Of an early winter morning—a winter morning in Cuba is like an ideal one in late May in our latitudes, Tacon Gardens are delightful, they are so well arranged and so full of interest. In the centre is the Quinta, or summer-house, which you reach by a very long verdant tunnel, formed of Pacific roses and the clustering yellow banksia. Here also I first made the acquaintance of the duck plant, or Aristolochia pelicana of which more anon, and of the divinely beautiful Cuban morning glory, convolvulus major—with its immense bunches of the deepest blue flowers. In the evening the moon-flower opens its colossal white disks, and the night-blooming cerus is also a perennial attraction to those who have never seen it burst into glory at a given hour, and shed around an almost too powerful odour of attar of roses.
Take Havana for all in all, in times of peace it is by far and away the pleasantest city in the Southern Hemisphere—the most resourceful, for it has capital public libraries, museums, clubs, and theatres. Of an evening it is quite charming. Then the streets are thronged with people until early morning. The bands play selections from the latest operas—even Wagnerian airs—the señoras and señoritas parade up and down with their attendant cabaleros, and mostly in evening, nay, full ball dress, with only a lace veil over their heads. A brilliant double line of equipages fills the central drive, and very smart many of them are—as well turned out as any in Hyde Park or the Bois. The cafés, and there are hundreds of them, are dazzling with electric and incandescent light, and packed by a motley crowd as picturesque as it is animated. Negresses, in gaudy cast-off finery, offer you dulce or sweetmeats, and coloured boys cry "limonata" and ice water. Everybody has a cigarette between their lips or their fingers. Banjos twang and mandolines tinkle in all directions, and if you chance to get a good seat at the Café Dominico, or the Louvre, where the world of fashion is wont to assemble to suck ice drinks through long straws, smoke cigarettes, and criticise their neighbours, you can pass many an amused hour, watching the passing show of this West Indian Vanity Fair.
If it please you to leave the gay throng to its devices, its cigarettes, and its scandal, to quit the flaring thoroughfares and betake yourself to the semi-deserted bye streets, you will find plenty to attract and amuse you. Here, for instance, is a street so narrow, you might shake hands across it. The mellow tropical moonlight falls only on the roofs of its tall one-storied houses, and on the tapering campanile of some church or convent, which it transforms for the time being into a column of burnished gold. A vivid glare across the street attracts your attention. It proceeds from a cavernous-looking tavern, whose otherwise gloomy interior is lighted up by strings of Chinese lanterns. A crowd of negroes, smoking cigars or cigarettes, stand in a confused group round a couple, consisting of a huge Congo black naked to the waist, and a lady of a few shades lighter hue, dancing the obscene Cubana, to the intense gratification of the dusky spectators. Down another still narrower street, across a little Plaza, and we find ourselves in a sort of covered gallery, where whole families of respectable citizens, gran'pa and gran'ma included, are supping al fresco—by the light of a number of curious brass lamps, such as the old Romans used. Not far off you catch a glimpse of the sea glistening in the moonlight, which turns the distant suburb of Regla, on the opposite side of the harbour, into rows of ivory dice, the square one-storied houses looking for all the world like those pernicious toys on a colossal scale. Resisting the pressing invitation of a party of gaudily dressed ladies seated in the huge cage-like window of a house hard by, we find ourselves, by a sudden turn, in the Cathedral Square. Although late, the great church is open and brilliantly illuminated, and within we can see the pious throng, kneeling before the high altar, chanting Ave Maria—
Ora pro nobis, nunc et in ora mortis nostris.
Commend to me a city of the Latin race for delightful contrasts, and I assure you Havana is no exception to the rule.
The picturesque volante, once as essentially Cuban as the gondola is Venetian, has entirely disappeared, at all events from the streets of the capital. It is, or perhaps I should say it was, a very singular-looking vehicle, with its wonderful spider-web-like wheels, its long shafts, and its horse or mule, upon whose back the driver should perch in a clumsily-made saddle. It had something of the litter on wheels, and was usually occupied of an afternoon on Sundays and holidays, by two or three ladies, magnificently dressed in full ball costume, and blazing with jewels, the fairest of the trio sitting on the knees of the other two. The volante was sometimes splendidly decorated with costly silver platings and rich stuffs. The negro driver wore a very smart dark blue and red cloth livery, covered with gold lace, high jack-boots coming almost up to his waist, and carried a long silver-mounted whip in his hand; victorias and landaus have usurped the place of these old-world coaches, excepting in the country, where they are often to be met with on the high roads.
For its size (the population is about 230,000) Havana is exceptionally well supplied with public and private carriages. You can hire an excellent victoria de plaza for 1 fr. 50 the hour, and a custom, which the London County Council might imitate and introduce with advantage, has long been in use in the Cuban capital. To avoid extortion from the cab-drivers, the lamp-posts are painted various colours, red for the central district, blue for the second circle, and green for the outer. Thus, in a trice, the fare becomes aware when he gets beyond the radius, and pays accordingly. Trouble with the Havanese hack coachman, usually a coloured man, and very civil, is of the rarest occurrence.
Although an eminently Catholic city, Havana cannot be said to be rich in churches. A goodly number have been destroyed during the various rebellions, especially those of the middle of the century (1835), when the religious orders were suppressed. The largest church is the Merced, a fine building in the rococo style, with handsome marble altars and some good pictures. It is crowded on Sundays and holidays by the fashionable world of the place, the young men forming up in rows outside the church as soon as Mass is over, to gaze at the señoritas and their chaperons. The Cathedral is the chief architectural monument of interest in Havana. It was erected for the Jesuits in 1704 on the site of a much older church built in 1519, and dedicated to St Cristobal, the patron of the city. The first Bishop of Havana was an Englishman, a Franciscan named Fray José White. He occupied the See from 1522 to 1527. The old cathedral being considered too small, this church was converted into a cathedral in the present century. It is built in the usual Hispano-American style, with a big dome, and two stumpy towers on either side of the centre. Internally the effect is rather heavy, owing to the dark colour of the marbles which cover the walls, but compared with most churches in these latitudes, the edifice is in exceptionally good taste, with a remarkable absence of the tawdry images and wonderful collections of trumpery artificial flowers and glass shades which, as a rule, disfigure South American churches. The choir would be considered handsome even in Rome, and the stalls are beautifully carved in mahogany. Almost all the columns in the church are also mahogany, highly polished, producing the effect of a deep red marble, most striking when relieved, as in this case, by gilt bronze capitals. In the choir is the tomb of Columbus. The great navigator died, as most of my readers will doubtless be aware, at Valladolid, in Spain, on Ascension Day 1506, and his body was at first deposited, after the most pompous obsequies, in the church of San Francisco, in that city.
In 1513, the remains were conveyed to the Carthusian monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville, where King Ferdinand erected a monument over them, bearing the simple but appropriate inscription:—
"A CASTILE Y LEON
NUEVO MUNDO DIO COLON."