and porterage, it costs the humblest traveller something like twenty dollars to cross the quay of the Havana and reach his hotel. But it is worth while to pay a good price for leave to land upon the enchanting shores of the Queen of the Antilles, to roam in forests of orange trees, to repose beneath the broad shade of the banana, and to enjoy, in their delightful quintas, the hospitality of the kindly Havanese. Besides, as M. Marmier exclaims, what are a hundred francs in a country whose soil produces golden harvests! _There_ are none of your coarse copper coins, or dirty Yankee bank-notes. A silver _medio_ (about threepence) is the smallest current coin, dollars are spent like francs in France, and a Cuban thinks no more of a portly golden ounce than a Paris dandy of a light napoleon. In that beauteous and luxurious isle, now almost the last colony remaining to the Sovereign of "Spain and the Indies," whilst the rich have abundant facilities for squandering their wealth, the man of humble fortune is at no loss for enjoyments. The bright sky, the glorious scenery, the gorgeous flowers, the cooling fruits of the tropics, are as free to him as to the _millionnaire_. And both alike are subject to the perils and annoyances of those sultry regions, where venomous plants and reptiles, offensive vermin, and the relentless _vomito_, the terrible Yellow Jack, are more than equivalent, as evils, to the grey skies and chilling blasts, snow-drifts and long winters of Northern Europe. It was in the month of January that M. Marmier reached the Havana, and by aid of open doors and windows, of curtains, mosquito nets, and a bed composed of two sheets and a sackcloth stretched on a frame, the heat was rendered very endurable. He scarcely dared imagine what it might be in the dog-days, when the demon of fever stalks abroad, invisible but fatal. In some years, however, the _vomito_, even at the most unhealthy season, commits few ravages, its virulence seems impaired, and the rejoicing Cubans almost imagine it is dying out upon their shores. The delightful dream of security is soon dispelled. Suddenly the grim phantom reappears, more deadly than ever, smiting alike the stranger and the native, the rough European mariner, and the graceful daughter of the tropics. "Last year, in the month of August, the ships in harbour resembled those which are deserted by their sailors in the port of San Francisco. But it was not to hurry to the dazzling _placer_ that sailors and officers abandoned the national flag. It was to seek in the hospital a remedy for their tortures, to be buried in a foreign graveyard, far away from their pleasant Scheldt and beautiful Gironde." As if the isle itself did not harbour enough disease, the winds of heaven and the ocean tides wafted it thither from other climes, from the fever-ridden shores of Tampico and Vera Cruz.