VEDADO]

Further on, to the southeast, are other sections of the new Havana, the
districts of Cerro and Jesus del Monte. El Vedado has largely supplanted
these neighborhoods as the "court end" of the city. Many of the fine old
residences of forty or fifty years ago still remain, but most of them are
now closely surrounded by the more modest homes of a less aristocratic
group. A few gardens remain to suggest what they were in the earlier days.
Still further out, in the west-and-south quarter-circle, are little towns,
villages, and hamlets, typically Cuban, with here and there the more
imposing estate of planter or proprietor. But, far the greater number of
visitors, perhaps with greater reason, find more of charm and interest
in the city itself than in the suburbs or the surrounding country. The
enjoyment of unfamiliar places is altogether personal. There are many who
really see nothing; they come away from a brief visit with only a confusion
of vague recollections of sights and sounds, of brief inspection of
buildings about which they knew nothing, of the big, yellow Palace, of this
church and that, of the Morro and the harbor, of sunny days, and of late
afternoons along the Prado and the Malecon. To me, Havana is losing its
greatest charm through an excess of Americanization, slowly but steadily
taking from the place much of the individuality that made it most
attractive. It will be a long time before that is entirely lost, but
five-story office buildings, automobiles in the afternoon parade, steaks
or ham and eggs at an eight or nine o'clock breakfast, and all kinds of
indescribable hats in place of dainty and graceful _mantillas_, seem to
me a detraction, like bay-windows and porticos added to an old colonial
mansion.

VI

_AROUND THE ISLAND_

A hundred years ago, the Cubans travelled from place to place about the
island, just as our ancestors did in this country, by water and over rough
trails few of which could, with any approach to correctness, be described
as roads. It was not until about a hundred years ago that we, in this
country, began to build anything even remotely resembling a modern highway.
Our towns and cities were on the seaboard or on the banks of rivers
navigable for vessels of size sufficient for their purposes. Commodities
carried to or brought from places not so located were dragged in stoutly
built wagons over routes the best of which was worse than the worst to be
found anywhere toda