In a little shop in Trinidad, where ink and paper and a few old books were sold, I picked up an almost contemporary engraving of Hernando Cortez, which represents him as a fine-looking warrior, attired in a most elaborate suit of richly damascened mail, over which he wears a striped petticoat-like garment reaching below his knees. His feet are encased in plate armour. On his head he wears a splendid helmet, from which float a score of prodigiously long ostrich feathers. In his hand he bears a spear. The background is a view of a distant city, with several palm trees. The features are perfectly regular, and the illustrious Lothario sports a sweeping moustache, and has a dare-devilry expression which the ancient and skilful limner has reproduced with apparently scrupulous fidelity. It is evidently an original portrait, and is dated 1542. It was copied, in all probability, from some contemporary oil-painting, and engraved, of course, in Europe--probably in Flanders.[17] We had early dinner here, at the hospitable residence of a rich American planter, who has built himself a large and handsome house, just outside the town, and furnished it sumptuously. It was very pleasant to meet cultivated and intellectual women in such an out-of-the-way part of the world, and we took leave of our host and hostess--the lady an excellent botanist--regretfully, bearing away with us big baskets of luscious fruit and a bouquet of exquisite flowers. Late in the afternoon we embarked for Santiago on board a neat little steamer which plies along the coast from Havana twice a week. We should gladly have stayed a little longer at Trinidad; but the following was Palm Sunday, and I was anxious to reach Santiago for Holy Week, although my companion, being nothing like so indefatigable a sightseer as myself, was much put out by my persistence. The coast line between Trinidad and Santiago is extremely pretty--at least what we saw of it, for darkness soon sets in in these latitudes, there being absolutely no twilight, as in more northern regions. We were able, however, to admire the very beautiful cluster of "cays" which rise out of the sea in all directions, some of them large enough to be habitable, though they are left desolate, and others mere barren rocks, with a palm tree or so growing on their crests. The effect they produced in the setting sunlight was exquisite enough to excuse the enthusiastic encomiums of Christopher Columbus when he first beheld them, and mistook them for the islands mentioned by Marco Polo as being off the coast of Asia.