To horse and inwards! Adieu to the bright blue waters of the Gulf!

We have crossed the sand-ridges of the coast, and are riding through the
shadowy aisles of the forest. It is a tropical forest. The outlines of
the leaves, their breadth, their glowing colours all reveal this. The
eye roams with delight over a frondage that partakes equally of the gold
and the green. It revels along waxen leaves, as those of the magnolia,
the plantain, and the banana. It is led upward by the rounded trunks of
the palms, that like columns appear to support the leafy canopy above.
It penetrates the network of vines, or follows the diagonal direction of
gigantic llianas, that creep like monster serpents from tree to tree.
It gazes with pleased wonder upon the huge bamboo-briars and tree-ferns.
Wherever it turns, flowers open their corollas to meet its delighted
glance--tropical tree-flowers, blossoms of the scarlet vine, and
trumpet-shaped tubes of the bignonia.

I turn my eyes to every side, and gaze upon a flora to me strange and
interesting. I behold the tall stems of the _palma real_, rising one
hundred feet without leaf or branch, and supporting a parachute of
feathery fronds that wave to the slightest impulse of the breeze.
Beside it I see its constant companion, the Indian cane--a small
palm-tree, whose slender trunk and low stature contrast oddly with the
colossal proportions of its lordly protector. I behold the _corozo_--of
the same genus with the _palma real_--its light feathery frondage
streaming outwards and bending downwards, as if to protect from the hot
sun the globe-shaped nuts that hang in grape-like clusters beneath. I
see the _abanico_, with its enormous fan-shaped leaves; the wax-palm
distilling its resinous gum; and the _acrocomia_, with its thorny trunk
and enormous racemes of golden fruits. By the side of the stream I
guide my horse among the columnar stems of the noble _coeva_, which has
been enthusiastically but appropriately termed the "bread of life" (_pan
de vida_).

I gaze with wonder upon the ferns, those strange creatures of the
vegetable world, that upon the hillsides of my own far island-home
scarce reach the knee in height. Here they are arborescent--
tree-ferns--rivalling their cousins the palms in stature, and like them,
with their tall, straight stems and lobed leaves, contributing to the
picturesqueness of the landscape. I admire the beautiful mammey with
its great oval fruit and saffron