five feet in the baths; and they
are large enough for short swimming. The bottom is white with sand and
shells. These baths are made at the public expense, and are free. Some
are marked for women, some for men, and some "por la gente de color." A
little further down the Calzada, is another set of baths, and further
out in the suburbs, opposite the Beneficencia, are still others.

After bath, took two or three fresh oranges, and a cup of coffee,
without milk; for the little milk one uses with coffee must not be taken
with fruit here, even in winter.

To the Cathedral, at 8 o'clock, to hear mass. The Cathedral, in its
exterior, is a plain and quaint old structure, with a tower at each
angle of the front; but within, it is sumptuous. There is a floor of
variegated marble, obstructed by no seats or screens, tall pillars and
rich frescoed walls, and delicate masonry of various colored stone, the
prevailing tint being yellow, and a high altar of porphyry. There is a
look of the great days of Old Spain about it; and you think that knights
and nobles worshipped here and enriched it from their spoils and
conquests. Every new eye turns first to the place within the choir,
under that alto-relief, behind that short inscription, where, in the
wall of the chancel, rest the remains of Christopher Columbus. Borne
from Valladolid to Seville, from Seville to San Domingo, and from San
Domingo to Havana, they at last rest here, by the altar side, in the
emporium of the Spanish Islands. "What is man that thou art mindful of
him!" truly and humbly says the Psalmist; but what is man, indeed, if
his fellow men are not mindful of such a man as this! The creator of a
hemisphere! It is not often we feel that monuments are surely deserved,
in their degree and to the extent of their utterance. But when, in the
New World, on an island of that group which he gave to civilized man,
you stand before this simple monumental slab, and know that all of him
that man can gather up, lies behind it, so overpowering is the sense of
the greatness of his deeds, that you feel relieved that no attempt has
been made to measure it by any work of man's hands. The little there is,
is so inadequate, that you make no comparison. It is a mere
finger-point, the _hic jacet_, the _sic itur_.

The priests in the chancel are numerous, perhaps twenty or more. The
service is chanted with no aid of instruments, except once the
accompaniment of a small and rather disordered orga