house. I suppose there are persons who can
steer by intuition. I know there are who
can drive mail phaetons, mix salad, and
compose charades, without ever having been taught.
It is a gift. One is born to it, as to roasting
meat and playing the overture to "Semiramide"
on one's chin.

The custom-house was an apartment as big
as a barn—all the rooms in Havana are enormous.
The floor was intolerably dirty; but the
roof was a magnificent open timber one, the
timber being solid beams of delightfully fragrant
cedar. So you had the Augean Stables
underneath, and Solomon's Palace in all his glory
above—not an uncommon contrast in Cuba.
The custom-house officers gave us very little
trouble. I addressed the first gentleman with a
cockade I met as Señor—I should perhaps have
called him Caballero—begged a cigar light from
him, and slipped a dollar into his hand. He
opened one ot my trunks, let a little tobacco-
smoke into the orifice to fumigate it, and then
dismissed me with a very low bow. Then I
was handed to a little grated wicket, where
another official, who was smoking so desperately
that he sat, as it were, in the midst of a fleecy
cloud, like one of Sir James Thornhill's allegories
in the painted hall at Greenwich, asked me my
name and country, and delivered to me a printed
license to reside in Cuba for the space of three
calendar months, which was very kind on his
part, seeing that I only intended to remain in the
island until the West India mail-packet came
in from St. Thomas. This license cost a good
deal of money, four or five dollars, I think; and
I noticed that when the official had filled up the
form, he was a very long time handing it from a
small pepper-castor, and looked very hard at
me. I know, from long experience, what being
intently regarded by an official of the Latin race
means, and so "executed" myself without delay.
We parted the best of friends, and I was a peseta
the poorer.

I was now free to proceed to an hotel; but
this was much more easily said than done. In
the first place, there were no public conveyances
about, save the volantes, which are vehicles far too
ethereal to carry heavy luggage; in the next, to
find any tolerably comfortable hotel in Havana is
a labour which, had it been imposed on Hercules,
might have caused that strong man to be a little
less conceited about his triumph over the
Erymanthian boar and the eleven other difficulties.
The wealthy and splendid city of Havana is
worse off for hotels than any other in the civilised
world. The Antilles, perhaps, cannot be
held as belonging entirely to civilisation; but,
as the "Queen" of the Antilles, I think Havana
might maintain at least one decent inn. There
is an hotel in the Plaza Isabella Segunda, close
to the Tacon Theatre, kept by one Legrand, a
Frenchman; but I had heard dismal reports of
its cleanliness, and it was situated, besides,
beyond the walls, whereas I wanted to be near the
Plaza de Armas and the sea. There is a very
excellent boarding-house, clean, comfortable,
and well appointed, kept by Mrs. Almi, an
American lady; but her accommodation is
limited, and her establishment is nearly always
as "complete" as a Parisian omnibus on a wet
day. I have been told, also, that there is a slight
drawback to the comfort you enjoy at Mrs.
Almi's, in the fact of the house being the chosen
resort of consumptive invalids from the United
States, who have fled from the asperity of the
northern winter to the warmer sky of Cuba.
But they are often in the penultimate stage of
the disease when they land; they don't get
better; and it is apt to spoil your dinner—so I
was told—when inquiring for your next neighbour
of the day before, who talked so charmingly
of the last opera, and so hopefully of the coming
bull-fight, you are informed that he has been dead
for some hours, and will be buried this sundown
in the Potters' field. You grow accustomed to
this at last; for it may be said, without
exaggeration, life in these regions of vomito and fever
resembles life on board a man-o'-war in
wartime. You are very merry with Jack and Tom
overnight; and on the morrow Jack is "knocked
over," and Tom "loses the number of his mess,"
and you say "Poor Jack!" "Poor Tom!" their
clothes are sold by auction before the mast, and
you forget all about the sad occurrence.

With the exception of Legrand's and Mrs.
Almi's, the inns of Havana are all very like
what I should imagine the fondas and posadas
of old Spain, away from Madrid, to be. I had
heard such dreadful stories about them, that,
blinking the pulmonary drawback, I determined
to try Mrs. Almi's. By this time, with the
assistance of several willing and grinning
negroes, who danced with delight at the gift of
a very small silver coin—I never saw any copper
money in Havana—my luggage had been
piled on a machine closely resembling one of
those miniature drays in England, on which a
very small barrel of beer is drawn by a very big
horse, conducted by a very big man. The beast
of draught was in this case a bullock, with
an enormous gole, not over his shoulders, but right
across his forehead. That poor animal certainly
earned his bread by the sweat of his brow; and, to
judge from his lean flanks and protruding bones,
I should infer that the jerked beef he might
furnish, subsequent to his demise, would be dear
at threepence a pound. The conductor, who sat
the horse, side-saddle fashion, was a prodigious
old negro whose wool had turned white, and
whose wicked old head—he was such a nasty-
looking old man—was surmounted by a ragged
straw hat. He was singing, of course,
occasionally varying that recreation by skinning and
gobbling the pulp of some oranges, of which he
had a pocketful, and, on the whole, took things
very easily. I presume he was a slave. I was
bound to walk behind this sable drayman, for,
although I might have taken a volante, was it
not my duty to follow my luggage? And, but
for an uncomfortable fancy that if I stepped on
the dray and sat aside my trunk I should look
like a traitor being drawn to execution at
Tyburn on a sledge, I would have patronised
that mode of locomotion.