cigarettes, and
will employ the interval which elapses before the burial service is
over, by strolling about the neighbourhood, and chatting with
acquaintances at their grated windows.

Service being over, the funeral will proceed to the cemetery at St.
Ana's. Arrived at the gates of the burial ground, everybody will return
home without waiting for the interment, which in Cuba is performed by a
couple of black sextons who, unattended by either priest, mourner, or
any other person, lower the remains into the hole which has been dug for
it!

CHAPTER V.

CUBAN MODELS.

Tropical Birds--The Cocos--La Grulla--Vultures--Street
Criers--Water Carriers.

My companion has a weakness for bird-painting, and it pleases him to
have the living originals on the premises. Therefore does our spacious
court-yard contain a goodly collection of the feathered tribe, with one
or two animals without feathers. A large wirework aviary is filled with
fifty specimens of tropical birds with pretty plumage and names hard to
pronounce. A couple of cocos--a species of stork, with clipped
wings--run freely about the yard, in company with a wild owl and a
grulla, a tall crane-like bird five feet high. In a tank of water are a
pair of young caymanes, or crocodiles. These interesting creatures are
still in their infancy, and at present measure only four feet six inches
from the tips of their hard noses to the points of their flexible tails.
We have done our best to tame them; but they have not yet fallen into
our domestic ways. Nor does time improve their vicious natures, for at
the tender age of six months they have already shown signs of
insubordination. If they persist in their evil courses we must needs
make a premature end of them, which is no easy matter, for their scaly
hides are already tough as leather, and the only indefensible parts
about them are their small eyes and open mouths.

The Cocos, male and female, are meagre-bodied birds, with slender legs,
and beaks twelve inches long. They are an inseparable couple, and wander
about our patio and rooms in a restless nervous fashion, rattling their
chop-stick noses into everything. Now they are diving into the mould of
flower-pots for live food, which they will never swallow till it has
been previously slain. One of them has espied a cockroach in a corner,
and in darting towards the prey a scorpion crosses its path. The
venomous reptile hugs the belligerent beak in the hop