dominated
by a high tower. I have not visited it for a number of years and do not
know if its interior is available for visitors without some special
introduction, but there is much worth seeing inside its walls, the flying
buttresses of the super-structure, some old and interesting frescoes, and
a system of dome construction that is quite remarkable. To the latter, my
attention was first called by General Ludlow, a distinguished engineer
officer of the United States Army, then acting as governor of the city. To
him belongs, although it is very rarely given, the credit for the cleansing
of Havana during the First Intervention. He frequently visited the old
convent just to see and study that interior dome construction. Immediately
behind the Palace is the old convent of the Dominicans, less imposing but
of about the same period as the Franciscan structure. It is now used as
a high-school building. The Cathedral, a block to the northward of the
Dominican convent building, is of a much later date, having been begun as
recently as 1742. It was originally the convent of the Jesuits, but became
the Cathedral in 1789. Many have believed, on what seems to be acceptable
evidence, that here for more than a hundred years rested the bones of
Christopher Columbus. He died in Valladolid in 1506, and was buried there.
His remains were removed to the Carthusian Monastery, in Seville, in 1513.
From there they are said to have been taken, in 1536, to the city of Santo
Domingo, where they remained until 1796, when they were brought to Havana
and placed in a niche in the walls of the old Cathedral, there to remain
until they were taken back to Spain in 1898. There is still an active
dispute as to whether the bones removed from Santo Domingo to Havana were
or were not those of Columbus. At all events, the urn supposed to contain
them was in this building for a hundred years, below a marble slab showing
a carving of the voyager holding a globe, with a finger pointing to the
Caribbean. Beneath this was a legend that has been thus translated:

OH! REST THOU, IMAGE OF THE GREAT COLON,
THOUSAND CENTURIES REMAIN, GUARDED IN THE URN,
AND IN THE REMEMBRANCE OF OUR NATION.

In this neighborhood, to the east of the Plaza de Armas, on which the
Palace fronts, is a structure known as _El Templete_. It has the appearance
of the portico of an unfinished building, but it is a finished memorial,
erected in 1828. The tradition is that on this spot th