istinct specimens of the
cucumber-shaped product. From the centre of its large broad leaves,
which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or
fifteen feet there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long,
shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs
suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a
cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support
the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, this sheltering leaf
drops off, and another unfolds, exposing its little brood of fruit;
and so the process goes on until six or eight rings of young bananas
are started, forming, as we have said, bunches numbering from seventy
to a hundred. The banana is a herbaceous plant, and after fruiting its
top dies; but it annually sprouts up again fresh from the roots. From
the unripe fruit, dried in the sun, a palatable and nutritious flour
is made.

No matter where one may be, in town or country, in the east or west
end of the island, Santiago or Havana, the lottery-ticket vender is
there. Men, women, and children are employed to peddle the tickets,
cripples especially being pressed into the service in the hope of
exciting the sympathies of strangers and thus creating purchasers. It
may be said to be about the only prosperous business at present going
on in this thoroughly demoralized island. Half the people seem to
think of nothing else, and talk of dreaming that such and such
combinations of numbers will bring good luck. Some will buy only even
numbers, others believe that the odd ones stand the best chance of
winning; in short, all the gambling fancies are brought to bear upon
these lotteries. Enough small prizes are doled out to the purchasers
of tickets, by the cunning management, to keep hope and expectation
ever alive in their hearts, and to coax out of them their last dollar
in further investments. "If," said a native resident of Matanzas to
us, "these lotteries, all of which are presided over by the officials,
are honestly conducted, they are the one honest thing in which this
government is concerned. Venal in everything else, why should they be
conscientious in this gambling game?" No one believes in the integrity
of the government, but, strange to say, the masses have implicit faith
in the lotteries.

At one corner of our hotel in Cienfuegos, there sat upon the sidewalk
of the street a blind beggar, a Chinese coolie, whose miserable,
poverty