take a good look! The gratification is mutual--each gazer is happy, and, apparently, satisfied in the enjoyment of sight-seeing. Some of these ladies have sailed with their husbands for years, under stormy skies, or crossing polar seas. A few of them have learned how to compute latitude and longitude by the quadrant. They speak of wrecks as we would heavy thunder-showers on land. The time for leaving the bay soon arrived. Nature had veiled her face, like the Cuban beauties, with a tissue so transparent that, instead of concealing her charms, they were only increased. The darkness seemed like a mist, produced by the enchanting movements of some invisible spirit, more than the shades of night in other places. The lights beamed from the shore in the distance. All the ships had their signals, of varied hues, burning brightly, while the stars shone with, the same unfading, brilliant luster as when their first song echoed through the ethereal vaults of heaven, and "all the sons of God shouted for joy." The process of being returned into the little boat, at night, appears like a leap in the dark, as I stepped backward down a rope-ladder until the pilot says, "Let go," when my hands unclasp; at the same instant a very uncertain hold is taken, with my feet on something that moves, but I am safe. Before us lies a scene in which our imagination has reached its culminating point, where enthusiasm gains the ascendency, when an approach is made toward extravagance in the use of language--the barge of Cleopatra, borne on the placid Cydnus--which, in musical cadence, echoed no more sweetly than the plash of our oars with the brilliant phosphorescent light by which each stroke was followed, and the train of silvery waves that marked our movements through the illumined waters of Matanzas Bay. Near the wharf we obtained a carriage, without difficulty, that conveyed us to the plaza, and, afterward, to the hotel. The plaza resembled a panoramic view, drafted from the imagination by some skilled artist--the beautiful señoritas, with no dull, meditative moods in their eyes, but merry flashes of the sunshine, in which they spend their lives, reflected back to beautify the world in which they live. Decked in their pink and creamy robes, floating through the avenues among gorgeous flowering plants, they resembled a festival in fairy-land more than the enjoyments incident to real life.