cantile credit may be
said to be dead, and business nearly at a standstill. Commercial
honesty is hardly to be expected from a bankrupt community, where the
people seem only to be engaged in the sale and purchase of lottery
tickets, a habit participated in by all classes.

What little gold and silver coin there is found in circulation is
mutilated; every piece of money, large and small, has been subjected
to the ingenious punch, and thus has lost a portion of its intrinsic
value. American gold and silver, not having been thus clipped, justly
commands a six per cent. premium.

The circulating medium upon the island is paper scrip, precisely
similar to that used in this country before the resumption of specie
payment. This scrip is dirty beyond endurance, and one absolutely
hesitates to take it in making change.

When our currency became soiled and torn we could exchange it for new,
but there is no such facility in Cuba. One dollar of our money will
purchase $2.45 of this scrip. It passes current, and really seems to
answer the necessities of trade, but even the Cubans are not deceived
by it. They know that it is really worthless, being based upon
nothing, and issued indiscriminately by a bankrupt government. The
paper-mill grinds it out in five, ten, twenty, and fifty cent pieces
as fast as it can be put into circulation, while no one knows how much
has been issued. But one thing is known; namely, that every authorized
issue of a given sum has been enormously exceeded in amount.

Within about five years, or less, an issue of bank-bills and of this
small currency was entrusted to an establishment in the United States,
when fourteen millions of dollars were printed in _addition_ to the
amount authorized! All were duly receipted for and signed by corrupt
Spanish officials, who coolly divided these millions among themselves!
The Captain-General of Cuba during whose administration this financial
stroke was accomplished came to the island a poor man, and returned to
Spain in two years possessed of three million dollars!

There is no more beautiful or safe harbor in the world than that of
Santiago de Cuba, commercially speaking, as it is completely
land-locked and protected on all sides from storms; but for the same
reason it is as close and hot an anchorage as can be found in the
tropics. An intelligent resident gave us 80 deg. Fahrenheit as the average
temperature of the year, though the thermometer showed a more
ambiti