History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics: Being a Political, Historical, and Statistical Account of the Island, from its First Discovery to the Present TimeBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
History
History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics: Being a Political, Historical, and Statistical Account of the Island, from its First Discovery to the Present Time
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Cuba -- History
In the immediate neighborhood of the Plaza, near the rear of the
governor's palace, is a superb confectionary,--really one of the
notabilities of the city, and only excelled by Taylor's saloon,
Broadway, New York. It is called La Dominica, and is the popular resort
of all foreigners in Havana, and particularly of Americans and
Frenchmen. It is capable of accommodating some hundreds of visitors at a
time, and is generally well filled every afternoon and evening. In the
centre is a large open court, paved with white marble and jasper, and
containing a fountain in the middle, around which the visitors are
seated. Probably no establishment in the world can supply a larger
variety of preserves, bon-bons and confectionaries generally, than this,
the fruits of the island supplying the material for nearly a hundred
varieties of preserves, which the proprietor exports largely to Europe
and America, and has thereby accumulated for himself a fortune.
Following the street on which is this famous confectionary, one is soon
brought to the city walls, and, passing outside, is at once ushered into
the Tacon Paseo, where all the beauty and fashion of the town resort in
the after part of the day. It is a mile or more in length, beautifully
laid out in wide, clean walks, with myriads of tropical flowers, trees
and shrubs, whose fragrance seems to render the atmosphere almost dense.
Here the ladies in their volantes, and the gentlemen mostly on foot,
pass and repass each other in a sort of circular drive, gayly saluting,
the ladies with a coquettish flourish of the fan, the gentlemen with a
graceful wave of the hand.
In these grounds is situated the famous Tacon Theatre. In visiting the
house, you enter the first tier and parquette from the level of the
Paseo, and find the interior about twice as large as any theatre in this
country, and about equal in capacity to Tripler Hall, New York, or the
Music Hall, Boston. It has five tiers of boxes, and a parquette with
seats, each separate, like an arm-chair, for six hundred persons. The
lattice-work in front of each box is light and graceful, of gilt
ornament, and so open that the dresses and pretty feet of the señoras
are seen to the best advantage. The decorations are costly, and the
frescoes and side ornaments of the proscenium exceedingly beautiful. A
magnificent cut-glass chandelier, lighted with gas, and numerous smaller
ones extending from the boxes, give a brilliant light to this elegant
house. At the theatre the military are always in attendance in strong
force, as at all gatherings in Cuba, however unimportant, their only
perceptible use, however, being to impede the passages, and stare the
ladies out of countenance. The only other noted place of amusement is
the Italian opera-house, within the city walls, an oven-shaped building
externally, but within appropriately and elegantly furnished with every
necessary appurtenance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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