The British writer quoted above was right in saying that the Cubans emulated the example and followed the models of the French in the dress of the period. For Blanchet gives a description of the dress of the Cuban women of that time, which evokes before the reader visions of the elaborate costumes inseparable from the period of Louis XIV. The Spanish historian dwells at some detail upon the gorgeous dresses of the wealthy women of Cuba. There were gowns with long, sweeping trains, the material of which was mostly a heavy brocade silk, interwoven with threads of gold or silver, trimmed with taffeta in sky blue or crimson. Other material was trimmed with gold or silver braids. The belt generally of rose taffeta joined the waist to the skirt. The hair was adorned with a large silver or gold pin which held the folds of a richly trimmed mantilla, also either of brocade or some lighter tissue, gracefully falling back over the shoulders. The undergarments were of silk taffeta, all of these materials being flowered or checkered and interwoven with threads of gold. Velvet was also used in the fashioning of vestees and jackets. Cloaks, capes and redingotes were either of camelot or barocan, or of some other fine cloth. Pink was the favorite color. Laces and embroideries were used on the dress of both men and women. No cavalier was without a frill. The use of powder for the face and hair was quite common, and the powdered queue was as indispensable to the costume of a cavalier as the buckled shoe. CHAPTER II When Governor Martinez de la Vega was promoted to the post of President and Captain-General of Panama, there was appointed in his place, as the thirty-sixth governor of Cuba, Fieldmarshal D. Juan Francisco Guemez y Horcasitas, a native of Oviedo and son of Baron de Guemez. Valdes remarks that during his administration was born his son D. Juan, who seems to have been also actively engaged in public life. Guemez was governor of Cuba long enough to occupy a prominent place in the chronicles of the island. He was inaugurated on the eighteenth of March, 1734, and continued in office until the twenty-eighth of April, 1746. Guemez entered upon the political and military administration simultaneously with the Franciscan padre D. Juan Lasso de la Vega, who assumed the spiritual leadership of the people as successor to Bishop Valdez. During his governorship, the Municipio of Havana was organized, and Santiago de Cuba being for the first time subordinated to his authority, Havana became virtually the capital of the island, and one of the most important of Spanish America. In that civic corporation, a very prominent member was the Habanero D. Jose Martin Felix de Arrate, who wrote a valuable history of Havana under the title "Llave del Nuevo Mundo, Antemural de las Indias Occidentales, la Habana descriptiva: Noticias de su fundacion, aumentos y Estado."