I met my distinguished acquaintance of yesterday, the rector, who took me to the boys' chapel, and introduced me to Father Antonio Cabre, a very young man of a spare frame and intellectual countenance, with hands so white and so thin, and eyes so bright, and cheek so pale! He is at the head of the department of mathematics and astronomy, and looks indeed as if he had outwatched the stars, in vigils of science or of devotion. He took me to his laboratory, his observatory, and his apparatus of philosophic instruments. These I am told are according to the latest inventions, and in the best style of French and German workmanship. I was also shown a collection of coins and medals, a cabinet of shells, the commencement of a museum of natural history, already enriched with most of the birds of Cuba, and an interesting cabinet of the woods of the island, in small blocks, each piece being polished on one side, and rough on the other. Among the woods were the mahoganies, the iron-wood, the ebony, the lignum vitæ, the cedar, and many others, of names unfamiliar to me, which admit of the most exquisite polish. Some of the most curious were from the Isla de Pinos, an island belonging to Cuba, and on its southern shore.
The sleeping arrangement for the boys here seemed to me to be new, and to be well adapted to the climate. There is a large hall, with a roof about thirty feet from the floor, and windows near the top, to give light and ventilation above, and small portholes, near the ground, to let air into the passages. In this hall are double rows of compartments, like high pews, or, more profanely, like the large boxes in restaurants and chop-houses, open at the top, with curtains instead of doors, and each large enough to contain a single bed, a chair, and a toilet table. This ensures both privacy and the light and air of the great hall. The bedsteads are of iron; and nothing can exceed the neatness and order of the apartments. The boys' clothes are kept in another part of the house, and they take to their dormitories only the clothes that they are using. Each boy sleeps alone. Several of the Fathers sleep in the hall, in curtained rooms at the ends of the passage-ways, and a watchman walks the rounds all night, to guard against fire, and to give notice of sickness.