To Cuba and Back - 1859 Author:Richard Henry Dana Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Passengers.—Warm Weather.—Coast of Cuba.—Pan of Matanzas.—First View of Havana from the Sea.—Night off Havana. Thursday, February 17.—Agai... more »n a beautiful, warm day. I wake, and the first glance out of my state-room window shows the sea and sky flushed with the red of a bright sunrise. Awnings are spread; straw-hats and linen coats are worn; sewing, reading, and chess-playing is going on among the elders, and the children are romping about the decks, beginning to feel entirely at home. There are boys from the Northern States, with fair skins and light hair, strong, loud-voiced, plainly dressed, in stout shoes, honest and awkward ; and there are Cuban boys, with a mixed air of the passionate and the timorous, sallow, slender, small-voiced, graceful, but with the grace rather of girls than of boys, wearing slippers, ornamented waistcoats and jackets, and hats with broad bands of cord. What preternaturally blackeyes those little Creole girls have! Are they really eyes, so out of proportion in size and effect to their small thin faces ? Their mother is hale and full-fleshed, and probably they will come to the same favour at last. Throughout the day, sailing down the outer edge of the Gulf Stream, we see vessels of all forms and sizes, coming in sight and passing away, as in a dioramic show. There is a heavy cotton droger from the Gulf, of 1,200 tons burden, under a cloud of sail, pressing on to the northern seas of New England or Old England. Here comes a saucy little Baltimore brig, close-hauled and leaning over to it; and there, half down in the horizon, is a pile of white canvas, which the experienced eyes of my two friends, the passenger shipmasters, pronounce to be a bark, outward bound. Every passenger says to every other, how beautiful! how exquisite ! Th...« less