[Illustration: HAVANA, FROM CABANAS "Beautiful for situation" indeed is the Cuban capital, whether it be used as a point from which to view the sea and land, or be itself looked upon from some neighboring or distant height. This view, from the grounds of the great Cabanas fortress, shows the central portion of the city, with the notable public buildings clearly discernible, and nearer at hand the waters of the inner harbor, where occurred in 1898 the memorable and mysterious tragedy of the _Maine_.] "It is a very spacious city, well enough built and among the best fortified in America. In size it compares about with la Rochelle, but it is far more populated. It is graced with a large number of public buildings, churches, convents and you see there usually more negro slaves than in any other city of Spanish domination. Its harbor especially is one of the largest and most beautiful in America, and they build there warships for the construction of which the king of Spain employs a prodigious number of laborers, an arsenal and an immense workshop. It is the Catholic king's custom to pay one thousand piastres a cannon; so a vessel of eight cannon costs him eight thousand piastres. There are always on the docks five or six vessels at once; it is a company called the Company of Biscay which attends to the business. Havana is rather regular in plan; the streets are surveyed by the line, although some of them are not absolutely straight; all houses are of two or three floors, built of masonry and have balconies mostly of wood; the lower part of most houses is terrace-like as in European Spain and altogether they make a respectable impression. "The city is protected by a numerous garrison of about four thousand regular troops, extremely well kept, who make Havana impregnable in a country where one cannot attack, except with considerable forces. The city which is one of the best located seems an oval; the entrance to her port is advantageously protected by different forts, of which one, the first, is called Morro or port of entrance; the second is opposite; a third has been erected toward the side of the city; it is so large that it seems rather a citadel than a fort. There is besides before the principal section of the city before the palace of the governor which is magnificent, a battery of big guns and of considerable calibre; so one can say that Havana is the best defended of all places in America, the vessels that want to enter being obliged to pass so close to the forts that it would be easy to sink them.