There was no obtaining admission at Mrs.
Almi's. Intending visitors had written for their
rooms a month or six weeks in advance; and
the mansion was as full of phthysis as a Ventnor
lodging–house. Next I tried the "Fonda de
America," a few streets off. There was some
room in that hotel, which was under the arcades
of a crumbling old portal, not unlike the Covent
Garden Piazzas, with the aroma of all the
Spanish onions. leeks, and shallots of the
adjoining market hanging about the staircase:—a
despotism of garlic tempered by tobacco–smoke.
The landlady was a German, fair, fat, and
twenty–five, and was basking in a rocking–chair,
enjoying the smoke and the smell of onions with
apparently intense gusto. The perfume was
almost like Fatherland. She had one huge
apartment to let. It was not vacated yet; but
the occupant, a French commercial traveller,
who had seemingly just risen, and who was
carefully oiling and curling himself before a glass,
most courteously permitted me to inspect the
room. He was quite affable, indeed, and was
good enough to inform me that a packet I saw
lying on a side–table contained some of the
genuine Amaranthine soap of her Majesty Queen
Victoria, patented and gold–medalled at the
Universal Exhibition of 1855, and that he was
just then clearing through the custom–house
eighteen cases of Bully's Toilet Vinegar. Ere
I quitted his quarters, he likewise enounced the
opinion that the island of Cuba was un fichu
pays, and that the landlady of the Fonda de
America was a mégère. Heaven bless the
Frenchman wherever in the world's weary
journey you find him! He is always easy,
sprightly, confidential, and conversational.
Bless him for his grimaces, his airy philosophy,
his harmless, naïve vanity. He is, with the
exception of the Englishman, the best travelling
comrade in the world; only, for an Englishman
to speak to a stranger to whom he has not been
introduced, the stranger must be in the cramp–
stage of the cholera morbus or on the point of
having his brains blown out by robbers. Then,
but then only, the Briton becomes own brother
to the man he doesn't know. But the Frenchman
waits for no such crisis.

There was room at the "America," but not for
all of me. You will bear in mind that I was in
triplicate; and so raw was I then to Hispano–
American usages, that I imagined that a traveller
with money in his pocket had a right to a
bedroom to himself. I had yet to learn that our
English word comrade is derived from three
Spanish words—"camara a dos," double–bedded
lodgings. I took a bath at the America, for the
good of the house and my own (the oftener
you bathe before eating, and the more seldom
afterwards, in the tropics, the better it will be
for you); and then the dray, and I and the
negro, who was a spiteful old man, and had lost
his temper fearfully by this time, resumed our
peregrinations. We tried, I think, at "Los
Dos Amigos," "La Reyna de Inglaterra," "La
Corona de España," and other hostelries; but
the answer in all of them was "no room," or
"not room enough." I was, for the nonce, El
Señor Ferguson, and not fated to lodge
anywhere; and the negro sitting side–saddle on
the bullock began to spit and swear in Spanish,
like an infuriated old cat.

But to me the time was not all lost. Far
from it. I had begun to study the humours of
Havana. The time had worn away, it was ten
o'clock, and the city had burst into the full
blaze of tropical life. The Anglo–Americans
rail at Havana, because the streets are so narrow
and so tortuous; but ah! from ten to four
P.M., how grateful you are for narrow devious
lanes, in lieu of broad staring thoroughfares!
You have the inestimable blessing of shade.
Now and then you must take, perforce, a hot
bath, and frizzle for a moment in the sunshine as
you cross a plaza; or, turning a corner, the sun,
suddenly espying you, cleverly refracts a ray at
your head, which pierces your brain well–nigh as
an arrow would, but you are soon in the shade
again. The streets of Havana are perhaps as
clean as those of most southern European
towns. The principal sanitary inspectors are
named Garlic and Tobacco–smoke. They are at
least determined to keep the other stenches
down. The roadway is littered and untidy, but
who should complain of litter composed mainly
of orange–peel, the rinds of pine–apples, cocoa–
nut shells, fragments of melons, and exhausted
Indian corn–cobs? I must go to Covent–garden
again for a comparison. Don't you know that
delightful litter between the grand avenue and
the Old Hummums—I mean that spot where the
orange–boxes are bursting, and the almonds are
tumbling out of their sacks, and the Irish
market–women sit in the June afternoon shelling
peas. The scene is untidy, but grand. I
always think of the Garden of Eden run to seed,
in consequence of the gardener, Adam, having
been turned away.

There is but a ridiculous apology for a foot–
pavement in these streets. The average width
of the trottoir certainly does not exceed twelve
inches. It is a kerbstone with nothing to curb.
I have fancied this exiguity of path to be a
deliberate device on the part of the municipality
to keep up the practice of politeness in Havana,
for of course, if you meet any one on the trottoir
proceeding in a contrary direction to your
own, you naturally step into the kennel to allow
him to pass. You don't give him the wall, you
give him the totality of the pavement. This
hypothesis, I fear, however, is as fantastical as that
suggested, that the narrowness of the streets in
Havana is also due to premeditation, and is
designed to allow opposite neighbours to light
their cigars from each other's weeds. Small as
is the space between the houses, they preserve,
nevertheless, a tolerably perpendicular elevation;
whereas in the town of Algiers, which in the
narrowness of its thoroughfares closely resembles
Havana, the houses are built on the lean–to
principle. Each story seems on the brink of
toppling over; and at the roofs, opposite houses
nearly kiss each other. I have heard that the
Moorish architects adopted this style of