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Again I am here! Heat is a good thing, but too much is--too much! And this heat is too stimulating both for soul and body. It may be possible to keep in health, but to keep in spirits is an impossibility; one becomes quite enervated. A fine sand-dust enters through the jalousies from the streets, and fills the air of the room, and covers every thing. Evening is the only time of the day in which one can breathe at all freely, partly in the open air, partly in the airy galleries within the house, opening into the court.

I am now staying with the F. family in Calle (street) de Obra Pia. Good Mrs. F. has arranged a room for my accommodation, and seems to have my comfort at heart in every possible way. She is one of those beautiful, maternal natures who make life so rich, and all in the house love her. I should love her if it were for no other reason then because she likes the negroes; is a motherly protector of the slaves; and openly takes the part of the negro character on all occasions, and can relate many beautiful traits of their nobility of mind, their faithfulness and good disposition. She spends one portion of the forenoon quite patriarchally in sitting and sewing among her female slaves, as well as in reading to the younger children in one of the long, open galleries, where she also receives visits, and gives orders for the business of the kitchen or the toilet. In the evening the large family party and their circle of friends gather around her in the galleries or the drawing-room. Then come the two young, lovely ladies, her daughters, with their husbands, both Germans, and one of whom is very musical; then come the English consul, Mr. C., with his lovely young wife, a daughter also of   [p. 284]   Mrs. F., though by a former marriage; and there are the enamored pair, the eldest son of the house, and his blooming wife; and there are the betrothed couple, Louisa F., still almost a child, and her lover, a young Scotch gentleman, who is desperately in love, and very agreeable; there are the younger sons and daughters of the house, the youngest of these my grave little Maestro in the Spanish tongue, the thirteen-year-old Gulio and Emily, as pretty and graceful as one imagines a good fairy; then also come other friends of the family, and there is music, singing, and dancing; but the enamored bridegrooms, married or betrothed, sit beside their young brides and gaze at them, and will not let them dance or leave their sides.

The construction of houses in Havana is very peculiar, and one must get accustomed to them to like it. Every thing is arranged so as to produce as much air and as much circulation as possible. Long galleries, with wide semicircular arcades, open into the court (this house has them on four sides); in these galleries the whole household may be found, all busy, and leading a sort of public life; dinner is eaten, visits are received, the lady of the house sews surrounded by her female slaves, or instructs her children; her domestics wash, or perform their other respective household duties; every thing is done all in these open galleries, in which people and air circulate alike unimpeded. Within these galleries, which generally have marble floors, lie the sleeping rooms, separated from the gallery by Venetian shutters, the windows opening to the street, and which, in the upper story of the house, are inclosed in the same manner. On the ground floor, however, the windows have iron bars or gratings, and behind this grating a curtain which is drawn at night. During the day no curtain is seen, and these grated windows, with their upright iron bars, give a dismal, prison-like appearance to the story nearest to the street. In the more elegant houses, however, this window-grating is much   [p. 285]   ornamented, and frequently handsome ladies, rocking themselves in rocking-chairs, and fanning themselves with splendid fans, may be seen sitting behind the grating. Glass is never used. This construction of houses and arrangement of rooms gives free and general circulation to the air, and the air of Cuba can not be other than welcome, but with it comes, here in Havana, a vast deal of dust, which is detrimental both to neatness and comfort.

If one goes into the city--and I have rambled about a great deal by myself in the evening--one gets glimpses on all hands, through arcades and half-dusky passages, into homes and amid households, the figures of which are seen in a charming clair-obscur. They pass by and vanish into shade. On all sides you see new vistas open, new pictures in dusky arcades and beneath porticoes, ornamented with fresco-painting of fruits and flowers; but all is seen in a half light. Publicity has here a mystery, a shadowy depth; and in front of the open windows of the houses is iron grating. There is in the building of the city a great mixture of regularity and irregularity, of old and new, of the splendid and the dilapidated. Close beside the elegant arched arcade, with its gayly painted walls, stands a half-ruinous wall, the fresco-paintings of which are half obliterated or have pealed off with the mortar. And this old wall is not repaired, nor the old painting restored. All this--the countenances and life of the colored population; the silent, wedge-like way in which the volantes insinuate themselves between the rows of houses, give to Havana a peculiar character, and a romantic life which is unlike that of any other city which I have seen, and especially unlike those of England and North America.

We have now moonlight, and I can not but admire its brightness and transparency. Our moonlight in Sweden is tolerably bright, but has a colder, more blue tinge; here it is light yellow, and seems to me almost rose-tinted.   [p. 286]   Moonlight here is considered dangerous, and people do not venture into it with uncovered heads.

I have been two evenings to La Plaza des Armas, to hear the music, with my good friends Mr. and Mrs. F. Elegant signoras with light mantillas over their heads, which are adorned with flowers, walk about with polite caballeros under the magnificent king palms, or sit on marble benches talking, while the music plays Cuban dances or marches, and pieces from favorite operas. A more beautiful festal hail than this place, with its palms and palaces, seen beneath the moonlight, and the beaming heaven of Cuba, can not be conceived. I have also seen here lovely poetical forms, and poetically lovely costumes. That transparent Spanish veil is like moonlight, a talisman which conceals deformity, and enhances beauty by its mystic, shadowy half light.

My amiable entertainers drove me one day to a village or small town, called Guanabacoa, which is said to be the oldest on the island, and which still preserves some memories of the aborigines the mild, peaceful Indians who inhabited Cuba when the Spaniards discovered this beautiful island. And it is one of the peculiarities of Cuba that its aborigines were as mild as its climate, which even to this day exercises its delicious influence upon those who are born in the island. The Creoles are mild and of good disposition. There exist on the island neither poisonous plants nor venomous creatures. The native bee of Cuba has not even poison in its sting. The barbarities of the Spaniards in the island have not been able to poison its natural character; the blood of its massacred, inoffensive aborigines cries still from the earth, but its cry is a beautiful melody; it has baptized the most beautiful valley of Cuba with the name of Yumori!

Among the memories which the Indians have left in Guanabacoa is a kind of earthen vessel made from a sort of porous clay, peculiar to the place, and which is still made   [p. 287]   there. These earthen vessels are universal in Cuba for the keeping drinking-water cool in the house. The water evaporates through the porous vessel, around which a cloth is bound, which is thus always moist, and the water which is drawn off is fresh, if not always cool enough for my taste. The want of good drinking-water is a great want in Cuba. Ice is not as yet used there for the cooling of water, except in the large hotels of Havana.

The day was beautiful on which we drove to Guanabacoa, and the drive was beautiful also; but I was not able fully to enjoy it. I was worn out, from the want of rest for two nights, owing to the heat and the musquitoes, and I saw every thing in a half-slumbering state. The little town reminded me of a miniature picture of Havana, the houses built and painted in the same style, with the same flat roofs, and even ornamented azoteons, but all less and lower. The country exhibits still the same expanse of billowy plain scattered with palms and small farms, and with a background of that lofty mountain chain which runs from east to west, and which is every where a fine, prominent feature of its landscape. The highest peaks of these mountains, Patullo and Cobre, are said to be upward of 3000 feet.

The natural fortresses and strong-holds of the island have their own gloomy, romantic significance. Fugitive slaves live in these mountains, and have fortified themselves in their innumerable grottoes and caves, so that any pursuit of them is impossible. They have there built dwellings for themselves and obtained fire-arms, and at one time amounted to so large a number --it is said many thousands--that the government of Cuba entertained serious apprehensions from them. The difficulty, however, of obtaining food for themselves in these remote fastnesses have caused them of late greatly to decrease in number. Nevertheless, they prefer to live free, amid those free, stern mountains, than to come down and live amid still sterner men.

The palm always constitutes an important feature in the landscape, especially when it stands singly or scattered in small groups. It strikes me as being the noblest and most human-like of all trees. On our homeward drive from Guanabacoa, I observed, in the clear moonlight, two palm-trees standing solitary in a large field. They stood a little apart, but the stems had more and more inclined toward each other, and their crowns met. Thus they stood, embracing each other with whispering branches, beneath that beautiful vault of heaven, themselves forming below it a lofty Gothic arch. Thus sometimes will two noble-minded adversaries approach each other and grow together the nearer they grow toward heaven.

Our road through the whole drive lay between quick hedges, consisting, for the most part, of immense aloes, the pointed, thorny leaves of which forbade any approach. I saw in the middle of these plants tall white and pink spikes of flowers not yet fully blown, and Mr. F. had the kindness to gather two of them for me. They resembled at a distance an immense hyacinth stem; they were the beautiful spikes of the aloe flower, and which afterward produce a pleasant juicy fruit, with a pine-apple flavor. Here and there an orange-tree shot up in the hedge, as well as that strange candelabra-like plant or tree which I had already observed on the heights around Havana harbor, but have not learned either its name or genus. Very unlike were these quick hedges to those of our country fields; they are, however, more odd-looking than really beautiful. We drove home in that clear, gold, and rose-tinted moonlight. I understand that there are many beautiful flowers which bloom only in this light, among which is the night-blowing cereus.

Among the miracles which the sun performs here, that which it performs in the depth of the sea is perhaps the most remarkable. The sun casts his prismatic bow into the deep, and colors the fish therewith. I yesterday paid   [p. 289]   a visit to the fish-market of Havana, and no stranger in Havana should fail of seeing this remarkable sight.

The fish glow with all the colors of the rainbow, with the most splendid clearness and distinctness; they are blue, yellow, red.; they are edged with gold and violet, gold-tinted, and so on--it is the most magnificent fish-splendor that any one can imagine. The most beautiful algæ and corals are gathered from the sea around Cuba.

Good Mrs. F. has frequently invited me to accompany her to the opera, but I am so covetous of the air and the moonlight here, that I prefer spending my evenings on La Plaza des Armas. Nature here is to me No. 1; people and their fine shows, No. 2; I shall, however, go to-morrow to a large soirée at the house of the English consul, and see there the Spanish beauties. And then farewell to Havana for a time.

I have received two invitations which have greatly pleased me: the one to Matanzas, to the house of an American merchant there; the other to a plantation at a few miles' distance, from a Mrs. De C., whose friendly letter was a real refreshment to me; for there I shall be able to get out into the country, and to become acquainted with palms, and coffee-shrubs, and sugar-cane, and other tropical growths. I am greatly delighted. I wished to leave Havana, where the oppressive heat and the unusual mode of living have caused me to suffer from an intolerable headache, which I have now had for three days, and which I can not get rid of, although I am as much in the air as possible. To-morrow I shall go by rail-way to Matanzas, which is not quite a day's journey.

Before I close my letter, I must tell you the arrangement which the Swedish consul here, Mr. N., and Mr. S., wish to make for me. Mr. N. has a small country-house which he does not occupy, in the beautiful garden region close by the S.'s. This he wishes to furnish for me, and there I am to live in rural peace and freedom, attended by   [p. 290]   a respectable duenna, and to take my meals with the S.'s, who also invite me to take up my quarters with them as soon as their guest-chamber, which is now occupied, shall be at liberty. Is not this charming? I shall not probably avail myself of this proffered kindness, but I am grateful with all my heart for such hospitality. The good F.'s are, however, at the bottom of it all. God bless them!

You have now frost and snow, and cold, cold air, cold all around you! and here it is too hot for me; and heat is not much better than cold, particularly when one has a headache. But heart and soul are sound, and with them I embrace you in all love!