he shore generally
north of Principe was the Santa Clara battery, and between that and La
Punta, at the foot of the Calzada de Belascoain, stood the Queen's battery.
From any modern point of view, the system is little more than military
junk, better fitted for its present use as barracks, asylums, and prisons
than for military defence. But it is all highly picturesque.

In the beginning, most of the buildings of the city were doubtless of wood,
with palm-thatched roofs. In time, these gave place to rows of abutting
stone buildings with tiled roofs. Most of them were of one story, some were
of two stories, and a few "palaces" had three. The city within the wall
is today very much as it was a century and more ago. Its streets run,
generally but not accurately, at right angles, one set almost due east and
west, from the harbor front to the line of the old wall, and the other set
runs southward from the shore of the entrance channel to the shore of the
inner harbor. Several of these streets are practically continuous
from north to south or from east to west. But most of them are rather
passage-ways than streets. The houses come to their very edges, except
for a narrow strip hardly to be classed as a sidewalk, originally left,
presumably, only for the purpose of preventing the scraping of the front of
the building by the wheels of passing carts and carriages. It is a somewhat
inconvenient system nowadays, but one gets quite used to it after a little,
threads the narrow walk a part of his way, takes to the street the rest
of the way, and steps aside to avoid passing vehicles quite as did the
carriageless in the old days. One excellent way to avoid the trouble is to
take a carriage and let the other fellow step aside. Riding in the _coche_
is still one of the cheapest forms of convenience and entertainment in the
city, excepting the afternoon drive around the Prado and the Malecon. That
is not cheap. We used to pay a dollar an hour. My last experience cost me
three times that.

[Illustration: CUSTOM HOUSE, HAVANA _Formerly Franciscan Convent Begun_
1574, _finished_ 1591]

Much of the old city is now devoted to business purposes, wholesale,
retail, and professional. But there are also residences, old churches, and
old public buildings. On the immediate water-front, and for many years used
as the custom house, stands the old Franciscan convent, erected during the
last quarter of the 16th Century. It is a somewhat imposing pile,