly all wore gaudy sashes round their loins.
They were bare-armed and bare-legged: their
shirts were open at the breast, and, if they had
jackets, those garments hung loose upon their
shoulders, or with the sleeves tied in a knot
before them. Dark elf locks, black glittering
eyes, earrings, and little dangling crosses round
the neck; baskets of fish and baskets of fruit,
crates of crockery, coops of poultry; cries of
gratulation, welcome, derision, defiance, quarrels
never ending in blows, general hubbub and
confusion; and over all the hot, hot sun and the
cloudless vault of blue.

But the market-scene in Masaniello soon