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.
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