lengths and tones. Another has a strangely-fashioned harp,
made from a bent bamboo, to which a solitary string is attached. The
guitar player is, however, in greater demand than the rest, and is
perhaps asked to favour the company with a sentimental song, such, for
example, as the popular ditty called La Bayamesa, which commences:--

?No te acuerdes, gentil Bayamesa,
Que tu fuistes el amor de Fulgencio,
Cuando alegre en tu candida frente,
Beso ardiente imprimi, con pasion?--

that is, a certain 'gentle Bayamese' is reminded that she was the loved
one of Fulgencio, who, invited by the lady's _open_ countenance
impressed upon it a passionate kiss.

This being unanimously approved of by the company, the dark-complexioned
troubadour will probably be called upon for another song, and the
following mournful ballad will perhaps be chanted:--

Yo naci solo para padecer;
iNo te acuerdes mas de mi!
No tengo ningun placer,
Desgraciada y sin salud;
Yo naci solo para padecer.
Mira, iay! la virtud
No se consigue asi, &c.

I was born a child of tears!
Think thou then no more of me.
Life brings only grief and fears
To one worn and pale with care.
I was born a child of tears!
Ah! can virtue linger where
Dwelleth only misery?

CHAPTER XIV.

MASQUERADING IN CUBA.

Deserted!--'Los Mamarrachos'--A French-Creole Ball--Street
Masquers--Negro Amateurs--Masks and Dominoes--The Plaza de
Armas--Victims of the Carnival--A Cuban Cafe in Holiday
Time--'Comparsas'--White and Black Balls--A Moral.

It is the twenty-eighth of December, and the thermometer stands at
eighty-five in the shade. I rise with the 'ganza grulla'--our bird
chronometer--that wonderful creature of the crane species, with a yard
of neck, and two-feet-six of legs. Every morning at six of the clock
precisely, our grulla awakens us by half-a-dozen gurgling and metallic
shrieks, in a tone loud enough to be heard by his Excellency the
Governor, who is a sound sleeper, and lives in a big palace half a
league from our studio. I descend from my Indian grass hammock, and don
a suit of the flimsiest cashmere, in compliment to the winter month, and
because there is still a taste of night air in the early morning. I have
to manufacture my own cafe noir to-day, for my companion is absent, and
our servants--a stalwart Ethiop and a youthful mulatto--are both abroad,
and will not