The _hacienda_ to which the plantation I first visited was attached, belonged to a Cuban gentleman, and was a great contrast to the finely-appointed mansion we had recently left. There was no garden, and the front door was usually encumbered by a noisy group of stark-naked little darkies of both sexes, whom we generally caught tormenting some queer-looking animal which they had caught in the fields--a land tortoise or a baby iguana. They were always sprawling between our feet, but though they sometimes got more kicks than ha'pence, they seemed perfectly happy, and as jolly as sandboys. The entrance-hall was occupied by a double row of rocking-chairs, and by a large deal table, on which our breakfast and dinner were served, invariably without tablecloth or napkins. There were, however, any number of looking-glasses, gorgeous French clocks, artificial flowers under glass shades, and stupendous bronze lamps, such as you buy at the Louvre or the Bon Marché, by way of works of art; there was a collection of framed but extremely primitive chromos, representing scenes in the life of the Blessed Virgin, and others in gay Parisian life, as it appeared at Mabile and at the Bal de l'Opera, in the golden days of Müger. No books or newspapers were anywhere to be seen; on the other hand, there was a plentiful supply of playing-cards and dominoes, with which we contrived to amuse ourselves during the evening, or, as I ought rather to say, throughout the night, for nobody dreamt of going to bed till two o'clock in the morning. The planter was a very hospitable man, who gave us the best of wines, and we had several very palatable Cuban dishes, the dinner always winding up with the inevitable roast sucking-pig, strongly flavoured with garlic. The Señora was a very stout lady of forty, who lolled about the house all day long in an old red flannel dressing-gown: when she was not rocking in a chair, she was swinging in a hammock, with four or five negresses in attendance on her. They all seemed on the best of terms, but as they spoke patois, I could not understand their jokes, possibly made at our expense, for they used to look at us slyly, and then burst into roars of ill-suppressed laughter. Be that as it may, the Señora was a very different personage in the evening from the rather disorderly-looking, middle-aged female, without shoes and stockings, who was so busy doing nothing all day long. By supper-time she was gorgeous, dressed up in the very latest of Parisian toilettes, her magnificent glossy black hair carefully dressed, her podgy fingers blazing with diamond rings, and her face so thickly coated with rice flour that you could scarcely distinguish her features, except her lips, which were painted cherry red, and her eyebrows, which were artificially arched. She had a rather pretty daughter, called Dolores, who spent her days much after her mother's fashion. There was yet another daughter, at a