Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/209

Rh When I saw some banana-trees in the garden (which was not remarkably well kept), I asked her whether she ate bananas to breakfast. This inquiry seemed to be inconceivably entertaining, and almost choiring with laughter, she said she must have roasted meat and coffee to breakfast; but that her husband ate roasted bananas.

Wishing that happy old couple a long life in their cottage I went on my way, and every step increased my delight at the irregular but poetical and picturesque scene which San Antonio de los Bagnos presented to my view.

Imagine ruins of old, lofty walls and porticoes covered with fresco-paintings, among small white, or gaily tinted, Cuban houses and small palm-thatched negro huts, all standing in picturesque confusion; a deep but narrow river, as clear as crystal, its banks overgrown with shadowy trees, among which stand negro-huts with their palm-leaf roofs, and over these, bending down from the sloping banks, bananas and bamboo-trees, and all around bushes covered with red and yellow flowers; in the river imagine boys bathing and gambolling about; and old stone and wooden bridges spanning it, with their pointed pillars and buttresses; and majorals riding over the bridges with pistols at their saddle-bows, and swords with silver hilts by their sides; and here and there, upon the verdant banks of the river, or beneath cocoa and bamboo-trees, in gardens, or beside the old porticoes and the ruined walls, groups of olive-complexioned or white women, for the most part young and handsome, some smoking cigarrettos, others with white flowers in their hair, commonly acknowledging the salutation of the passerby with graceful inclinations of the head, and a melodious “Buona tarde, Signora!” and here and there groups of lightly-clad people, jolly negro men and women, and stark-naked negro children carrying themselves like