GENERAL VIEWS. 



109 



The royal palm, one of the most majestic of its 

 species, give a peculiar character to the country in 

 the neighborhood of Havana. It is the Oreodoxia 

 regia in. my classification of American palms ; its tall 

 trunk, slightly swelling near the middle, is from 

 sixty to eighty feet high ; the upper portion being 

 of a fresh, shining green color, forms the union and 

 extension of its pedicles, contrasts with the rest of 

 the trunk, which is of a whitish-brown, and shrunken, 

 forming, as it were, two columns, one supporting the 

 other. The royal palm of Cuba has a beautiful pin- 

 natifid leaf, which shoots upward, and bends only 

 near its point. 



The description of this palm reminds me of the 

 Vadgiai palm, that covers the rocks, and waves its 

 long leaves amid a cloud of spray, at the cataracts 

 of the Orinocco. Those groves of palms that gave 

 me such delight in the vicinity of Havana and Eegla 

 are waning year after year, and the low-grounds which 

 I beheld covered with the waving bamboo, are being 

 drained and cultivated. Civilization advances with 

 rapid pace, and I am told that even in those places 

 yet bare of cultivation, there exists but few remains 

 of their former wild abundance. 



winding-sheet of cambric, embroidered with gold, with a fringe of 

 black lace four inches deep." — PrescotVs Conquest of Mexico, vol. 

 III. Appendix, p. 469, 



