a remarkable variety of trees, including some thrifty
exotics. Here the mango, with its peach-like foliage, was bending to
the ground with the weight of its ripening fruit; the alligator pear
was marvelously beautiful in its full blossom, suggesting, in form and
color, the passion-flower; the soft delicate foliage of the tamarind
was like our sensitive plant; the banana trees were in full bearing,
the deep green fruit (it is ripened and turns yellow off the tree)
being in clusters of a hundred, more or less, tipped at the same time
by a single, pendent, glutinous bud nearly as large as a pineapple.
The date-palm, so suggestive of the far East, and the only one we had
seen in Cuba, was represented by a choice specimen, imported in its
youth. There was also the star-apple tree, remarkable for its uniform
and graceful shape, full of the green fruit, with here and there a
ripening specimen; so, also, was the favorite zapota, its rusty-coated
fruit hanging in tempting abundance. From low, broad-spreading trees
depended the grape-fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as
gold, while the orange, lime, and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green
and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the
garden with fragrance. The cocoanut palm, with its tall, straight
stem and clustering fruit, dominated all the rest. Guava, fig,
custard-apple, and bread-fruit trees, all were in bearing. Our
hospitable host plucked freely of the choicest for the benefit of his
chance visitors. Was there ever such a fruit garden before, or
elsewhere? It told of fertility of soil and deliciousness of climate,
of care, judgment, and liberal expenditure, all of which combined had
turned these half a dozen acres of land into a Gan Eden. Through this
orchard of Hesperides we were accompanied also by the proprietor's two
lovely children, under nine years of age, with such wealth of promise
in their large black eyes and sweet faces as to fix them on our memory
with photographic fidelity.

Before leaving the garden we returned with our intelligent host once
more to examine his beautiful specimens of the banana, which, with its
sister fruit the plantain, forms so important a staple of food in Cuba
and throughout all tropical regions. It seems that the female banana
tree bears more fruit than the male, but not so large. The average
clusters of the former comprise here about one hundred, but the latter
rarely bears over sixty or seventy d