Sunday morning we arose while the stars yet blazed, found a cup of coffee for our desayuno at a little restaurant across the street, and at five o’clock were in the cars again traveling toward Havana.
The country we have been looking on is quite as beautiful as the more flat-lying, but not more fertile region about Matanzas, and I have felt that the many Americans we have met everywhere, all looking for land to buy and to abide upon, are in happy quest. They are entering into one of the veritable garden places of the earth and many more of my fellow-countrymen will surely follow them.
XXIV
Steamer Mascot
Steamer Olivette, between Havana and Key West,
December 31st.
One learns to rise early in these tropical lands. The midday siesta here affords the rest which we are wont to claim for the early morning hours. I have readily acquired the habit. To lie abed is become a burden. I stir abroad betimes as do all others. And I am sleepy also toward midday, and quite inclined to take a nap when the heat is most intense. I recall that two years ago when coming home from France, the only stateroom I could obtain upon the Wilhelm der Grosse, was already partly taken by a gentleman from Mexico. I doubted whether it would be pleasant to chum with a stranger, but I had no choice, so made the best of it. He had the upper berth, I slept below. But although we were a week upon the sea, I never saw him, and I do not to-day know who he was. I was asleep before he turned in. I was still asleep when, at break of dawn, he passed out to pace the decks. He took his midday siesta when I was enjoying the midday sun, or resting upon my sea-chair. I then wondered at the persistent habit which drove him from a comfortable bed almost before the night was spent. Now I comprehend his ways, and if I were to voyage seaward to-morrow, I should be rising with the dawn. Yesterday morning I had risen at four o’clock, and had taken my desayuno at an hour when those at home are sunk in sleep.
THE WRECK OF THE ALFONSO XII