A TRIP TO CUBA AND THE SOUTHERN STATES. 



fully ,c:rown, the leaves and fruit are so elevated as to present a less pleasing 

 aspect. That first sight of the cocoa-nut palm has left an impression that no sul)- 

 secpicnt experience at all ])arallcls for intensity. A few minutes more, and we 

 wore under the escort of Major Saunders, and in the conrulence of his colored 

 man, in search of milk from the nut. Sambo took us to the frardcn of one of his 

 Itlack friends, with a cottage no doubt much like Paul and Virginia's, and with 

 little negroes running about in nature's garb under the palms. Sambo bought 

 liberty to ascend, and soon detached the ponderous nuts from their stems, the 

 mothers holding their children like dogs in a leash, lest the falling fruit should 

 crack their skulls. We betrayed no ignorance by giving directions, and Samijo 

 soon found an axe, with which he chopped off the upper end of the fruit, and 

 upset it into a pint and a half tumbler, first showing us that it was entirchj full of 

 the almost transparent liquid. The elevated position in the wind which it had 

 enjoyed, had kept the milk cool, and we demolished the whole, the regular charge 

 appearing to be sixpence ; the empty shell, and its network of green covering, was 

 cast away as useless, but an examination displayed a very thin lamina, not thicker 

 than the blade of a knife, of a white, soft substance, which, as the milk dries 

 away, and the nut becomes older, thickens to the consistence we find in its more 

 ripe and desiccated state at home. 



The cocoa-nut will not produce its fruit except in the vicinity of the sea ; at 

 Kew Gardens there is a large plant, but it is barren for want of salt air. This 

 nut is now in extensive demand for making palm-oil, and it is supposed that a 

 large district of the yet entirely uninhabited Florida coast is well adapted to its 

 growth. As soon as the Indians of that region are got rid of, and the white man 

 is unmolested, the experiment will probably be tried on an extensive scale. The 

 tree bears in its sixth year. 



'SVv. J. P. Baldwin, the intelligent collector of the port, and an enthusiastic 

 horticulturist, has a large garden near the town, and an active negro gardener 

 (yclept Sandy Cornish), to whose varied information we commend questioners 

 new to such novelties as he hoes and discourses on. lie has great success with 

 bananas, the sugar and rose apple, guava, &c., and he declares that he gets three 

 crops of grapes annually from the same vines. But the Sisal hemp is the most 

 profitable crop of the Key, and, with care, will yield $400 to the acre at a cost of 

 only $10, if a machine could be invented to clean its fibre from the surrounding 

 aloe-like substance which envelops it. Sandy showed us many novelties, but as 

 these came more fully under our notice in Cuba, we shall defer them to a future page. 



The orange attains great perfection at Key West, and the cultivation of this 

 and the cocoa-nut, &c., for exportation, is profitable. The island, though highly 

 attractive for its vegetation, is not a desirable residence ; it depends mostly upon 

 the Isabel for its supplies and the mail, and its coral rocks present no features of 

 beauty. We had left the region of snow which continued abundant at home all 

 March, and found the whole population here clothed in summer costume, with 

 Panama hats, at this early date ; with slight exceptions, this is the costume of the 

 entire winter. The officers on the station had much to say of the utter uselessness 

 of the war carrying on against the Indians, and admitted that though five thou- 

 sand troops were iu the field, only one of the enemy had yet been captured, and 

 she was a woman ! 



As the editors of the Horticulturist have rarely or never ventured of yore beyond 

 the latitude of Washington, however incompetent to the task we shall endeavor 

 to interest our readers with a few memoranda respecting a climate as new to some 

 of them as it was to us, and, in our next number, shall enter briefly upon Cub 

 ics. 



