TIfJS TIMIT FOOn^-CAP. 195 



than chickens." The system, however, is nearly at an end. 

 Already the Cuban Eevolution has produced measures of 

 half-emancipation ; and in seven years' time probably there 

 will not be a slave in Cuba. 



We waded stream after stream under the bamboo clumps, 

 and in one of them we saw s\vimmin2: a green rio^oise, or 

 whip-snake, which must have been nearly ten feet long. It 

 swam with its head and the first two feet of its body curved 

 aloft like a swan, while the rest of the body lay along the 

 surface of the water in many curves a most graceful object 

 as it glided away into dark shadow along an oily pool. 

 At last we reached an outlying camp, belonging to one of 

 our party who w-as superintending the making of new roads 

 in that quarter, and there rested our weary limbs, some in 

 hammock, some on the tables, some, again, on the clay floor. 

 Here I saw, as I saw every ten minutes, something new 

 that quaint vegetable plaything described by Humboldt and 

 others ; namely, the. spathe of the Timit palm. It encloses, 

 as in most palms, a branched spadix covered with in- 

 numerable round buds, most like a head of millet, two feet 

 and a half long : but the spathe, instead of splitting and 

 forming a hood over the flowers, as in the Cocorite and most 

 palms, remains entire, and slips off like the finger of a glove. 

 AVhen slipt off, it is found to be made of two transverse 

 layers of fibre a bit of veritable natural lace, similar to, 



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