Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/179

Rh are soon back again, shouting “''Cuccu! cuccu!''” If one takes no notice of them, they will steal into the room—that is to say, if no gentlemen are there—and come up to the piano when Miss P. is playing Cuban dances, or I Swedish polskas, and temptingly stretch out their hands full of “cuccus” merrily laughing. If I take up my handkerchief with a threatening gesture, away they scamper like the wind, but merely for a moment.

These beautiful cuculios are really the most tormenting of all creatures. The negroes place them in vials and bottles, and use them as lanterns and candles in their rooms. In this way they will live for a week, until finally they die of suffocation. If they were but as devoid of feeling as they are of sense! The children of the family and I amuse ourselves in the evenings, by endeavouring to make the cuculios fly, which we have either picked up or purchased out of bondage. It is sometimes difficult to persuade them to it, but when one sets them on the point of one's finger, and holds it up in the air, one may often see them spread out their wings, and making their droning sound, ascend aloft, giving forth their beautiful incomparable light.

In the morning I return to Matanzas, and thence I shall proceed to Havanna, and afterwards to San Antonio de los Bagnos—a bathing-place, where the country is said to be magnificent, and thence to a plantation at some distance. A young planter here, a French Creole of the name of S., wishes me to become acquainted with his mother, a widow, after a second marriage with a Spanish marquis C. who resides there; and he has often spoken of her in such a manner as makes me wish to know her. Besides this, she is said to enjoy literature and art, and the company of people who are devoted to them. I shall thus remain longer in Cuba than I intended, but—I shall be at Cuba only once in my life; and Cuba is a home of beauty, and I am annoyed that it is so little known. Natural historians,