Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1859 — CUBA. [ARTICLE]

CUBA.

[We are permitted to make the following extract from a letter received by a gentleman of this place last Wednesday. ] Havanna, Jan. 27, 1859. We took a steamboat dSwn the Potomac river, and the cars to Charleston, S C. We passed through several cotton plantations, immense pineries, and, nearly half th? way, miserable swamps. When we left the North the thermometer was at. zero; when we arrived at Charleston the roses were in blossom in the open air. I think we Northern peojile Ought to be contented wi bout negroes, and let the South have them to their heart’s content. They furnish us with our cotton, sugar and rice, and are entirely welcome to the profit of raising them. | The climate is much warmer than ours, but i they do not get half the comforts of life, and none of he luxuries. This place (Havanna) is a city of narrow streets. The sidewalks are only about twenty to twenty-four inches wide in the 1 principal streets. Ladies never go in the j streets here unless they go in volantes, a kind of chair with Very long shafts drawn by a little Spanish horse, ridden on the saddle of the harness by a negro. The tail of the horse is braided .and tied to the saddle of the harness. Everything in the way of living is awful high here. Milk, twentyfive cents per quart; chickens weighing two pounds, each; board in an awful mean I hotel, .$3.50 per day. Rents here for twostory houses, that will accommodate from ; twenty to twenty-five persons closely packi ed, <512,000 per year. Rents here are highler than in Broadway, New York, for fivestory biiifilings, on an average, rent for five times the amount they do in New Yosk. The Spaniards, as a general thing, hate the'Americans—the Creoles, or native-born, like the Americans, and are in favor of annexation. The Creoles have nine-tenths of i the wealth and number three-fourths of the ' j whites. The Creoles have ne political ; rights. It is estimated that not more than j one-fourth of the island is under cultivation. I have had a canker sore throat for several winters past, and thought I would try a • southern climate for it. I have been here ’ a week, and it has entirely left me. 1 was ! never so well in mv life.