FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 195 



many smaller fowl, of which gaudy plumage, 

 raucous voices and long tails seem to be common 

 characters. Dragon-flies hawk untiringly over the 

 breeding haunts of mosquitoes, their iridescent 

 wings vibrating in the bright sunshine. Butterflies, 

 in which orange and lemon-yellows are the prevail- 

 ing tones, float beside the train. Of wild quad- 

 rupeds there is no sign. Cuba's only indigenous 

 beast of any size, the hutia, I saw only in the queer 

 little museum in the Cuba Street, Havana, where 

 a couple of indifferently embalmed specimens 

 languish behind glass in the mournful company of 

 other libels on the local fauna. The only other 

 alleged " wild" beasts are the feral deer and boar, 

 which have taken a leaf out of the Cubano's diary 

 and thrown over their allegiance to man. 



Human dwellings cluster round the stations. 

 There is not, as in Java, a teeming population of 

 natives generally distributed over the interior. 

 There is a population of under fifty to the square 

 mile as against nearly four times that number in 

 Jamaica. In consequence, the interior of Cuba 

 gives the impression of being sparsely populated, 

 and indeed the area would support a very great 

 increase. What chiefly strikes one in this respect 

 is the occurrence along the line of settlements of 

 foreign labour, Canadians and others congregating 

 together and contrasting in their powerful physique 

 with the weedy Cubanos. Down in the Santa 

 Cruz cattle district on the south coast there is one 

 that owes allegiance to far-off Sweden. The clean, 

 substantial dwellings of some of these exotic con- 

 tributions to the population are easily distinguished 

 from the tumbledown thatched huts of the coloured 



