Sunday, but lie did not mind risking a dollar on the
game.
Came in sight late that night, or, rather early the next morning, the fair island of Cuba. I dressed my- self and went out. It was a magnificent moonlight night and the sea was smooth as glass. There was a soft tropical haze in the atmosphere, and as, on our approach, the mountains of the interior assumed form, and the green hills, and white beach, and coral reefs — almost buried in foliage— -the waving palms of the hill-tops and the orange groves nestling in quiet val- leys were more plainly distinguished, the view pre- sented was ravishing in the extreme. Arrived off Habana an hour before daylight, we came to a stop and lay too under the guns of the More Castle, where we were obliged to wait until sunrise before entering the harbor, such being the rule. Then, just as the sun lifted its warm tints above the horizon, scattering the sky-painted imagery that forecast the dawn, we turned round the dark bluff, under the frowning battle- ments of the fortress, gun answering gun in courteous salute, while far over the sea swept the morning music from the fort, like blasts of the archangel sounding the opening of a new world. As we slowly steamed up the channel, on the right of which lay the city, with its terraced houses of many colors, blue, yellow, and red, its quaint cathedral piles and glittering spires, our course was arrested by pompous health and cus- toms officers, who, after performing their duties to their dignified satisfaction, allowed us to proceed. We soon came to anchor before the city, and the passengers were permitted to land.
Pygmalion's statue was no more lost in won- derment than was I. To my inexperienced gaze all was as marvelous as if I had been lifted from another world and put down upon this spot. There was the voluptuous morning sun rolling in an aerial sea of crimson flanked by silver-burnished clouds ; the wanton air playing with the feathered palms, and breathing
