mperature can scarcely be defined by mounting mercury, neither can it
be adequately described. It is during these blazing hot months that the
ever-azure firmament seems to blink with blue: that the roads and
pavement blister the soles of your feet; and that the gay-coloured
house-fronts scorch your clothes of white drill and tan your Anglo-Saxon
complexion. The Cubans have a mania for painting the fronts of their
town residences a celestial blue, a blinding white, or a feverish yellow
ochre: colours singularly trying to the eyes, and figurative eyesores to
artists in search of the harmonious. It is at this oppressive season of
the year that I would relieve my exhausted vision with the grateful
greens of the dusky olive, the pale pea, and the lively emerald. I pant
for a plantation which shall shelter and not suffocate.

The realisation of my desire is kindly brought about by Cachita's
father, Don Severiano, who hospitably places at my disposal his hacienda
in the country. Thither he himself is bound, with Dona Belen his wife,
his children, certain friends and domestics. So I make one of his party.
Don Severiano is a wealthy planter, with I know not how many acres of
rich soil, where the coffee-plant grows, yielding a couple of crops or
so per annum to the labour of a small battalion of blacks.

On the morning of our departure for Don Severiano's coffee estate, Don
Severiano himself is in the patio, presiding over the saddling and
harnessing department; for some of us are to bestride horses. The ladies
and children are to drive; and mules, and carts drawn by oxen, are
reserved for the conveyance of the luggage and the domestics. By way of
dispelling our lingering somnolence, and fortifying us for the heavy
journey before us, cups of strong coffee are handed round; and, with a
view to getting over as much ground as possible before blinding daylight
shall appear, we start at three o'clock to the minute.

The quitrins--light gig vehicles on wheels six yards in circumference,
with shafts sixteen feet long, and drawn by mules bearing negro
postilions in jack-boots--lead the way. The equestrians follow at a
jog-trot; the extreme tips of their buff-coloured shoes lightly touching
the stirrups; their knees firmly pressed against the saddles; their
figures bolt upright and immovable. Then come the carts with shady
awnings of palm leaves, drawn by oxen with yokes fastened to the points
of their horns. The drivers probe them with