in this hot sun, to black French hats. The tyranny of
systematic, scientific, capable, unpicturesque, unimaginative France,
evidently rules over the realm of man's dress. The houses, the vehicles,
the vegetation, the animals, are picturesque; to the eye of taste

"_Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile._"

We drove through the Puerta de Monserrate, a heavy gateway of the
prevailing yellow or tawny color, where soldiers are on guard, across
the moat, out upon the "Paseo de Isabel Segunda," and are now
"extramuros," without the walls. The Paseo is a grand avenue running
across the city from sea to bay, with two carriage-drives abreast, and
two malls for foot passengers, and all lined with trees in full foliage.
Here you catch a glimpse of the Morro, and there of the Presidio. This
is the Teatro de Tacon; and, in front of this line of tall houses, in
contrast with the almost uniform one-story buildings of the city, the
volante stops. This is Le Grand's hotel.

III.

HAVANA: First Glimpses (2)

To a person unaccustomed to the tropics or the south of Europe, I know
of nothing more discouraging than the arrival at the inn or hotel. It is
nobody's business to attend to you. The landlord is strangely
indifferent, and if there is a way to get a thing done, you have not
learned it, and there is no one to teach you. Le Grand is a Frenchman.
His house is a restaurant, with rooms for lodgers. The restaurant is
paramount. The lodging is secondary, and is left to servants. Monsieur
does not condescend to show a room, even to families; and the servants,
who are whites, but mere lads, have all the interior in their charge,
and there are no women employed about the chambers. Antonio, a swarthy
Spanish lad, in shirt sleeves, looking very much as if he never washed,
has my part of the house in charge, and shows me my room. It has but one
window, a door opening upon the veranda, and a brick floor, and is very
bare of furniture, and the furniture has long ceased to be strong. A
small stand barely holds up a basin and ewer which have not been washed
since Antonio was washed, and the bedstead, covered by a canvas sacking,
without mattress or bed, looks as if it would hardly bear the weight of
a man. It is plain there is a good deal to be learned here. Antonio is
communicative, on a suggestion of several days' stay and good pay.
Things which we cannot do without, we must go out of the house to find,
and those which we ca