is probably no impediment to him. But at home, as a Cuban,
he may be a planter, a merchant, a physician, but he cannot expect to be
a civil magistrate, or to hold a commission in the army, or an office in
the police; and though he may be a lawyer, and read, sitting, a written
argument to a court of judges, he cannot expect to be himself a judge.
He may publish a book, but the government must be the responsible
author. He may edit a journal, but the government must be the
editor-in-chief.

At the chief stations on the road, there are fruit-sellers in abundance,
with fruit fresh from the trees: oranges, bananas, sapotes, and
coconuts. The coconut is eaten at an earlier stage than that in which we
see it at the North, for it is gathered for exportation after it has
become hard. It is eaten here when no harder than a melon, and is cut
through with a knife, and the soft white pulp, mixed with the milk, is
eaten with a spoon. It is luscious and wholesome, much more so than when
the rind has hardened into the shell, and the soft pulp into a hard
meat.

A little later in the afternoon, the character of the views begins to
change. The ingenios and cane-fields become less frequent, then cease
altogether, and the houses have more the appearance of pleasure retreats
than of working estates. The roads show lines of mules and horses,
loaded with panniers of fruits, or sweeping the ground with the long
stalks of fresh fodder laid across their backs, all moving towards a
common center. Pleasure carriages appear. Next comes the distant view of
the Castle of Atares, and the Principe, and then the harbor and the sea,
the belt of masts, the high ridge of fortifications, the blue and white
and yellow houses, with brown tops; and now we are in the streets of
Havana.

Here are the familiar signs--Por mayor y menor, Posada y Cantina,
Tienda, Panaderia, Relojeria, and the fanciful names of the shops, the
high-pitched falsetto cries of the streets, the long files of mules and
horses, with panniers of fruit, or hidden, all but their noses and
tails, under stacks of fresh fodder, the volantes, and the motley
multitude of whites, blacks, and Chinese, soldiers and civilians, and
occasionally priests--Negro women, lottery-ticket vendors, and the girl
musicians with their begging tambourines.

The same idlers are at the door of Le Grand's; a rehearsal, as usual, is
going on at the head of the first flight; and the parrot is blinking at
the hot, w