native flowers. There is also an interesting aviary to be seen
here, and a small artificial lake is covered with curious web-footed
birds and brilliant-feathered ducks. The gardens seem to be neglected,
but they are very lovely in their native luxuriance. Dead wood and
decaying leaves are always a concomitant of such gardens in the low
latitudes. If the roses and heliotropes are in full bloom, some other
flowering shrub alongside is taking its rest and looks rusty, so that
the whole garden is never in a glow of beauty at one time, as is the
case with us in June. The noble alley of palms, the great variety of
trees, blossoms, and shrubs, the music of the fountains, and the
tropical flavor permeating everything were all in the harmony of
languid beauty. The coral tree, that lovely freak of vegetation, was
in bloom, its small but graceful stem, seven or eight feet in height,
being topped above the gracefully pendent leaves with a bit of
vegetable coral of deepest red, and in the form of the sea growth from
which it takes its name. The star cactus was in full flower, the
scarlet buds starting out from the flat surface of the thick leaves
after a queer and original fashion. The bread-fruit tree, with its
large, melon-like product, hung heavy with the nourishing esculent.
The Carolina tree, with gorgeous blossoms like military pompons,
blazed here and there, overshadowing the large, pure white, and
beautiful campanile, with hanging flowers, like metallic bells, after
which the plant is named. Here too was a great variety of the scarlet
hibiscus and the garland of night (galan de noche), which grows like a
young palm to eight or nine feet, throwing out from the centre-of its
drooping foliage a cluster of brown blossoms tipped with white, shaped
like a mammoth bunch of grapes. It blooms at night and is fragrant
only by moon and starlight. Cuba presents an inexhaustible field for
the botanist, and in its wilder portions recalls the island of Ceylon
in the Indian Ocean. As Ceylon is called the pearl of India so is Cuba
the pearl of the Antilles.

To reach the Governor's Garden one turns west from the Campo de Marte
and takes the Calzada de la Reina, which followed about a mile in a
straight line becomes the Paseo de Tacon, really but a continuation of
the former street, commencing at the statue of Carlos III., a colossal
monument placed in the middle of the broad driveway. This Paseo forms
the favorite evening drive of the citiz