There were such stories in Spain of the dangers from yellow fever in the colony that ladies-in-waiting were as reluctant to make the trip as the sailors of Columbus; and though my husband took a large suite of gentlemen, I found only one lady-in-waiting to go with me, and one maid, a faithful old servant who had been in the family for thirty years. We set out, in April, 1893, on board the _Reina Maria Cristina_ from Santander, after the inevitable Te Deum in the cathedral of Santander, a State dinner and reception, an illumination of the harbour, and a choir in a tender to sing us off. There were more Te Deums and receptions and illuminations at the Spanish ports and islands where we called; and at one port we were met by the authorities with a black-bordered protest against the suppression of the local _capitan general_. The paper was signed by a “defence assembly.” The officials warned us that it would be unwise for us to land. I insisted on it. They went away, and as soon as I understood that they had gone for a police order I went ashore without any escort except our suite, and walked through the crowded streets to the cathedral. This proceeding aroused such a furore of popular enthusiasm that I might have been another Jeanne d’Arc entering a beleaguered town that she had relieved; and for the rest of my trip I had no hesitation about putting aside the officials and trusting myself to the people. At Las Palmas I got on so well that in the cathedral, when the bishop was singing the Te Deum, the crowd forgot they were in church and interrupted him with shouts of “Vive la Infanta!” As a matter of fact, I have found that the danger to royalty comes not from informalities of this sort so much as from the parade of bodyguards and escorts that exasperate the unhappy people by personifying the power of the social conditions that oppress them. It is usually on the most impressive occasions that bombs are thrown. We arrived outside the wonderful harbour of Havana early in May, and I watched for the first sight of Morro Castle with curiosity. I had heard from my mother that it had cost her grandfather, King Charles IV., such an incredible sum to build that he had longed to see it, as he said, “if only through a keyhole.” I understood that I was the first of the Royal Family to look at it. Certainly, I was the last. And the fact that I should probably be the last was the strongest impression that I got from Cuba.