FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 193 



many a connoisseur in eastern cities might envy 

 him. 



At Santa Clara we transfer, without changing 

 train, to the system of the Cuba Company, and the 

 scenery soon displays greater variety than in the 

 earlier stage. Wild tangles of virgin forest push 

 their claims right up to the single line laid by 

 British enterprise through the heart of the jungle, 

 and mahogany, logwood, lignum vitse and other 

 valuable lumber lies in heaps in the clearings 

 waiting for transportation to the coast. In some 

 of these breaks in the forest lie slender trunks of 

 cedar, and may I never again open a new box of 

 cigars without remembering how Nature aids and 

 abets man in the most venial of his vices by plant- 

 ing the aromatic cedar beside the delicate leaf that 

 it will one day protect from deterioration in a 

 climate more suited to frogs than cigars ! On all 

 sides there are the unmistakable signs of agri- 

 cultural prosperity, and indeed, thanks in great 

 measure to the ungrudging investment of American 

 capital, the tobacco vegas are equipped with every 

 improvement, and all the newest plant has been 

 introduced in the larger sugar-mills. It was in its 

 lack of capital, rather than of enterprise, that much 

 of the railroad scenery of Jamaica struck so unwel- 

 come a contrast with that of Cuba, aesthetically its 

 inferior. Were sterling as freely sunk in its soil as 

 dollars in that of the more northern isle, it need 

 not be one whit less prosperous. 



At Ciego di Avila the company makes the 

 most of twenty minutes in an attack on an ex- 

 cellent breakfast of meats and vegetables, guava- 

 jelly, cold fruit-pie, with a wash of white Rioja and 



