not,--their heads are dressed with flowers, or with jewelled pins. Their
faces are whitened, we know, with powder, but in the distance the effect
is pleasing. Their dark eyes are vigilant; they know a lover when they
see him. But there is no twilight in these parts, and the curtain of the
dark falls upon the scene as suddenly as the screen of the theatre upon
the _dénouement_ of the tragedy. Then comes a cup of truly infernal tea,
the mastication of a stale roll, with butter, also stale,--then,
more sitting on the piazza,--then, retirement, and a wild hunt after
mosquitoes,--and so ends the first day at Woolcut's, on the Cerro.


HAVANA. THE HOTELS.


"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Yes, truly, if you can get it,
Jack Falstaff; but it is one thing to pay for comfort, and another thing
to have it. You certainly pay for it, in Havana; for the $3 or $3.50
_per diem_, which is your simplest hotel-charge there, should, in any
civilized part of the world, give you a creditable apartment, clean
linen, and all reasonable diet. What it does give, the travelling public
may like to learn.

Can Grande has left Woolcut's. The first dinner did not please him,--the
cup of tea, with only bread, exasperated,--and the second breakfast,
greasy, peppery, and incongruous, finished his disgust; so he asked for
his bill, packed his trunk, called the hotel detestable, and went.

Now he was right enough in this; the house is detestable;--but as all
houses of entertainment throughout the country are about equally so,
it is scarcely fair to complain of one. I shall not fear to be more