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fragrant alleys dividing the coffee plants is the red of the Mexican
rose, the flowering pomegranate, the yellow jasmine, and the large,
gaudy flower of the penon, shrouding its parent stem in a cloak of
scarlet. Here too are seen clusters of the graceful yellow flag, and
many wild flowers, unknown by name, entwining their tender stems about
the base of the fruit trees. In short, a coffee plantation is a
perfect floral paradise, full of fragrance and repose.

The writer's experience was mainly gained at and about the estate of
the late Dr. Finley, a Scotch physician long resident upon the island.
He had named his plantation after the custom with a fancy title, and
called it Buena Esperanza. Here was seen the mignonette tree twenty
feet high, full of pale yellow and green blossoms, as fragrant as is
its little namesake, which we put in our conservatories. There were
also fuchsias, blue, red, yellow, and green, this last hue quite new
to us. The night-blooming cereus was in rank abundance, together with
the flor de pascua, or Easter flower, so lovely in its cream-colored,
wax-like blossom. The Indian poui, with its saffron-colored flowers,
was strikingly conspicuous, and there too was that pleasant little
favorite, the damask rose. It seemed as if all out-doors was an exotic
garden, full of marvelous beauty. What daily miracles nature is
performing under our only half-observant eyes! Behold, where the paths
intersect each other, a beautiful convolvulus has entwined itself
about that dead and decaying tree, clothing the gray old trunk with
pale but lovely flowers; just as we deck our human dead for the grave.

It was the revolution in San Domingo which gave the first great
stimulus to the culture of the coffee plant in Cuba, an enterprise
which has gradually faded out in the last decade, though not
absolutely obliterated. The refugees from the opposite shore sought
shelter wherever they could find it among the nearest islands of the
Archipelago, and large numbers made their new homes in the eastern
department of Cuba, near the cities of Trinidad and Santiago. Here
they turned lands which had been idle for three and four centuries
into smiling gardens, and the production of the favorite berry became
very profitable for a series of years, many cargoes being shipped
annually to this country from the two ports just named. The production
of sugar, however, has always maintained precedence, dividing the
honor to-day only wit