kets daily. Coffee and
sugar are, however, the staple products. Among the neighboring planters,
as we were told, are a few enterprising Americans, who have lately
introduced more modern facilities than have been in use heretofore for
planting, cultivating, packing, and the like. A coffee plantation is one
of the most pleasing tropical sights the eye can rest upon, where
twenty-five or thirty acres of level soil are planted thickly with the
deep green shrub, divided into straight lines, which obtains the needed
shade from graceful palms, interspersed with bananas, orange and mango
trees. Coffee will not thrive without partial protection from the ardor
of the sun in the low latitudes, and therefore a certain number of shade
and fruit trees are introduced among the low-growing plants. The shrub
is kept trimmed down to a certain height, thus throwing all the vigor of
the roots into the formation of berries upon the branches which are not
disturbed. So prolific is the low-growing tree thus treated that the
small branches bend nearly to the ground under the weight of the
ripening berries. Conceive of such an arrangement when the whole is in
flower, the milk-white blossoms of the coffee so abundant as to seem as
though a cloud of snow had fallen there and left the rest of the
vegetation in full verdure, while the air is as heavy with perfume as in
an orange grove.

The soil between here and Orizaba is considered to be of the richest and
most fertile in all Mexico. Plantations devoted to the raising of
cinchona have proved quite profitable. Four times each year may the
sower reap his harvest amid perpetual summer. We saw some fine groves of
the plantain, the trees twelve feet high and the leaves six feet long
by two in width. This, together with the banana, forms the chief feature
as regards the low-growing foliage in all the tropical regions about the
Gulf of Mexico, gracefully fanning the undergrowth with broad-spread
leaves, and affording the needed shade. The stem of the plantain
gradually decays, like the banana, when the fruit has ripened, after
which the young shoots spring up from the roots once more to produce the
abundant and nourishing food. It does not seem to have any special
season, but is constantly in bloom and bearing. The accumulation of
sugar and starch in the fruit makes it a most valuable source of food in
the tropics, while the product from a small area of land is enormous
when compared with that of cultiv