“The improved special fast facilities furnished by the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Atlantic Coast line, the Plant system of railways, and its new, swift, and superb steamships, carry you from the American to the Cuban metropolis in three days. “While the north shore of the island has three important harbors--Havana, Mantanzas, and Cardenas--the former is incomparably the finest and most spacious; the city, to the west of the gleaming bay, is a rare study in Moorish, Saxon, and Doric architecture. The scene has been thus pen-pictured: “‘On the east side, where the close jaws of the harbor open, and clambering up the mountain side where frown the landward outworks of Moro Castle, is Casa Bianca, with its queer villas and structures, each one standing out in this wonderful daylight of the tropics in such distinctness, and with such a strange seeming of approaching and growing proportions, that, in your fancy, the houses individually become great pillared temples. In and over and through this dreamful spot, away up the side of the mountain, thread and run such indescribable wealth of vegetation that, as you look again and again, the clustered, shining houses seem like great white grapes bursting through a glorious wealth of vines and leaves. “‘Beyond Casa Bianca the bay debouches to the east. Here is a veritable valley of rest. Every half a mile is a little cluster of homes set in a marvellous wealth of rose and bloom. Beyond this valley are seen pretty villages, each with its half-ruined church, whose only suggestion of use or occupation is had in the din of never-ceasing chimes; and still beyond these are uplands which almost reach the dignity of mountains, upon whose far and receding serrated heights an occasional cocoa tree or royal palm looms lonely as a ghostly sentinel upon some mediæval tower.