are in full bearing, the deep green
fruit (it is ripened and turns yellow off the tree), being in clusters
of nearly a hundred, tipped at the same time by a single, pendent,
glutinous bud nearly as large as a pineapple. Here we see also the
star-apple-tree, remarkable for its uniform and graceful shape, full of
green fruit, with here and there a ripening specimen. The zapota, in its
rusty coat, hangs in tempting abundance. From low, broad-spreading trees
hangs the grape fruit, as large as a baby's head and yellow as gold;
while the orange and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, and green and
ripening fruit all together, serve to charm the eye and to fill the
garden with rich fragrance.

Let us examine one of these products in detail, selecting the banana as
being the most familiar to us at the north. It seems that the female
banana-tree (for we must remember that there are sexes in the vegetable
as well as in the animal kingdom), bears more fruit than the male, but
not so large. The average clusters of the former comprise about one
hundred, but the latter rarely bears over sixty or seventy distinct
specimens of this finger-shaped fruit. The stem grows to about ten feet
in height; from the centre of its broad leaves, which gather palm-like
at the top, there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long,
shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone-like bud 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 night dews, the 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, which gradually develop to full size. The banana is a plant
which dies down to the ground after fruiting, but it annually sprouts
again from the same roots.

We will continue our journey towards Havana by way of Matanzas, crossing
the island so as to penetrate at once into a section of luxuriant
tropical nature, where we see the cactus in great variety, flowering
trees, and ever-graceful palms, with occasional trees of the ceba family
grown to vast size. Vegetation here, unlike human beings, seems never to
grow old, never to falter in productiveness; crop succeeds crop, harvest
follows harvest; it is an endless cycle of abundance. Miles upon miles
of the bright, golden sugar-cane lie in all direc