Never eat fruit at night. Result—Typhoid fever.
If you sleep too much; if you sit in the draught; if you let the moon shine on you. Result—Lockjaw and speedy annihilation.
These admonitions were very confusing, and we lay awake at night thinking how we could manage to live under these circumstances.
What a delight to look at the view from our balcony! I never imagined anything so beautiful: the distant hills are so blue, the water so sparkling, the sun gilds the hundreds of sails in the harbor. At night the water is brilliant with phosphorescence, and when the boats glide through it they throw out a thousand colors; even the reflection of the stars is multicolored. And then, pervading all, the delicious fragrance of fruit and flowers and tropicality!
When I am not poetical, as above, I notice the oxcarts with their cruel drivers yelling at their poor beasts and goading them with iron-pointed sticks. When they were not striking them, they struck picturesque attitudes themselves, leaning on their carts and smoking endless cigarettes. The cabmen are also picturesque in their way. After their return from a "course," tired out from whipping their forlorn horses into the sideling trot which is all they are equal to, and after flicking their ears until they are too lazy to continue, they hang their hats and stockingless feet over the carriage lamps and chew sugar-cane, looking the picture of contentment.
Cabs are cheap; twenty-five cents will take you anywhere à la course. But if you go from one shop to another, or linger at a visit, fancy knows no bounds, for there is no tariff and the coachman's imagination is apt to be vivid; and as you can't trust anything else, you must trust to your conversational power to get you out of the scrape.
Volantes are capricious and too exotic a vehicle to trifle with; moreover, they turn corners with difficulty, and corners in Havana are the things you meet the most of.
The streets are narrow; so that if you wish to avoid adventures you must be careful to give your coachman the correct address before starting off. The porter of the hotel did this for us to-day, as our Spanish has not reached perfection yet.
All the streets are labeled subida, which means, "go up this street," or bajado, "down this street." If, by chance, you want to go to 27 subida and you amble on to 29, it takes you hours to go bajado and get back to subida again, going round in a cercle vicieux. We spent a whole broiling afternoon buying two spools of thread, my parasol being mightier than my tongue, as the poor coachman's back can vouch for. When everything else failed we shouted in unison, "Hotel San Carlos," and the black coachman grinned with delight. Seeing bajado so often at different points, Laura thought it was the sign of an assurance company; when I saw it on the same house as Maria Jesus Street I thought it was some kind of charitable institution.
A volante, as I have said, is a unique and delightful vehicle, which one requires to know to appreciate. There are two huge wheels behind and none in front; the animal, secured between the shafts, supports the weight of the carriage. The seat is very low, so that you recline, more than sit; your feet are unpleasantly near the horse's tail; a small seat can be pulled out between you and your companion if there is a child in the party. A dusky postilion decked out in high top-boots, with enormous spurs of real silver, sits astride the horse between the shafts, and a huge sombrero covers his woolly head.