city. Here the maimed, the halt, and the blind meet us at every turn.
Saturday is the harvest day for beggars in Cuban cities, on which
occasion they go about by scores from door to door, carrying a large
canvas bag. Each well-to-do family and shop is supplied on this day with
a quantity of small rolls of bread, one of which is almost invariably
given to any beggar who calls, and thus the mendicant's bag presently
becomes full of rolls. These, mixed with a few vegetables, bits of fish,
and sometimes meat and bones, are boiled into a soup which at least
keeps soul and body together in the poor creatures until another
Saturday comes round.

Cienfuegos is in the centre of a great sugar-producing district.
Sugar-cane is cultivated much like Indian corn, which it also resembles
in appearance. It is first planted in rows and weeded until it gets high
enough to shade its roots, after which it is left pretty much to itself
until it reaches maturity. This refers to the first laying out of a
plantation, which will afterwards continue to throw up fresh stalks from
the roots, with a little help from the hoe, for several years. When ripe
the cane is of a light golden yellow, streaked here and there with red.
The top is dark green, with long narrow leaves depending,--very much
like those of corn,--from the centre of which shoots upward a silvery
stem fifteen or eighteen inches in height, and from the tip grows a
white-fringed plume. The effect of a large field at maturity lying under
a torrid sun, and gently yielding to the breeze, is very fine.

Though the modern machinery for crushing, grinding, and extracting the
sugar from the cane as lately adopted on the Cuban plantations is
expensive, still the result obtained is so much superior to that of the
old methods, that small planters are being driven from the market. The
low price of sugar and the great competition in its production renders
economy in the manufacture quite necessary, especially now that slave
labor is abolished.

The delightful climate is exemplified by the abundance and variety of
fruits and flowers. Let us visit a private garden in the environs of the
city. Here the mango with its peach-like foliage is found, bending to
the ground with the weight of its ripening fruit; the alligator-pear is
wonderfully beautiful in its blossom, suggesting in form and color the
passion-flower; the soft, delicate foliage of the tamarind is like our
sensitive plant; the banana-trees