Cuba nn)J Un §a\\i\)tx\\ 



■ Fair land of Cuba ! on thy shores are seen 

 Life's far extremes of noble and of mean ; 

 The world of sense iu matchless beauty dtessed, 

 And nameless horrors hid within thy breast ; 

 Ordained of Heaven the fairest flower of earth." 



ALMS. — Liniifeus ri.ffbtly called the Palms the princes 

 of the vegetable world, for they surpass all other plants 

 ^in the grandeur and majesty of their port. Cuba pos- 

 j, sesses such numbers, and a considerable variety, that the 

 ^'^ Laplander from the United States, who has only seen 

 them cramped in hothouses, is perpetually delighted. 

 Their lofty stem, supported by a mass of fibrous roots, 

 which frequently creep along the surface of the ground, 

 consists of wood with longitudinal fibres, soft in the cen- 

 tre, but hard as horn itself at the circumference. The 

 r^a fi'iiit is a drupe, or berry-nut, with either a fibrous or 

 i fleshy coat. Most of the species are confined within 

 fixed and narrow bounds, few extending over a large ex- 

 tent of surface. Yon Martins thinks it probable that the number of Palms will 

 be found, by future travellers, to amount to as many as a thousand species. In 

 the times succeeding the deluge, they appear, from the written evidences of his- 

 torians and poets, to have followed the footsteps of man, to whom their fruit 

 yielded food, drink, and oil ; their stems, houses, arms, utensils, flour, and wine ; and 

 their leaves, cordage, and roofs for habitation. In cultivation, their soil should 

 be slightly saline. 



Cutting down a Palm-Tree. — One morning, our party obtained jjermission from 

 the owner of a coffee plantation to cut down a Royal Palm, in order to get the 

 much esteemed cabbage. Taking a workman, we found a moderate-sized tree, 

 which soon yielded to the strokes of the axe; the wood is coarse-grained, and 

 presents, in the centre, a pithy appearance. It was somewhat of a hazardous re- 

 quest, for this Palm is held to be almost sacred from such desecration, meeting, 

 as it does, so many of the wants of man ; the head is sometimes wantonly cut off 

 by marauders, to procure the cabbage, and the tree inevitably dies in consequence. 

 When the tree fell, the stem was divided at the well defined point of junction of 

 the green and light lead-colored bark ; the green or top portion was about eight 

 feet in length when the plume was removed. Our axe-man shouldered this, and 

 took it to the house, and we enjoyed the pleasure of unrolling the sheath, which 

 extends from the bottom of the lowest branch, and enfolds the green stalk. Each 

 branch or leaf has a sheath extending downwards, and enfolding the cabbage in 

 the most extraordinarily white successive layers, each of which represents a foot- 

 stalk and leaf. Unwinding these (if the expression may be allowed), we come at 

 last to the colorless younger embryo leaves constituting the cabl)age. These are 

 sufficiently soft and delicate to be eaten raw, tasting something like an uncooked 

 cauliflower, Ijut more delicate. The leaves, as they expand, are strongly attached 

 to the sheath, and fall in succession, about monthly, one at a time, and cover the 

 ground, being from ten to twenty feet in length ; the leaf at the outer end is formed 

 like the feathers on a quill, and the broad stem, which we have called a sheath, 

 having acquired the strength and consistence almost of a board, and as a substitute 

 for a board, it is used for thatching, for making inclosures, and the thinner ])ortiou 

 as we see it around seroons of tobacco. There are fifteen or twenty forminfr th 

 lovely, tuft-like plume — the younger leaves at top. The dropped lower leaf 



