d coaches are driving to and fro,
and stopping at the shop doors, and attendants take their goods to the
doors of the carriages. The watchmen stand at the corners of the
streets, each carrying a long pike and a lantern. Billiard-rooms and
cafes are filled, and all who can walk for pleasure will walk now. This
is also the principal time for paying visits.

There is one strange custom observed here in all the houses. In the
chief room, rows of chairs are placed, facing each other, three or four
or five in each line, and always running at right angles with the street
wall of the house. As you pass along the street, you look up this row of
chairs. In these, the family and the visitors take their seats, in
formal order. As the windows are open, deep, and large, with wide
gratings and no glass, one has the inspection of the interior
arrangement of all the front parlors of Havana, and can see what every
lady wears, and who is visiting her.

IV.

HAVANA: Prisoners and Priests

If mosquito nets were invented for the purpose of shutting mosquitoes in
with you, they answer their purpose very well. The beds have no
mattresses, and you lie on the hard sacking. This favors coolness and
neatness. I should fear a mattress, in the economy of our hotel, at
least. Where there is nothing but an iron frame, canvas stretched over
it, and sheets and a blanket, you may know what you are dealing with.

The clocks of the churches and castles strike the quarter hours, and at
each stroke the watchmen blow a kind of boatswain's whistle, and cry the
time and the state of the weather, which, from their name (serenos),
should be always pleasant.

I have been advised to close the shutters at night, whatever the heat,
as the change of air that often takes place before dawn is injurious;
and I notice that many of the bedrooms in the hotel are closed, both
doors and shutters, at night. This is too much for my endurance, and I
venture to leave the air to its course, not being in the draught. One is
also cautioned not to step with bare feet on the floor, for fear of the
nigua (or chigua), a very small insect, that is said to enter the skin
and build tiny nests, and lay little eggs that can only be seen by the
microscope, but are tormenting and sometimes dangerous. This may be
excessive caution, but it is so easy to observe, that it is not worth
while to test the question.

There are streaks of a clear dawn; it is nearly six o'clock, the cock