Morning journal and courier., 1888-04-21
HAVANA. Cuba, April 16.


 nation.
 HAVANA, Cuba, April 16. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND CUURIEH;
 The markets of Havana, as we'll as those of other large Cuban cities. are undoubtedly the finest in the world. Those of New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francis co are surely deservedly famous; but when one considers the actual size and conven- fences of. the market-houses themselves; the countless necessities and luxuries attainable aside from an actual food supply; and es- pecially the bewildering variety of every thing in flesh, fowl, fish, fruit, vegetables and flowers, securable at any one met1opoli- tan Cuban market-house in any coastwise city; it is only honest to confess that the most noted in the United States fares but lily by contrast.
 THE MARKETS OF HAVANA.
 There are no places in Cuba more worthy of repeated visits than the Havana markets. They are splendid affairs, at least two of them, in themselves; they furnish rare spectacle of tropical food and fruit products impossible to equal in months of travel in the island; and the scenes one witnesses, as we'll as the people who are met, are full of pleasure and interest. They are three in number-Plaza Vieja, in the square at the intersection of Teniente Key, Muralla, San Ignacio and Mercaderes streets; Plaza de Co., lon, near Parque Central and the Prado; and Plaza de Vapor, just west of Campo de Marte, in the new business and residence quarter of the city. Besides these there is an ancient market and plaza frequented by the lancheros, guadaneros and other queer folk of waterside vacations in old Regla, across the bay. At the latter market you will find Cuban metropolitan low life inter- mingled with the rawest and rudest forms of interior existences to your hearts con- tent. It is the locality of all others where the guajiro of the country meets the lazy city lout on terms of the sunniest equality, and while bartering his greasy pouches of cane-leaves fodder, chickens, eggs and all manner of fruit, exchanges valiant tales of country prowess for city yarns of street and sea, while quaffing huge drafts of wine, firt- ing bravely with the senoritas of all coloIs, or gambling at dominoes, loteria or tutti, with the abandon of a Spanish grandee. From daylight until dark the old Regla mar ket is seething mass of these lowly- folk | who chatter and below alarmingly; but they are all simple-hearted lot, as harmless as noisy, and as happy as filthy, which is saying good deal.
 | THE PLAZA vIEJA.
 | The Plaza Vieja must have been built 8 couple of hundred years ago. It is in the ! very heart of the oldest quarter of the city, | ky &6a rkal d CoY, | Francisco and the wharves, where the mournful ruin of the church of that name, and the deserted archbishop's palace, mutely attest the glories of a former time. The market is small and low, with stupendous | walls; while the architecture of all the build | ings of the locality is of the most ssuatty yet massive character. On every hand are | the century-old structures, each one strong enough for a fort; while the pillared columns of facades and supporting arches of porches, | with gigantic bases and entablatures, are lu- dicrously tremendous when the insignifcance | of the low buildings behind them are consid- cred. Every stranger who gets sight of this ancient locality, in former times the center | of the fabulous wealth and business activis ties of the Havanese, is drawn to it again | and again. Not only have age and ruin | sealed it fer decay, but every present feature of the place intensifies the impression that one has come upon, as in a dream, 8 quaint bit of the quaintest of thousand-year old European cities, where all the intervening time and progress have swept past, leaving everything shriveled and silent, almost as at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The utensils at the market are precisely such as you could have found at Toledo half thousand years ago. The architecture is more Dorian than that of ancient Greece. The lazzaroni,
 crouching at the bases of pillars and at the
 edge of slimy pools beneath mouldy arches,
 are sodden shriveled, voiceless and apparent
 ly as dead as the yellow mummies of Thebes.
 Negro, mestizos and coolie servitcrs about
 the quaint place are barred to the waist, and
 their feet are sandaled like the ancient pill
 grim friars. Every face you see dreamily set in Moorish window, or as if carved in
 bronze against the rail of oyerhanging balco-
 ny, is an old face, as if gathered from the
 antiques to fill out the strange old picture. Animated skeletons of guajiros with sparse produce from the country seem alone to sup ply and provide, while their beasts of bur den, with their heads between their fore legs,
 lean in their sleep against wall and pillar, the embodiment of brute old age. So too the
 seeming is intensified by those who buy and
 those who struggle past the Plaza Vieja. Here the aTistocracy once came tenacious oi old ways and localities, white-haired men and women with traces of former rank and