Breakfast is almost as important a meal with the Habanero, as dinner. It is hearty: decidedly á la fourchette, almost á la fourche with some of the merchants who have, for three hours before it, been on the wharf:-of which, more anon. Indeed, invitations to breakfast are quite as common as invitations to dinner; and the ordinary breakfast table, save in the absence of preliminary soup, and supplemental dessert, differs little from the ordinary dinner table. Before breakfast, is the proper time to eat oranges, which is done thus. The skin is pared off with a sharp, rough-edged knife, leaving a thin layer of the white leathery underskin still around the fruit. A small slice is then cut from one end, and the pulp is sucked from the incision; successive slices being removed as the process advances. It is well to remember this. Those who have eaten an orange in this way, will never eat one in any other. Only the thickskinned Havana fuit, however, can support the operation. An orange or two, rather gives zest to the appetite for breakfast, and, although by nine o'clock it is oppressively hot, in spite of the land breeze which has sprung up, you look at the well loaded table with desiring eyes. On it you will find fish, poultry, fried eggs, ragouts, chops, plaintains deliciously stewed in wine and jelly, as well as roasted whole and fried in slices, yams, rice and rolls. The native rice has a rich, sweet flavor, which is far superior to that of the product of our Southern States. It is darker and smaller grained. Rolls are the only form in which bread appears; and this staff of life with us, is one of the luxuries of a Havanese table. Almost every barrel of flour used on the island is brought from Spain, as the import duty on American flour is nine dollars a barrel. With the poorer classes, rice takes the place of wheaten flour, and plantains answer the purpose of all other vegetables. There is yet another occupant of the breakfast table which finds great favor with all natives and many foreigners: it is the aguacate, or alligator pear. It is somewhat of the shape, and generally, three or four times the size of an ordinary pear. Its outer skin is tough, and of a bright green color; in the centre is a smooth stone, about as large in proportion as that of a peach; between the two is a soft oleaginous substance which is made into a salad, or eaten 'neat,' with expressions of ecstatic pleasure by those who were born to the taste or have acquired it. As for me, my attempts to eat it only produced disgust. Its taste, to the uninitiated, can be likened to nothing else than that of tallow faintly sweetened, about to that

vague indefinite degree to which the parsimonious hand of the ordinary genteel boarding-house keeper sugars the pale. watery custards which grace the end of her Sunday dinner. Fasting and prayer might beget a relish for this greasy fruit; but I can conceive no other mode of attaining that gastronomic virtue.

At breakfast, no coffee or tea is offered; but at every other plate stands a bottle of red Bordeaux or Catalonian wine, of which all partake as freely as if it were water. Do you shrink from drinking it so early in the day, or from drinking it at all? You are unwise. Take it, asking no questions, as you did with the coffee three hours ago. Though at the North. such potations at such an hour would make your eyes ache and your head swim. here you will feel from them only beneficial effects; or, more correctly, will know nothing of them, save to feel their want if you should omit them. After breakfast, coffee comes again; over which, it is the fashion to sit and chat awhile, as we do over our after-dinner wine. Drink that too "for the stomach's sake."

The stranger is told that he should house himself in Havana, between ten o'clock in the morning, and four in the afternoon; and in the summer it will be well for him to avoid the sun for about two hours before and after midday. The heat, though seeming at first not so scorching as that of many a July day in the northern cities of the Union, has a latent, penetrating power, which seems to wilt your brain and dry up the marrow in your bones. But in the autumn, winter, and spring, a quiet walk may be safely enjoyed in the shadow of the houses, whose close proximity to the street always gives grateful shelter to some portion of it, save at midday. The Habaneros themselves walk their streets at all times. But do not imagine that they locomote after the fashion of an American in Broadway. A man who should walk in Havana as most men do in New-York, would be thought stark mad. The shopkeepers would actually get up from the boxes and bales upon which they stretch themselves, waiting for customers, and stare at him in silent wonder. The Spaniards are decidedly not 'fast.' They have a proverb which runs in this wise, "el que se apresura se muere, y el que no, tambien;" (he who hurries dies, and he who does not, dies too.) This is their rule of action-or inaction. In this spirit they live and move, and have their being: that is, they live and have their being without moving. As we leave our hotel for a stroll, we see a score or so of men, who seem also strolling. Not a bit of it; they are going to business.

There is a strapping negress with fruit for sale, which she carries on a board upon her head. She strolls too; her laggard step beating the rhythm of her drawling, nasal cry. She is hatless, shoeless, stockingless; less every thing, but the one garment, which hangs half off her bosom, all open at her back, and reaches but little below the calf of her leg. Do not pity her on this account. She has all she feels the need of; more would be superfluity. She is earning something towards purchasing a lottery ticket which may give her freedom; and it is more than likely that at home she has the means of appearing on saints' days in all the bravery of clouds of cotton lace, glass beads, pink shoes, and a fan. Look at her full, round arms, polished shoulders and dimpled back. Those are not the traits of physical wretchedness. See, she stops to speak to that porter, who is carrying a box upon his head, which seems as if it would press him into the earth. His only garment is a pair of trowsers, which reach from the waist to the knee; the sweat pours in streams from off his broad, muscular back, making it glisten in the sun like that of a Hercules in bronze. But see his merry grin of recognition. Pass slowly by the pair, and you will see that their interview is graced by a "million of manners." He is dignified and deferential, she pleased and gracious. Señor and Señorita pass freely between these poor burden bearers, and the slave assures the slave that he is her devoted servant. They part with compliment; and, as they cannot bow and curtsey, a wave of the hand, which most actors might envy for its unaffected grace; and each toils on, the happier for the interview. Surely there are lessons of content and courtesy to be learned from a Cuban slave. But hardly have they parted, when one of them is made to feel the bitterness of bondage under tyrants. A little officer of the civil guard turns a corner suddenly upon the porter-little officers of the civil guard are always turning corners suddenly in Havana, so are little officers and little privates of infantry, cavalry, and artillery; the place swarms with them;-this one comes suddenly upon the poor porter, who, toiling along upon the narrow causeway, cannot give place so quickly as his officership thinks is due to his dignity, and he therefore whips out his sword and strikes the poor slave two or three blows with the flat of it, curses him, and sending the weapon home in the sheath with a valorous clang, passes on with the air of a man who has nobly sustained his position. It makes one's fingers tingle and produces an itching sensation in the toe of one's

boot, to see outrages like this perpetrated, as they hourly are in Havana; and it is but justice to the Spaniards to say, that they do not confine such demonstrations to the slaves, but treat any one of their own countrymen, particularly any creole, who chances to be in custody, for a real or fancied offence, in exactly the same way.

Yonder comes a body of men of wretched exterior. They walk in pairs; and the clank of iron as they step, the soldiers who lead and follow the column, tell us that they are galley slaves; men condemned for civil or political offences to the presidio. They eat just enough to keep them alive; they sleep upon the stones; they work as hard as Spaniards can be made to work; he is happy among them who possesses an old cotton handkerchief with which he can wind his gyves so that they may not gall him; it makes one heart-sick to look upon them; and yet they have one comfort, yes, a luxury. In one way or another, past conjecture, they manage to get money enough to buy cigars, and the enjoyment is not denied them. A Spaniard knows no crime so black that it should be visited by the deprivation of tobacco. The convict who is deprived of the ordinary comforts or even the necessities of life, may enjoy his cigar, if he can beg or borrow it: if he stole it, the offence would be regarded as venial. At the doorway of most of the shops hang little sheet-iron boxes filled with lighted coals, at which the passers by may light cigars; and on the newel post of the balustrade of the staircase of every house stands a small chafing-dish for the same purpose. Fire for his cigar is the only thing for which a Spaniard does not think it necessary to ask and thank with ceremonious courtesy. If he have permitted his cigar to go out, he steps up to the first man he meets, nobleman or galley slave as the case may be, and the latter silently hands his smoking weed-for it is impossible that two Spaniards should meet and not have one lighted cigar between them the light obtained, the lightee returns the cigar to the lightor in silence. A short and suddenly checked motion of the hand as the cigar is extended is the only acknowledgment of the courtesy; this is never omitted, however, even when the person obliged has turned away his head to resume an absorbing conversation. Women smoke as well as men; but it is becoming bad ton for the younger ladies of position to use tobacco; and though in a full railroad car I have seen every person, man, woman and child, including the American conductor, smoking, except myself; it was evident that none of the women were of the higher

classes. To placard "No smoking allowed," and enforce it, would ruin the road.

During the day, ladies are rarely or never seen in the streets of Havana; and never walking, unless perchance you catch a glimpse of one with a mantilla thrown over her head and using her fan as a parasol, while she trips along to have a bit of gossip with her next neighbor. The men are not noteworthy in appearance, save for their swarthiness and their slothful movements. The consequence is a striking incongruity in appearance between the strange, fantastic, Eastern air of the city, and the very proper and Parisian looking people who inhabit it. The vo

lantes and the caleseros alone have an air which would be out of place in any other city. The volante or quitrin is exactly like a large gig, with the body in front of the huge wheels, and resting upon the shafts between the wheels and the saddle. It is drawn by one horse, or two, or three, always harnessed abreast. It is built for two persons; but it is common to see three fat Spanish women seated in one, especially round the Grand Plaza, and upon the Paseo. The calesero mounts postilion-wise upon the horse. His dress consists of a bright cloth or velvet jacket, richly trimmed with lace, in which the arms of his master are often worked, a laced hat with a cockade, and white linen trowsers, over which enormous boot-legs rise almost to his hips. His lace is gold, he wears massive silver spurs of formidable dimensions, and his bootlegs are covered with buckles and etceteras of the same material. He delights in a gayly-embroidered cambric handkerchief, which he is always sure to display to the best advantage from the side pocket of his jacket. But amid all this magnificence, this carrying about of bullion, this warlike encasement of cucumber shins in bootlegs, the poor blackey's feet are bare, at least on the top. His boot-legs have no feet. They are magnificent shams, strapped over his trowsers. He wears low-cut shoes perhaps, but no stockings, and between the edge of the shoe and the termination of his boot, is six inches by four of unmitigated ebony foot. Often enough he is without shoes as well as stockings; and yet, unless he is a public calesero, and a very unsuccessful one at that, he wears his stupendous boot-legs. horses are small and have very little action; and as their long tails are plaited tightly and looped up to the saddle, to prevent them from swashing about the liquid mud which floods the streets when there is rain, they have a very mean and rat-like appearance. They are, however, not without spirit and a power of endur

The

ance.

American horses are a luxury indulged in only by the wealthiest. At the livery-stables the hire of a volante with an American horse is nearly twice as much as that of one with a horse of the country. The jockeys give them a name which means horses which hold up their heads.' It is not strange that an upright carriage of the head in man or beast should strike a Cuban Spaniard as a peculiarity.

It is just the time now to eat a pine; and luckily here is the Dominica, the café which figured so largely in the exaggerated accounts of indignities offered to the remains of the misguided fifty who were shot under the walls of Fort Atares. It is a large building, of a single story, opening on three sides through wide and lofty arches upon an inner court, in the midst of which is a fountain. Its single floor is of tesselated marble. The pine which the waiter placed before us so courteously, and which it is almost needless to say we eat by tearing it in pieces with a silver fork, is truly excellent, but not so much more luscious than some which we remember to have eaten at the North, as we expected to find it. The truth is, that occasionally as fine a pine can be procured in New-York as the market of Havana will ordinarily afford; but there such a pine costs six shillings, and is rarely seen; here it may be had at any time for six cents.

There are few visitants to this famous café at this time of day, and it is not surprising that every head should be raised as yonder tall, slovenly figure enters. "Los Californianos!" is passed around. True enough, he is one of the same tribe by which we were encountered ere we had reached the shore. A steamer arrived this morning from Chagres, and as that from New-York is not expected until to-morrow, a hundred and fifty or two hundred of these Jasons are turned loose upon the city.

Singly, in pairs, and in companies they rove about the place, utterly indifferent

once were black, are thrust into them only because the bottom rims are ragged. More wonderful than all, he wears a tolerably clean shirt, kept doubtless to provide against a contingency, and put on in honor of the ladies he vainly expected to meet in Havana. He is evidently a city man. His beard is reduced to a moustache and a peaked tuft upon his chin. He wears a cap which mayhap was bought at Genin's, and carries a well preserved umbrella under his arm. He thinks it ungenteel' to stare; and with folded arms he stalks on in dignified propriety, while the other satisfies his curiosity. He is evidently some young lawyer or merchant's clerk, who was more devoted to his moustache and the opera than to clients or customers, and who foolishly thought he could make that fortune in California which did not 'turn up' ready made at home. He has failed; but had he succeeded in his wishes, his success I would have been of little service to him. Ready-made fortunes, like ready-made clothes, rarely fit those who get them.

By this time the place seems to swarm with Californians. The Spaniards begin to entertain fears that they may hold a mass meeting on the Grand Plaza, and organize a revolution. They pervade the city, and as they are bent on pleasure and have very little coined money, you may see them in the silver-plate shops and the exchange offices selling gold dust. They drive a sharp bargain, and sell only as much as they must part with to supply

as to their forlorn appearance, and with an ill-disguised contempt for the people around them, which increases every hour. This one, as he stands for a moment alone on the threshold of the door, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his baggy sack-coat; his trowsers threatening to tumble in a heap about his heels; his boots virgin of blacking, but not of Chagres mud, and turned up at the toes like the front of a woodsled; his matted beard hiding his mouth, but not its sneer; his hat so shapeless and so greasy that it is fit only for the use of the soap-boiler, -as he stands thus, he looks with the quiet unconcern of native independence and conscious wealth,for ten thousand dollars is wealth to him, -upon the people who regard him as little better than a pirate and an ogre. Catch him eating pines and ices! He comes in to liquor; and regretting that none of his companions were with him when he stumbled unexpectedly upon this 'bar-room,' he whets his thirst, while awaiting their arrival, by a slight preliminary potation, consisting of a quarter of a pint of brandy and two tablespoonfuls of water. The excellent quality of the spirit tends somewhat to elevate the country in his estimation; and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he turns around with a complacent smile, and resumes his bold scrutiny of the other visitants of the place; not seeking to suppress a broad grin as he notices many of them eating thin slices of crisp cake, which they dip daintily into the huge tumblers of lemonade from which they occasionally sip a little of the refreshing liquid with a spoon, or suck it through a sil-. ver tube. Though in appearance he is a fair type of the Californian, as he is known in the south and west, there are occasional varieties of the genus which differ from him materially. Look through one of the doors into the street, and see that pair, one of whom, not unlike our first acquaintance, stands staring at some object new to him. His companion differs from him equally in manner and in dress. He wears a cutaway coat, a waistcoat, a cravat; he has blacked his boots; and his trowsers, which

their present need; for the government prevents the exportation of gold by giving the ounce (doubloon), which is actually worth but sixteen dollars, the legal value of seventeen. I remember one of them, thin-faced, with straight yellow beard and hair; a fellow like Falstaff's friend Justice Shallow, "so forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible." He stood listlessly behind two others who were selling dust to an old Spaniard, who took no notice of him until he found that his companions turned continually around to consult him, for he was the sharpest and the richest of the party. In spite of the miscellaneous condition of their wardrobes, these

men have a certain manliness of manner, which contrasts favorably with the air of those around them, and which, aided not a little by the full growth of that manly ornament, the beard, makes them not unpleasing objects of contemplation,at a distance.

Having put money in their purses, their first desire after "a drink all round," is for a drive. They have a contempt for the volante, which they call "a damned parson's gig with the wheels behind." Some of them are obliged to take up with the despised vehicle; but as many as can, get into an old barouche, which for years has been getting mouldy in some out-ofthe-way stable. There are but three other four-wheeled vehicles in the city, to wit, the state carriages of the Captain General and of a foreign dignitary; and after being reluctantly convinced that neither of those gentlemen would "hire out" their carriages, half a dozen of our Californian friends take this, and sitting in it and out of it in all possible and impossible attitudes of nonchalance, they drive about the town and the suburbs, through the pascos, to the Bishop's Garden; everywhere but to the baths; not neglecting to stop and drink at every other posada, and make themselves fit subjects for the cholera as they go up the Mississippi.

Every body dines in Havana at three o'clock. There is nothing remarkable at dinner, except that the fish, though firm, is insipid, and the beef dark-colored, and of a strong flavor. Fish in great variety

and abundance are to be found in the fish market of Havana, of which, till lately, Señor Marty, the manager of the opera, had the entire possession, by monopoly. But all the varieties are almost equally tasteless. This is accounted for by some, from the fact that all the fish for Havana are taken upon the coral reefs, the lime in which has this effect upon them. How much of a reason this may be, I will not pretend to say; but I have remarked that trout, the highest flavored of all fish, are never found in a brook which flows over lime-stone rocks. Beef always must remain bad in Havana, until the Cubans are taught how to raise it and how to butcher it. It is ill-fed, over-driven, improperly killed, and instead of being divided into proper joints, is cut into strips, with the grain. There are one or two butchers, however, who cut joints for the few American and English tables in the city. Coffee concludes dinner; after which no Habanero does any thing but go to the paseo, the grand plaza, the theatre, the café or a cock-fight.

On Sundays and saints' days, the ladies drive upon the paseo Isabella II., for an hour and a half before sundown. They go in full dress, and without hats:-no lady in Havana ever wears a hat, except some person of high fashion and fortune who may wear a very costly one in a ball-room. Two always, and sometimes three, occupy one volante; but it is not the custom for a gentleman to share the seat with a lady. The volantes thus filled,