Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/119

Rh printed upon the picture that such an indulgence was granted à todos los fideles, as owned una salve à nuestra Sennora del Rosario. C'est imprimé.

Below the picture stood the following verse:—

This indulgence for the sins of forty days might be bought for a quarter of a pesos (about a fourth of a dollar). It is remarkable that in a country where such permissions for sin are openly prepared, and bought and sold, that the people should still continue pious and inoffensive; but so it is. The poor country people of Cuba are said to be remarkable for their good and quiet disposition. It is certainly owing to the delicious air! The people of my rural abode were from the Canary Islands, where it is more difficult for the indigent to provide for themselves than in Cuba. For this reason a great number of poor people, whose occupation is agriculture, come hither.

At about ten o'clock my hostess went up to some high ground, and blew upon a shell, which produced a shrill but not inharmonious sound, calculated to reach to a great distance. This was the signal for the men, who were out at work in the valley, to assemble for breakfast. The breakfast was prepared for seven or eight persons in the piazza under the straw roof of the little house which contained the kitchen. A parrot (una cotorra) sat below it also, in its cage of iron-wire. Violet-blue doves flew around us hither and thither, and cocks and hens promenaded round us with the queerest twisted necks, which gave them a deformed look. The men, both old and young, with gloomy, cheerless countenances, assembled for breakfast, which consisted of stock-fish and yams, maize-bread, roasted plantains (a coarse kind of bananas), and flesh-meat, besides which was a sort of light yellow