ond tier of boxes. The
Creole smokes everywhere, and seemed astonished when the soldier who stood
at the door ordered him to throw away his lighted segar before entering.
Once upon the floor, however, he lighted another segar in defiance of the
prohibition.

The Spanish dances, with their graceful movements, resembling the
undulations of the sea in its gentlest moods, are nowhere more gracefully
performed than in Cuba, by the young women born on the island. I could not
help thinking, however, as I looked on that gay crowd, on the quaint
maskers, and the dancers whose flexible limbs seemed swayed to and fro by
the breath of the music, that all this was soon to end at the Campo Santo,
and I asked myself how many of all this crowd would be huddled uncoffined,
when their sports were over, into the foul trenches of the public
cemetery.

Letter XLVII.

Scenery of Cuba.--Coffee Plantations.

Matanzas, _April 16, 1849_.

My expectations of the scenery of the island of Cuba and of the
magnificence of its vegetation, have not been quite fulfilled. This place
is but sixty miles to the east of Havana, but the railway which brings you
hither, takes you over a sweep of a hundred and thirty miles, through one
of the most fertile districts in the interior of the island. I made an
excursion from Havana to San Antonio de los Banos, a pleasant little town
at nine leagues distance, in a southeast direction from the capital, in
what is called the Vuelta Abajo. I have also just returned from a visit to
some fine sugar estates to the southeast of Matanzas, so that I may claim
to have seen something of the face of the country of which I speak.

At this season the hills about Havana, and the pastures everywhere, have
an arid look, a russet hue, like sandy fields with us, when scorched by a
long drought, on like our meadows in winter. This, however, is the dry
season; and when I was told that but two showers of rain have fallen since
October, I could only wonder that so much vegetation was left, and that
the verbenas and other herbage which clothed the ground, should yet
retain, as I perceived they did, when I saw them nearer, an unextinguished
life. I have, therefore, the disadvantage of seeing Cuba not only in the
dry season, but near the close of an uncommonly dry season. Next month the
rainy season commences, when the whole island, I am told, even the
barrenest parts, flushes into a deep verdure, creeping plants climb over