From this a gentleman in a business suit, about sixty years of age, alighted and approached me.

He was a man of pleasing address.

He said to me, "You seem to be interested in this cannon." "I am," was the reply.

Then he began to pace it and to examine it, and said, "It is just twelve feet long." He thought that possibly it came into the hands of the Spaniards during the Napoleonic wars, and that it at length found its way over to Cuba to help in enslaving the people of that island.

As I was attracted to my informant, I ventured to ask him whom I had the pleasure of addressing.