Cabs are cheap; twenty-five cents will take you anywhere _à la course_. But if you go from one shop to another, or linger at a visit, fancy knows no bounds, for there is no tariff and the coachman's imagination is apt to be vivid; and as you can't trust anything else, you must trust to your conversational power to get you out of the scrape. _Volantes_ are capricious and too exotic a vehicle to trifle with; moreover, they turn corners with difficulty, and corners in Havana are the things you meet the most of. The streets are narrow; so that if you wish to avoid adventures you must be careful to give your coachman the correct address before starting off. The porter of the hotel did this for us to-day, as our Spanish has not reached _perfection_ yet. All the streets are labeled _subida_, which means, "go up this street," or _bajado_, "down this street." If, by chance, you want to go to _27 subida_ and you amble on to 29, it takes you hours to go _bajado_ and get back to _subida_ again, going round in a _cercle vicieux_. We spent a whole broiling afternoon buying two spools of thread, my parasol being mightier than my tongue, as the poor coachman's back can vouch for. When everything else failed we shouted in unison, "Hotel San Carlos," and the black coachman grinned with delight. Seeing _bajado_ so often at different points, Laura thought it was the sign of an assurance company; when I saw it on the same house as Maria Jesus Street I thought it was some kind of charitable institution. A _volante_, as I have said, is a unique and delightful vehicle, which one requires to know to appreciate. There are two huge wheels behind and none in front; the animal, secured between the shafts, supports the weight of the carriage. The seat is very low, so that you recline, more than sit; your feet are unpleasantly near the horse's tail; a small seat can be pulled out between you and your companion if there is a child in the party. A dusky postilion decked out in high top-boots, with enormous spurs of real silver, sits astride the horse between the shafts, and a huge sombrero covers his woolly head. The harness, spurs, buckles, and a good deal of the carriage trimmings are silver; the horse's tail is braided once a week and tied to the saddle. No frisky frightening off the flies from his perspiring and appetizing body! Sometimes (in fact, usually) there is an extra horse outside of the traces, so that labor is thus divided. The _volante_ drags the people; the horse in the shafts drags the _volante_, and the extra horse drags everything; the coachman does the spurring, whipping, and shouting, and the inmates do the lolling.