Lights and Shadows of American Life Author:Mary Russell Mitford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE THREE INDIANS. Numerous as are the strangers who resort to the island of Cuba from the continent of Europe and the States of North America, few, if any, v... more »isit it from mere curiosity. The greater part are drawn thither by commerce, a few are in pursuit of health, and fugitives from the severity of our northern winters; but all have almost invariably made their abode in the city of Havana, a place full of strangers and adventurers like themselves, and copying, so far as the climate will admit, the manners of the large European towns. Multitudes of these occasional residents never learn the language with sufficient perfection to speak it, or to understand it when spoken, and thus are cut off from the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the character of the native inhabitants. Thus it is, that, notwithstanding the principal city of Cuba is the great mart for the trade of Spanish America, and enjoys so large a portion of the commerce of the world, so little is yet known of the largest, finest, and most fertile, of the West India Islands. All theknowledge of it exists in the minds of men too busy to write books, or incompetent to literary pursuits. Geographers are at fault in searching for materials from which to compile a tolerable account of the island; and the celebrated Malte Brun, of whose work the French are so proud, could do nothing better for Cuba than give a naked translation of what was penned long ago by the old Spanish geographer Alcedo. I also have visited Cuba, and, like others, visited it in the capacity of a man of business. I went there some fifteen years since, to recom a debt due to the estate of a relation, a West India merchant, whose executor I had been appointed. Law has its delays in Cuba, as In other countries; and, being obliged to resort to...« less