"All the houses are built of masonry, their entrances being shaded by piazzas, supported by Tuscan pillars, or pilasters, against the south sun. The houses have to the east windows projecting sixteen or eighteen inches into the street, very wide and proportionally high. On the west side their windows are commonly very small, and no opening of any kind to the north, on which side they have double walls six or eight feet asunder, forming a kind of gallery, which answers for cellars and pantries. Before most of the entrances were arbors of vines, producing plenty and very good grapes. No house has any chimney for a fire-place; the Spaniards made use of stone urns, filled them with coals, left them in the kitchens in the afternoon, and set them at sunset in their bedrooms, to defend themselves against those winter seasons which required such care. The governor's residence has both sides piazzas, a double one to the south, and a single one to the north; also a Belvidere and a grand portico decorated with Doric pillars and entablatures. "The roofs are commonly flat. The number of houses in the town are about nine hundred. The streets are narrow on account of shade. In a few places they are wide enough to permit two carriages to pass abreast. They were not originally intended for carriages, many of them being floored with artificial stone, composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock, no other vehicle than a hand-barrow being allowed to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the wheels of the carts and carriages introduced by the new inhabitants. The old houses are built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of small shells, which overhang the streets with their wooden balconies; and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the pomegranate and of the orange-tree now fragrant with flowers, and rising yet higher the leaning boughs of the fig with its broad, luxuriant leaves. Occasionally you pass the ruins of houses--walls of stone, with arches and stair-cases of the same material, which once belonged to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange language. These are the remains of the Spanish dominion inhabitants, speaking the language of their country."