Havana has a fluctuating population, variously estimated at from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand souls; at present it is probably not greater than the former number. The people represent the best there is in Cuba, in point of wealth, education, and progress, and they are largely Spaniards, either Spanish-or Cuban-born. The city is by far the largest and richest in the Island, and has always been to Cuba what Paris is to France. The city is especially noticeable in that its houses, built of the absorbent, porous stone of the Island, are painted in yellows and pinks and greens and blues and whites, with a prevailing red in the tiled roofs. Of the seventeen or eighteen thousand houses of the city, three-fourths are of one story and only about two dozen have four stories. The people live very closely together; the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, are strangely huddled, all of them more or less regardless of the simplest laws of sanitation. It is not so great a wonder that the health of the city is so bad, as that any health exists. Rents are high, with the result that as many poor persons as possible live in one house, and the moral health suffers no less than the physical. If any animals are owned--as, for example, horses--they find quarters on the ground floor. Except in the best houses (and some fine specimens of elegant homes exist in the city), modern conveniences are unknown. Iron bars take the place of glass in the windows and doors, and windows are always open in dry weather. The domestic life of the Havanese is an open book to all who wish to look upon it as they pass, for the houses open directly upon the street, and the lower story is on the street-level. Most of the floors are laid directly on the ground, and it would seem as if the people did all in their power to maintain a low degree of health. All the good houses have marble floors. Churches are numerous all over the city, the Cathedral in which the remains of Columbus are said to have reposed being the chief in point of interest.[13] The women of Havana constitute a large portion of the congregations; the men give little attention to church attendance. The Government buildings are numerous, but neither modern nor beautiful. The cigar factories and tobacco warehouses are commodious structures; indeed, some of the former occupy what were at one time official or private palaces. The retail stores are usually small places, with the stocks of goods mostly in the windows.