288
THE
ENGLISH
IN
THE
WEST
INDIES
CHAPTER XVIII. Passage to Cuba —A Canadian commissioner—Havana —The Moro — The city and harbour— Cuban money— American visitors — The cathedral — Tomb of Columbus— New friends — The late rebellion — Slave emancipa tion — Spain and progress—A bull fight.
I HAD gone to the West Indies to see our own colonies, but I could not leave those famous seas which were the scene of our ocean duels with the Spaniards without a visit to the last of the great possessions of Philip II. which remained to his successors. I ought not to say the last, for Puerto Rico is Spanish also, but this small island is insignificant and has no important memories connected with it. Puerto Rico I had no leisure to look at and did not care about, and to see Cuba as it ought to be seen required more time than I could afford ; but Havana was so interest ing, both from its associations and its present condition, that I could not be within reach of it and pass it by. The body of Columbus lies there for one thing, unless a trick was played when the remains which were said to be his were removed from St. Domingo, and I wished to pay my orisons at his tomb. I wished also to see the race of men who have shared the New World with the Anglo-Saxons, and have given a language and a religion to half the Ame rican continent, in the oldest and most celebrated of their Transatlantic cities. Cuba also had an immediate and present interest. Before the American civil war it was on the point of being absorbed into the United States. The Spanish Cubans had afterwards a civil war of their own, of which only confused