, 1888-01-29
CUBAN SIGHTS ANDzscENEs.
Quaint aud Picturesque Hayana With
Its Bright Eyed Senoriras.

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan. %, lS8S.-There
is a subtle, unreliable charm about scene,
city and citizen in the Spanish capital of
the West Indies which l wish. | could
fully convey in words. 1t has never been
done. | fancy that, after all, one must
see and feel it for himself.
The very first glance at Cuba's purple,
mountain peaked shores impresses you
strangely. When old Moro castle looms
above the gulf waters, and the embattled
headland trowns savagely upon all north
ern approaches, an almost startled feeling
OF %irrevocable distance from American en-
vironment possesses you. And finally,
when the great city and its long shore
reaches of villas to the west lie there in full
view, the contemplation of no medieval
Mediterranean port could prompt more
weird and fanclful coniurings. In reality
you are within ten hours sail of your own
land and all its matchless activities and
progress. Not in all the Orient could
you come upon scenes more v~oiceful of
the dim mysteries of lost countries and
peoples.
Havana is the concentrated Spain of
Cuba, as Paris is the France of the
French, London the England of Great
Britain, as well as the eighth commercial
capital of the world. Baron Won Hum
boldt, who in far remote moments saw
men and things as well as rocks and areas,
confessed it to be INTELLECTUALLY the
gayest and most picturesque sight in
America lie might well have added,
"or in Europe Spain itself cannot
show a more curious or interesting city.
Study 1t as you approach it from the
gnn with YnIphtu Nnrn COT hiuh nnpu tho
headland, time-dyed in mottled splatches
of yellow, gray and black, and the red
and yellow flags above; with lie Plata
across the narrow channel, prim and
white save where the ugly Dahlgren guns
flash at you like venemous black eyes,
and the city with its towers, domes nina
rets, mammoth pillars, vast capitals, en-
tabulatures and succeed cornices, rising
gradually behind to Castillo del Principe
and Jesu del Monte, with their forts,
towers and churches-the whole scene a
blending OF the most beautiful c%olors; and
all this backed by half mountains Of
green, with here and there a lonely palm
cutting INTO the sky Of marvellous blue; it
is as interesting and impressive a sight
(when you look at it all with thought of
the life within it and behind i) as human
eye ever beheld.
| am at loss how to convey to another
who has not seen it, the peculiar impress
sions arising from its critical contempla-
ton, and particularly the marvellous dis.
tinctness and NATURALIZATION each edi-
flee seems to possess, while the whole
scene is one of perfect structural har-
mony OF sharply contrasting color. If
truthfully painted, critics would damn the
artist. But an artist can no more paint
| fhtg zanna -, A.. nI-,A-I4ua yrL,.1
clothes it with It's remarkable seeming,
and under the sky which bestows upon
all beneath a positive reflection OF its
own depth, brilliancy and translucence,
than he can paint thought. You here
sec colors which in any other place on
earth would excite ridicule and contempt.
Here is a church chrome yellow; there a
posada sky blue; against it n business
structure snow white with a yellow roof;
alongside a ruin gray and black or yellow
and gray, a splendid %habitation glaring in
crimson; Just beyond and over this, a
tower with russell supporting pillars, a
white dome, and a yellow cross; and any
where and everywhere all name of
structures, orange yellow, or royal in the
color of a crushed hucklebcrry.
But you cannot look at it all through
this glowing light and air, and underneath
this marvellous sky without the conscious
ness, despite all the odds of your conscrv-
atism and art notions, that these strange
contrasts rest the eye in this fcrvid cline,
and that it grows upon you from n sense
OF gr%Otesqueness TO one of fitness and
propriety, and at length to agreeableness
and harmony. You may explain this, or
rather be content with it, on grounds of
reason logical enough from their Saracenic
origin; but you never wholly rest in the
idea that you are only in Cuba, and not
5000 miles to the east, and in a time half
a thousand years behind us. You may
finally, perhaps, account for it all because
it is Italy in atmosphere and sky; Granada
and Constantinople in architecture; the
Midland in landscape and oriental color.
Nor when set down within the city and
determinedly bent on Analysing as far as
may be, through the innumerable aids of
street scenes of any country's metropolis,
can you escape this constant sense of i'm
measurable distance from your own mex
pressibly different time and conditions.
Spain has not so characteristic Spaniards;
Egypt no darker olive III faces;
Turkey has no more picturesque group
ings OF inhabitants; the TyrOl sends to
the villages on market days no more
distinct peasautry; Asia has no more
marked human studies than she has sent
here; the far Malay was never so much a
Malay in his own cline; Italy has a no
more revolving lazzaroni; the iungles of
Africa herd no blacker brutes than half
naked walk these streets, many with the
tribal brand still soaring the shine on
their sable jaws; and no more lustrous,
sense ravishing eyes ever glowed through
the pages of "Lalla Rookh' than burn
like black diamonds in beds Of pearl be
meath the witching wells of the incomrlr
able Hapanas. Unconsciously 10 Itself
here is a life conditioned and environed
as wierdly as in Barbary; as romantic as
in old Spain; as pitiably as with princes
paupers; as couchant and asleep as in
Morocco; as pastoral as pulses through
La Nencia;' as narcotic as in the poppy
lands of the Turks. often as cruelty re.
pressed as in Russia; as dreamful as in
poem painted Venice; as bewitchlnG and
tropically sensuous as where, in perpetual
May, the glowing enchantress. Armida,
yielded her sweets to the enthralled Tan
cred-who ought to have been back there
with Godfrey shying rocks at the heads
of pareants over the walls of old ,Jerusa-