Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/277

Rh nor is it very dear, except during the so-called winter months, when the concourse of strangers to the city is extraordinarily great. Besides which, Havannah is one of the dearest places in the world.

The last view I had of the Queen of the Antilles showed me her enveloped in dark clouds, the precursors of tempest. The sea rolled high, and the vessel rocked tremendously; and the Morro light was seen like a flambeau on its lofty rock, as the vessel rose on each ascending billow, to be again lost when it sunk into the abyss of the waves. That beautiful, bright light which so often gladdened me during the evenings and nights of Cuba, seemed to me now in the rising tempest and darkening night, like some signal of misfortune flashing forth from the stormy horizon. On the day previous, there had been an eclipse of the sun, and around the sun a vast black ring. This seemed to me a prophetic token; for the internal condition of Cuba, the despotism of the government, the prevailing venality and the thirst of gain, the bitter dissatisfaction of the creoles, the state of the slaves, the continuance of the slave-trade, which annually peoples the island with thousands of wild Africans—the longing glances which America casts upon this new Helen, all forebode a stormy future, and it may be, a terrible, bloody crisis! May I be an untrue diviner!

Ah! this beautiful island with its delicious breezes, its glorious trees, its lovely evenings, its eternal summer—I shall always love it as one of God's most beautiful creations, and be thankful that I beheld it, and have learned from it the better to understand a new heaven and a new earth!

My secret wish and hope is that Cuba may one day, by peaceful means, belong to the United States. When the United States shall comprehend within themselves the regions of the tropics, and shall thence extend their realm of states, then first will it become the universal realm which it ought to be. And Cuba in the hands of the