and interjections, selected with no great care
from the vocabularies of almost every European and African language.

There is no place in the world which will seem, at first sight, more
strange and foreign to a home-bred New Englander than the mole at
Matanzas. It attracted even our eyes, which had last looked upon the
picturesque groups in the streets and upon the quay of Valetta. Sunday
is a holiday in Cuba, and a motley crowd had assembled under the cover
of the immense shed which is built on the mole. Upon a pile of
sugar-boxes near us were seated a group of Dutch sailors, gravely
smoking, and sagely keeping silent, in striking contrast with a knot
of Frenchmen, who were all talking at once and gesticulating like
madmen. Here stalked a grave Austrian from Trieste, and yonder a
laughing, lively Greek promenaded arm-in-arm with a Maltese.
Hamburghers and Danes, Swedes and Russians, John Bulls by scores,
Paddies without number, Neapolitans, Sicilians and Mexicans, all were
there, each with fellows and some one to talk to. A group of
emigrants, just landed from the Canary Islands, were keeping watch
over their goods, and were looking with great interest and many
earnest remarks upon this first appearance of their new home. Not far
from them a collection of newly imported African negroes, naked, save
a strip of cloth about their loins, were rivaling in volubility and
extravagance of gesture even the Frenchmen. Native islanders, from the
mountains, in picturesque, brigand-like dresses, with long knives
stuck jauntily in their girdles, gazed with stupid wonder at the crowd
of foreigners. Soldiers from the barracks, with most ferocious looking
whiskers and mustaches, very humbly offered for sale little bunches of
paper cigaritos. Black fruit women, whose whole dress consisted of a
single petticoat of most laconic Fanny Ellslerish brevity, invited the
passer by, in terms of the most affectionate endearment, to purchase
their oranges, melons, and bananas. Young Spanish bloods, with
shirt-bosoms bellying out like a maintop-sail in a gale, stalked along
with great consequence, quizzing the strangers. Children, even of ten
years of age, and of both sexes and all colors, naked as Job when he
came into the world, excited the attention of no one but greenhorns
like myself. Down East molasses drogher skippers, who, notwithstanding
the climate, clothed themselves in their go-ashore long-napped black
beaver hats, stiff, coarse broadcl