We had already been lying an hour or more in the bay of Havana. Very soon all the passengers are gone but ourselves; we, the only foreigners, are left alone to wait the hour when a volante can be obtained. B---- goes as fast as possible to secure rooms at the hotel. One Chinese waiter offers me milkless coffee; another bushy-headed antipode stands in the door, with pail and mop in hand, waiting for me to go. At last, with patience in a precarious condition, I rush out on one side of the vessel to get out of the way, and I am driven thence by the observing disposition of a swarthy man lying in his berth in a little vessel moored next to our own: he leans on his coatless elbow with an air of cool curiosity that is unendurable. Then I go to the other side, where dirty drippings from the upper deck, suggest anew the superfluity of my presence and drive me, this time fluctuating on the precincts of ill-temper, out to the gentlemen’s cabin. Here I met B---- tired out with looking for a volante, and the disappointment of not finding rooms at Mrs. A----’s where we hoped to go for a change.
At last, after a deal of English and Spanish nobody understands, and of pantomimes that would have enlightened “blocks, and stones, and worse,” etc., we find ourselves re-established at Queen’s Hotel, in a room which, it is plain to see, if there were light enough in it to see anything, was made for some uncompleted individual,--one in whom had never been breathed the breath of life, or who had breathed it all out again, with little hope of a second respiratory experiment.
_Tuesday, April 10th._--Last night arrived a young Bostonian, who, like ourselves, has been adventuring in the interior. He tells us he knows well the young man who gave a well-known author on Cuba all the facts in his book except the few the author learned personally. He says the person is a great practical joker, and plumes himself on the humbugging he achieved.
The day has passed in farewell sight-seeings and shoppings, the latter consisting mostly of the purchase of Spanish fans and linen dresses. And now I am ready to part from Cuba with scarcely a regret, yet carrying with me only fresh experiences and smiling memories. The sun in this social as well as material firmament has been cloudless, or with only rare veils to brighten its brightness.