At Last They Gave Us Leave To Land, Without
Undergoing A Quarantine, And Withdrew, Taking With Them Our Passports.
We
went on shore, and after three hours further delay got our baggage through
the custom-house.
Letter XLVI.
Havana.
Havana, _April_ 10, 1849.
I find that it requires a greater effort of resolution to sit down to the
writing of a long letter in this soft climate, than in the country I have
left. I feel a temptation to sit idly, and let the grateful wind from the
sea, coming in at the broad windows, flow around me, or read, or talk, as
I happen to have a book or a companion. That there is something in a
tropical climate which indisposes one to vigorous exertion I can well
believe, from what I experience in myself, and what I see around me. The
ladies do not seem to take the least exercise, except an occasional drive
on the Paseo, or public park; they never walk out, and when they are
shopping, which is no less the vocation of their sex here than in other
civilized countries, they never descend from their _volantes_, but the
goods are brought out by the obsequious shopkeeper, and the lady makes her
choice and discusses the price as she sits in her carriage.
Yet the women of Cuba show no tokens of delicate health. Freshness of
color does not belong to a latitude so near the equator, but they have
plump figures, placid, unwrinkled countenances, a well-developed bust,
and eyes, the brilliant languor of which is not the languor of illness.
The girls as well as the young men, have rather narrow shoulders, but as
they advance in life, the chest, in the women particularly, seems to
expand from year to year, till it attains an amplitude by no means common
in our country. I fully believe that this effect, and their general
health, in spite of the inaction in which they pass their lives, is owing
to the free circulation of air through their apartments.
For in Cuba, the women as well as the men may be said to live in the open
air. They know nothing of close rooms, in all the island, and nothing of
foul air, and to this, I have no doubt, quite as much as to the mildness
of the temperature, the friendly effect of its climate upon invalids from
the north is to be ascribed. Their ceilings are extremely lofty, and the
wide windows, extending from the top of the room to the floor and guarded
by long perpendicular bars of iron, are without glass, and when closed are
generally only closed with blinds which, while they break the force of the
wind when it is too strong, do not exclude the air. Since I have been on
the island, I may be said to have breakfasted and dined and supped and
slept in the open air, in an atmosphere which is never in repose except
for a short time in the morning after sunrise.
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