largely to Europe
and America, and has thereby accumulated for himself a fortune.

Following the street on which is this famous confectionary, one is soon
brought to the city walls, and, passing outside, is at once ushered into
the Tacon Paseo, where all the beauty and fashion of the town resort in
the after part of the day. It is a mile or more in length, beautifully
laid out in wide, clean walks, with myriads of tropical flowers, trees
and shrubs, whose fragrance seems to render the atmosphere almost dense.
Here the ladies in their volantes, and the gentlemen mostly on foot,
pass and repass each other in a sort of circular drive, gayly saluting,
the ladies with a coquettish flourish of the fan, the gentlemen with a
graceful wave of the hand.

In these grounds is situated the famous Tacon Theatre. In visiting the
house, you enter the first tier and parquette from the level of the
Paseo, and find the interior about twice as large as any theatre in this
country, and about equal in capacity to Tripler Hall, New York, or the
Music Hall, Boston. It has five tiers of boxes, and a parquette with
seats, each separate, like an arm-chair, for six hundred persons. The
lattice-work in front of each box is light and graceful, of gilt
ornament, and so open that the dresses and pretty feet of the senoras
are seen to the best advantage. The decorations are costly, and the
frescoes and side ornaments of the proscenium exceedingly beautiful. A
magnificent cut-glass chandelier, lighted with gas, and numerous smaller
ones extending from the boxes, give a brilliant light to this elegant
house. At the theatre the military are always in attendance in strong
force, as at all gatherings in Cuba, however unimportant, their only
perceptible use, however, being to impede the passages, and stare the
ladies out of countenance. The only other noted place of amusement is
the Italian opera-house, within the city walls, an oven-shaped building
externally, but within appropriately and elegantly furnished with every
necessary appurtenance.

No object in Havana will strike the visitor with more of interest than
the cathedral, situated in the Calle de Ignacio. Its towers and pillared
front of defaced and moss-grown stone call back associations of
centuries gone by. This cathedral, like all of the Catholic churches, is
elaborately ornamented with many fine old paintings of large size and
immense value. The entire dome is also decorated with paintings in