, laurels, and flowering shrubs,
mingled with which are some exotics from the North, which droop with a
homesick aspect. Plants, like human beings, will pine for their native
atmosphere. If it be more rigorous and less genial at the North, still
there is a bracing, tonic effect, imparting life and strength, which
is wanting in the low latitudes. On one side of this fine square is
the government house and barracks, opposite to which is an open-air
theatre, and in front is the cathedral with any number of discordant
bells. The little English sparrow seems to be ubiquitous, and as
pugnacious here as on Boston Common, or the Central Park of New York.
Boyish games are very similar the world over: young Cuba was playing
marbles after the orthodox fashion, knuckle-down. It was very pitiful
to behold the army of beggars in so small a city, but begging is
synonymous with the Spanish name, both in her European and colonial
possessions. Here the maimed, halt, and blind meet one at every turn.
Saturday is the harvest day for beggars in the Cuban cities, on which
occasion they go about by scores from door to door, carrying a large
canvas bag. Each family and shop is supplied with a quantity of small
rolls of bread, specially baked for the purpose, and one of which is
nearly always given to the applicant on that day, so the mendicant's
bag becomes full of rolls. These, mixed with vegetables, bits of fish,
and sometimes meat and bones when they can be procured, are boiled
into a soup, thus keeping soul and body together in the poor creatures
during the week.

Cienfuegos is situated in the midst of a sugar-producing district,
where soil and climate are both favorable, and over twenty large
plantations are to be seen within a radius of two or three leagues.
The export from them, as we were informed by the courteous editor of
"La Opinion," a local paper, aggregates thirty thousand hogsheads
annually. The visitor should not fail to make an excursion to some
representative plantation, where it is impossible not to be much
interested and practically informed. One of these sugar estates,
situated less than two leagues from the town, was found to be
furnished with a complete outfit of the most modern machinery, which
had cost the proprietor a quarter of a million dollars. It was working
with the usual favorable results, though at the present price of sugar
no profit can accrue to the planter. The plantation presented a busy
scene. During the