venture to address either of themselves, but I asked an acolyte if
he could throw any light upon the matter. He assured me that there
neither was nor could have been any mistake. They had the right body and
were in no doubt about it. In more pious ages disputes of this sort were
settled by an appeal to miracles. Rival pretenders for the possession of
the same bones came, however, at last to be able to produce authentic
proofs of miracles which had been worked at more than one of the
pretended shrines; so that it was concluded that saints' relics were
like the loaves and fishes, capable of multiplication without losing
their identity, and of having the property of being in several places at
the same moment. The same thing has been alleged of the Holy Coat of
Treves and of the wood of the true cross. Havana and St. Domingo may
perhaps eventually find a similar solution of their disagreement over
the resting place of Columbus.

I walked back to my hotel up a narrow shady street like a long arcade.
Here were the principal shops; several libraries among them, into which
I strayed to gossip and to look over the shelves. That so many persons
could get a living by bookselling implied a reading population, but the
books themselves did not indicate any present literary productiveness.
They were chiefly old, and from the Old World, and belonged probably to
persons who had been concerned in the late rebellion and whose property
had been confiscated. They were absurdly cheap; I bought a copy of
Guzman de Alfarache for a few pence.

I had brought letters of introduction to several distinguished people in
Havana; to one especially, Don G----, a member of a noble Peninsular
family, once an officer in the Spanish navy, now chairman of a railway
company and head of an important commercial house. His elder brother,
the Marques de ----, called on me on the evening of the day of my
arrival; a distinguished-looking man of forty or thereabouts, with
courteous high-bred manners, rapid, prompt, and incisive, with the air
of a soldier, which in early life he had been. He had travelled, spoke
various languages, and spoke to me in admirable English. Don G----, who
might be a year or two younger, came later and stayed an hour and a half
with me. Let me acknowledge here, and in as warm language as I can
express it, the obligations under which I stand to him, not for the
personal attentions only which he showed me during my stay in Havana,
but for g