Foreign Notices : — West Indies. 137 



January, eight days after our arrival in Havanna, I set out for Matanzas, 

 where some of my fellow-travellers had gone some days before. Matanzas is 

 a seaport-town on a bay of the same name on the northern coast of the island, 

 about fourteen miles from Havanna. I went in a steam-boat, and reached it in 

 about nine hours. The sea was rough and the wind contrary, so that the greater 

 number of- the passengers were sick ; but here, as during the whole voyage, I 

 was exempt from it, and it was the more extraordinary as even sailors who 

 had become grey in the service were attacked by sickness during this short 

 excursion, and suffered extremely. The particular object of our first expe- 

 dition, however, was not Matanzas, as the fortunate acquaintance of Don 

 Carlos Booth Tinto brought us to the plantation of Cafetal el Fundador, 

 where we embarked in a small boat on the river Camina. The banks of this 

 winding stream are ornamented with trees and shrubs of every kind ; and on 

 the sides of rocks which would otherwise be naked are seen agaves and 

 yuccas, and the trees are covered with orchidaceous and other parasitical 

 plants ; and tillandsias, Guznianma tricolor, Epidendrum elongatum, Di- 

 crypta Bauen et crassifolia, and Epidendrum cochleatum, are seen in immense 

 numbers both on the trees and on the ground. There is a spacious avenue of 

 bamboos (Bambusa arundinacea), from the place of landing to the dwelling- 

 house. Each tree is from 13 ft. to 15 ft. in diameter, and more than 40 ft. in 

 height, and each shoot is 6 in. in diameter, and bends gently towards the 

 ground. The Orchidaceae in the immediate vicinity here (perhaps on account 

 of the season of the year) were nearly all as yellow and unsightly as we see. 

 them sometimes, even when cultivated with the greatest care, in our green- 

 houses : I intend to pay the utmost attention to their growth and habits, so 

 as to obtain as much information on the subject as possible for their cul- 

 tivation at home. We saw no Cacti here, except Opuntia horrida in hedges 

 and growing wild, and Cereus grandiflorus ; and all the trunks of the trees 

 were covered with UromelidcecE, Pothos, and other ^lroidese. 



The plantations of Miisa have not a very inviting appearance, because the 

 high winds here from time to time tear their leaves to pieces : those of the 

 cocos and oreodoxas are much prettier, and, when not too large, form a 

 beautiful forest. The kitchen-garden presented something quite new to us, 

 as it had its beds bordered by Tradescantia discolor. The oranges were 

 within our reach, and had an excellent flavour, and we found that a very 

 frequent enjoyment of them did us no injury, as they are said to do in other 

 regions of the New World. I did not observe any pine-apples. The plant- 

 ations here are surrounded by high and steep mountains, covered with trees, 

 and our next intention'was to penetrate them. We found this extremely dif- 

 ficult ; and the forest is quite impassable unless you form a path for yourself, 

 and this is so tedious that you cannot advance more than sixty steps in an 

 hour. 



How gladly should we have overcome these difficulties if they had been 

 attended with a more fortunate result ! but perhaps that was more than we 

 could expect, as great part of the vegetable kingdom lay in their winter's 

 sleep, and the number of genera of the parasitical Orchidese which are found 

 in the neighbourhood of Cafetal el Fundador was not very considerable. My 

 attention was particularly attracted to oncidiums, epidendrons, maxillarias, 

 and genera allied to Cyrtopodium. I found the greater number of oncidiums 

 on the ground in the thickest forests, lying and growing on stones. The last 

 storm had probably thrown them down from the trees, as I saw here and 

 there pieces of the bark adhering to the roots, and many plants of the same 

 kind were seen on the trunks and in the axils of the branches. Besides the 

 Orchideae, innumerable bromelias grow on the trees, and hang down in long 

 festoons, united with the rhipsalises and cereuses growing near them. Slender 

 trees grow on the stoniest banks of the Camina, particularly Jatropha pel- 

 lata, the trunk of which is covered with Orchideae and climbing plants, and 

 actually form a kind of bower over the river itself, thus affording a pro- 

 tection from the burning rays of the sun. I saw both species of Dicrypta (D. 



