there be if the standard is the quiet, cleanly inn of many towns in this country and in parts of Europe.  The larger towns and villages of the island have a posada in which food and lodging may be obtained; the smaller places may or may not have “a place to stay.”  Cuba is not a land in which commercial travellers swarm everywhere, demanding comfort and willing to pay a reasonable price for it.  However, few travellers and fewer tourists have any inclination to depart from known and beaten paths, or any reason for doing so.  Nor does a fairly thorough inspection of the island necessitate any halting in out-of-the-way places where there is not even an imitation of an inn.  All that one needs to see, and all that most care to see, can be seen in little tours, for a day, from the larger cities.  Yet if one wants to wander a little in the by-paths, it is easy enough to do so.

What one sees or does in Cuba will depend mainly upon the purpose of the visit, and upon the violence of the individual mania for seeing as many places as possible.  If the object is merely an excursion or an escape from the rigors of a northern winter, there is no occasion for wandering out of sight of the capital city.  There is more to see and more to do in Havana than there is in all the rest of the island.  Nor is there much to be seen elsewhere that cannot be seen in the immediate vicinity of that city.  This, of course, does not cover the matter of scenery.  There are no mountains, no forest jungles in that neighborhood, but forests in Cuba are not particularly interesting, and even the mountains of Oriente are no more beautiful or majestic than are our own summits, our own White Hills of New Hampshire, the Adirondacks, the Blue Ridge, the Alleghenies, the Rockies, and the Sierras.  The charm of Cuba, and it is extremely charming, is not its special “points of interest.”  It is rather a general impression, a combination of soft and genial climate with varying lights and shades and colors.  Even after much experience there, I am not yet quite ready either to admit or to deny that the island, taken as a whole, is either beautiful or picturesque, and yet there is much of both.  Attention is rarely challenged by the sublime or the majestic, but is often arrested by some play of light and shade.  Cuban villages, with few exceptions, are unattractive, although there is not infrequently some particular building, usually a church, that calls for a second look or a careful examination.  Most of these little communities consist of a row of low and ungraceful structures bordering the highway.  They are usually extended by building on at the ends.  If the town street gets undesirably long, a second street or a third will be made, on one or both sides of the main street, and thus the town acquires breadth as well as length.  The houses are built immediately upon the roadside, and sidewalks are quite unusual.  Nor, until the place becomes a large town or a small city, is there,