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The Captain of the Port thinks his English is better than his French, but sometimes it is very funny. He says: "Don't take care," instead of "Never mind" "The volante is to the door" "Look to me, I am all proudness" "You are all my anxiousness." The houses are generally not more than one story high, built around an open court, on which all rooms open.
"I and my volante" is like Cardinal Wolsey's "Ego et Rex meus." As for those who have no volantes, modesty becomes them, and quietness of dress and demeanor.
They were empty. "Am I the only passenger?" I asked, when he returned, with some anxiety. "Precisely," he answered. I could not proceed and ask if he composed the entire crew it seemed too fearfully probable that he did. I now suspected that I had taken passage with the Olandese Volante.
The first was driven by the señora's own man, the second by Pasquale, a negro devoted since childhood to the señorita. The señora would have placed her daughter in the first of these vehicles; but no! the señorita sprang lightly into the second volante, followed by her maid, a young person, also tenderly attached to her.
In the volante was the person of a lady, but so closely enshrouded by a voluminous rebosa, or Spanish shawl, as hardly to leave any of her figure exposed, her face being hid from fright at the scene being enacted about her. At her side stood the figure of a tall, stately man, whose hat had been knocked over his head in the struggle, and whose white hairs gave token of his age.
"Mercy knows, but it will not do to trust these treacherous Spaniards too far. Still his story may have been a truthful one. He was undoubtedly a sailor. We will at least go and see. The pony and chaise are ready." "Take care of my darling, Margarita," said Leah, as she kissed her sleeping child, and stepped out to the waiting volante. "Now drive fast, Mr. Gardner. My heart misgives me."
Before we left Cuba, however, we made one last excursion across the island, and to the Isla de Pinos the Isle of Pines off the southern coast. A volante took us to the railway-station. The volante is the vehicle which the Cubans specially affect; it is like a Hansom cab, but the wheels are much taller, six and a half feet high, and the black driver sits postillion-wise upon the horse.
In that year Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora published in the City of Mexico a kind of irregular newspaper bearing the title El Mercurio Volante, in which appears a concise and tolerably reliable sketch of the insurrection and the various attempts to reconquer the territory, including the successful one in 1692 by Diego de Vargas. Sigüenza is brief, but reasonably accurate.
Happy are the ladies at the hotel who have a perpetual volante at their service! for they dress in their best clothes three times a day, and do not soil them by contact with the dusty street. They drive before breakfast, and shop before dinner, and after dinner go to flirt their fans and refresh their robes on the Paseo, where the fashions drive.
The second object of note which the visitor will not willingly miss is a sight of the famous caves of Bellamar, situated about two leagues from the city proper. It is customary to make this trip in a volante, and it is quite the thing to ride, at least once, in this unique vehicle, the only article ever invented in Cuba.
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