ach side
over the steps of the carriage. The Governor's band played various airs,
martial and civic, with great beauty of execution. The music continued for
two hours, and the throng, with only occasional intervals of conversation,
seemed to give themselves up wholly to the enjoyment of listening to it.

It was a bright moonlight night, so bright that one might almost see to
read, and the temperature the finest I can conceive, a gentle breeze
rustling among the palms overhead. I was surprised at seeing around me so
many fair brows and snowy necks. It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or
perhaps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions of
these ladies seem to differ several shades from those which I saw
yesterday at the churches. A female acquaintance has since given me
another solution of the matter.

"The reason," she said, "of the difference you perceived is this, that
during the ceremonies of holy week they take off the _cascarilla_ from
their faces, and appear in their natural complexions."

I asked the meaning of the word _cascarilla_, which I did not remember to
have heard before.

"It is the favorite cosmetic of the island, and is made of egg-shells
finely pulverized. They often fairly plaster their faces with it. I have
seen a dark-skinned lady as white almost as marble at a ball. They will
sometimes, at a morning call or an evening party, withdraw to repair the
_cascarilla_ on their faces."

I do not vouch for this tale, but tell it "as it was told to me." Perhaps,
after all, it was the moonlight which had produced this transformation,
though I had noticed something of the same improvement of complexion just
before sunset, on the Paseo Isabel, a public park without the city walls,
planted with rows of trees, where, every afternoon, the gentry of Havana
drive backward and forward in their volantes, with each a glittering
harness, and a liveried negro bestriding, in large jack-boots, the single
horse which draws the vehicle.

I had also the same afternoon visited the receptacle into which the
population of the city are swept when the game of life is played out--the
Campo Santo, as it is called, or public cemetery of Havana. Going out of
the city at the gate nearest the sea, I passed through a street of the
wretchedest houses I had seen; the ocean was roaring at my right on the
coral rocks which form the coast. The dingy habitations were soon left
behind, and I saw the waves, pushed forwa