surrounding
heights.

The houses, which are in the Moorish style, have excessively thick
walls, and are mostly of one storey. The windows, however, are
unglazed, and, on account of the heat of the climate, always kept open.

The object of most interest in the city is the cathedral, not on account
of its beauty, but because it contains the bones of Columbus, which were
removed here from the church of Santa Domingo, in Hispaniola, at the end
of the last century.

The chief attractions of the place are its paseos or public drives, of
which it possesses three, two inside, and one outside the walls. Some
of them are ornamented with statues of royal personages, more or less
ugly, with rows of poplars on either side, and with fountains and
gardens. Here, in the afternoon, the world of fashion resort, and they
are thronged with young creoles in evening dress and round hats,
employed in casting admiring glances at the fair dames, who drive slowly
up and down the carriage-road in their wide and open volantes, their
heads adorned as if for a ballroom, with natural flowers, and generally
arrayed in costumes of all the colours of the rainbow.

Jack felt, at first, somewhat indignant as he observed the impudent
glances, so he considered them, cast by the youths at the young ladies;
but soon came to the conclusion that they had no objection to be so
looked at, and would indeed have felt injured had they not received this
style of homage from the opposite sex. As he passed through the
streets, he could look with ease through the large open windows into the
drawing-rooms of the houses, where in the evening, when not abroad, the
ladies of the family are wont to assemble; the older dames seated in
rocking-chairs, the younger in front of the iron bars, by which alone
ingress from without is prevented. Here they can see every one passing
and be seen in return.

The volante is as worthy of a description as the gondola of Venice. The
dames of Cuba delight in it, for it is not only picturesque, but
luxurious in the extreme. It is made to contain two sitters with
comfort, but when a duenna is in attendance, she is seated on a middle
seat between her charges. It has two enormous wheels, strong and thick;
the body is supported on the axle-tree, and swings forward from it on
springs; it is somewhat low down, and affords abundance of room for the
feet, which are supported by a brightly polished metal bar, which runs
across the footboa