oes and vegetables of all
kinds can be produced in plenty, while honey and wax, the work of
wild harmless bees, and copal are gathered on the trees. The
tobacco, which is to-day the article that engrosses the mind and
monopolizes the attention of the planters, is of a superior
quality, emulating the Cuban production. On the other hand the
thickets are alive with pheasants, quail, pigeons, wild pigs and
other descriptions of game. The waters swarm with the most
excellent fish and innumerable turtles sport in the lagoons, while
curlews, snipe, ducks and other aquatic fowls flock on their
shores; and not the least of the gifts with which the munificent
hand of nature has so bountifully endowed this delicious oasis of
the ocean is its delightful and soft, yet invigorating, climate,
that makes well nigh useless the art of the physician.

At some epoch it is evident that the whole island was under
cultivation, which is proved by the stone fences that divide it
into small parcels or farms like a checker-board. The island, like
the whole of the Yucatan peninsula, has evidently been upraised
from the bottom of the sea by the action of volcanic fires, and the
thin coating of arable loam of surprising fertility which covers a
substratum of calcareous stones, is the result of the accumulation
of detriti, mixed with the residuum of animal and vegetable life of
thousands of years. The greater part of this island is as yet
archaeologically unexplored. I have no doubt that thorough
explorations in the depths of its forests and of the caves would
bring to light very interesting relics, which would repay the
trouble and expense. Rough and rude as is the construction of the
monuments of the island, the architecture possesses the same
character as that of the more elaborate edifices on the main land.
The same design of entablature, with some little difference in the
cornice, the same triangular arch, the same shaped rooms--long and
narrow, but all on a miniature scale. They seem more like dolls'
houses than dwellings for man. One of the best preserved of these
singular buildings was visited, and two other constructions,
consisting of independent and separate arches, the only ones we
ever met with in our rambles in Yucatan. The edifice formed at one
time, with the