246 SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS AT THE HAVANNAH. 





at least that are bathed by the Atlantic seem alike to have 

 drawn nearer to the continent. Such are the changes which 

 a few years have produced, and which are proceeding with 

 increasing rapidity. They are the effects of knowledge, and 

 of long-restrained activity ; and they render less striking the 

 contrast in manners and civilization, which I observed at 

 the beginning of the century, at Caracas, Bogota, Quito, 

 Lima, Mexico, and the Havannah. The influences of the 

 Basque, Catalanian, Galician, and Andalusian origin, be- 

 come every day more imperceptible. 



The island of Cuba does not possess those great and mag- 

 nificent establishments, the foundation of which is of very 

 remote date in Mexico; but the Havannah can boast of 

 institutions which the patriotism of the inhabitants, ani- 

 mated by a happy rivalry between the different centres of 

 American civilization, will know how to extend and improve, 

 whenever political circumstances and confidence in the pre- 

 servation of internal tranquillity may permit. The Patriotic 

 Society of the Havannah (established in 1793); those of 

 Santo Espiritu, Puerto Principe, and Trinidad, which depend 

 on it; the university, with its chairs of theology, juris- 

 prudence, medicine and mathematics, established since 1728, 

 in the convent of the Padres Predicadores ;* the chair of poli- 

 tical economy, founded in 1818; that of agricultural botany; 

 the museum and the school of descriptive anatomy, due to 

 the enlightened zeal of Don Alexander Ramirez ; the public 

 library, the free school of drawing and painting ; the na- 

 tional school; the Lancastrian schools, and the botanic 

 garden, are institutions partly new, and partly old. Some 

 stand in need of progressive amelioration, others require 

 a total reform, to place them in harmony with the spirit of 

 the age, and the wants of society. 



AGRICULTURE. When the Spaniards began their settle- 

 ments in the islands and on the continent of America, those 



* The clergy of the island of Cuba is neither numerous nor rich, if we 

 except the Bishop of the Havannah and the Archbishop of Cuba, the for- 

 mer of whom has 110,000 piastres, and the latter 40,000 piastres per 

 annum. The canons have 3000 piastres. The number of ecclesiastics 

 does not exceed 1100, according to the official enumeration in mj 

 possession. 



