Although an eminently Catholic city, Havana cannot be said to be rich in churches. A goodly number have been destroyed during the various rebellions, especially those of the middle of the century (1835), when the religious orders were suppressed. The largest church is the Merced, a fine building in the _rococo_ style, with handsome marble altars and some good pictures. It is crowded on Sundays and holidays by the fashionable world of the place, the young men forming up in rows outside the church as soon as Mass is over, to gaze at the señoritas and their chaperons. The Cathedral is the chief architectural monument of interest in Havana. It was erected for the Jesuits in 1704 on the site of a much older church built in 1519, and dedicated to St Cristobal, the patron of the city. The first Bishop of Havana was an Englishman, a Franciscan named Fray José White. He occupied the See from 1522 to 1527. The old cathedral being considered too small, this church was converted into a cathedral in the present century. It is built in the usual Hispano-American style, with a big dome, and two stumpy towers on either side of the centre. Internally the effect is rather heavy, owing to the dark colour of the marbles which cover the walls, but compared with most churches in these latitudes, the edifice is in exceptionally good taste, with a remarkable absence of the tawdry images and wonderful collections of trumpery artificial flowers and glass shades which, as a rule, disfigure South American churches. The choir would be considered handsome even in Rome, and the stalls are beautifully carved in mahogany. Almost all the columns in the church are also mahogany, highly polished, producing the effect of a deep red marble, most striking when relieved, as in this case, by gilt bronze capitals. In the choir is the tomb of Columbus. The great navigator died, as most of my readers will doubtless be aware, at Valladolid, in Spain, on Ascension Day 1506, and his body was at first deposited, after the most pompous obsequies, in the church of San Francisco, in that city. In 1513, the remains were conveyed to the Carthusian monastery of Las Cuevas, at Seville, where King Ferdinand erected a monument over them, bearing the simple but appropriate inscription:-- "A CASTILE Y LEON NUEVO MUNDO DIO COLON."