most fertile districts in the interior of the island. | which you find nowhere else, but the trees are `I made an excursion from Havana to the San An- planted in straight alleys, and the water-roses, a tonio de los Boaños, a pleasant little town at nine species of water-lily of immense size, fragrant, and leagues distant, in a south-east direction, from the pink-colored, grow in a square tank, fed by a capital, in what is called the Vuelta Abajo. I straight canal, with sides of hewn stone. have also just returned from a visit to some fine sugar estates to the south-east of Matanzas, so that I may claim to have seen something of the face of the country of which I speak. Let me say, however, that when I asked for trees, I was referred to the hurricanes which have recently ravaged the island. One of these swept over Cuba in 1844, uprooting the palms and the At this season the hills about Havana, and the orange groves, and laying prostrate the avenues of pastures everywhere, have an arid look, a russet trees on the coffee plantations. The Pasco Isabel, hue, like sandy fields with us when scorched by a a public promenade, between the walls of Havana long drought, or like our meadows in winter. and the streets of the new town, was formerly This, however, is the dry season; and when I was over-canopied with lofty and spreading trees, which told that only two showers of rain have fallen this tempest levelled to the ground; it has now since October, I only wondered that so much vege-been planted with rows of young trees, which tation was left, and that the verbenas and other yield a meagre shade. In 1846 came another hurherbage which clothed the ground, should yet re- ricane, still more terrific, destroying much of the tain, as I perceived they did, when I saw them beauty which the first had spared. nearer, an inextinguished life. I have, therefore, the disadvantage of seeing Cuba not only in the dry season, but near the close of an uncommonly dry season. Next month the rainy season commences, when the whole island, I am told, even the barrenest parts, flushes into a deep verdure, creeping plants climb over all the rocks and ascend the trees, and the mighty palms put out their new foliage. You Of late years, also, such of the orange trees as were not uprooted, or have recently been planted, have been attacked by the insect which a few years since was so destructive to the same tree of Florida. The effect upon the tree resembles that of a blight; the leaves grow sere, and the branches die. may imagine, therefore, that I was somewhat disappointed not to find the air, as it is at this season in the south of Italy, fragrant with the odors of orange and lemon blossoms. Oranges are scarce, and not so fine, at this moment, in Havana and Matanzas, as in the fruit shops of New York. I hear, however, that there are portions of the island which were spared by these hurricanes, and that there are others where the ravages of the insect have nearly ceased, as I have been told is also the case in Florida. Shade, however, is the great luxury of a warm climate, and why the people of Cuba do not surround their habitations in the country, in the villages, and in the environs of the large towns, with a dense umbrage of trees, I confess I do not exactly understand. In their rich soil, and in their perpetually genial climate, trees grow with great rapidity, and they have many noble ones both for size and foliage. The royal palm, with its tall, I have mentioned my excursion to San Antonio. straight, columnar trunk of a whitish hue, only I went thither by railway, in a car made at Newuplifts a Corinthian capital of leaves, and casts ark, drawn by an engine made in New York, and but a narrow shadow; but it mingles finely with worked by an American engineer. For some disother trees, and planted in avenues, forms a colon-tance we passed through fields of the sweet potato, nade nobler than any of the ancient porticos to which here never requires a second planting, and the Egyptian temples. There is no thicker foliage propagates itself perpetually in the soil, patches or fresher green than that of the mango, which of maize, low groves of bananas with their dark daily drops its abundant fruit for several months stems, and of plantains with their green ones, and in the year, and the mamey and the sapote, fruit large tracts producing the pine apple growing in trees also, are in leaf during the whole of the dry rows like carrots. Then came plantations of the season; even the Indian fig, which clasps and kills sugar-cane with its sedge-like blades of pale green, the largest trees of the forest, and at last takes then extensive tracts of pasturage with scattered their place, a stately tree with a stout trunk of its shrubs and tall dead weeds, the growth of the last own, has its unfading leaf of vivid green. summer, and a thin herbage bitten close to the soil. Here and there was an abandoned coffee plantation, where cattle were browzing among the half perished shrubs and broken rows of trees, and the neglected hedges of the wild pine, piña raton, as the Cubans call it, were interrupted with broad gaps. It is impossible to avoid an expression of impatience that these trees have not been formed into groups, embowering the dwellings, and into groves, through which the beams of the sun, here so fierce at noon-day, could not reach the ground beneath. There is in fact nothing of ornamental cultivation in Cuba, except of the most formal kind. Some private gardens there are, carefully kept, but all of the stiffest pattern; and there is nothing which brings out the larger vegetation of the region in that grandeur and magnificence which might belong to it. In the Quinta del Obispo, or Bishop's Garden, which is open to the public, you find shade, Sometimes we passed the cottages of the monteros, or peasants, built often of palm leaves, the walls formed of the broad sheath of the leaf fastened to posts of bamboo, and the roof thatched with the long plume-like leaf itself. The door was sometimes hung with a kind of curtain to exclude the sun, which the dusky-complexioned women and children put aside to gaze at us as we passed. | ed by stiff-leaved hedges of the ratoon pine, over These dwellings were often picturesque in their ways so bad that if the motion of the volante were appearance, with a grove of plantains behind, a not the easiest in the world we should have taken thicket of bamboo by its side, waving its willow- an unpleasant jolting. The lands of Cuba fit for like sprigs in the wind; a pair of mango trees cultivation, are divided into red and black; we near, hung with fruit just ripening, and reddish were in the midst of the red lands, consisting of a blossoms just opening, and a cocoa tree or two fine earth of a deep brick color, resting on a bed lifting high above the rest its immense feathery of soft, porous, chalky, limestone. In the dry leaves and its clusters of green nuts. season the surface is easily dispersed into dust, and stains your clothes of a dull red. We now and then met the monteros themselves scudding along on their little horses, in that pace which we call a rack. Their dress was a Panama hat, a shirt worn over a pair of pantaloons, a pair of rough cowskin shoes, one of which was armed with a spur, and a sword lashed to the left side by a belt of cotton cloth. They are men of manly bearing, of thin make, but often of a good figure, with well spread shoulders, which, however, have a stoop in them, contracted, I suppose, by riding always with a short stirrup. Forests, too, we passed. You, doubtless, suppose that a forest, in a soil and climate like this, must be a dense growth of trees with colossal stems and leafy summits. A forest in Cuba-all that I have seen are such-is a thicket of shrubs and creeping plants, through which one would suppose that even the wild-cats of the country would find it impossible to make their way. Above this impassable jungle rises here and there the palm, or the gigantic ceyba or cotton tree, but more often trees of far less beauty, thinly scattered, and with few branches disposed without symmetry, and at this season, often leatless. We reached San Antonio at nine o'clock in the morning, and went to the inn of La Punta, where we breakfasted on rice and fresh eggs, and a dish of meat so highly flavored with garlic that it was impossible to distinguish to what animal it belonged. Adjoining the inn was a cockpit, with cells for the birds surrounding the enclosure, in which they were crowing lustily. Two or three persons seemed to have nothing to do but to tend them, and one, in particular, with a gray beard, a grave aspect, and a solid gait, went about the work with a deliberation and solemnity which to me, who had lately seen the hurried burials at the Campo Santo, in Havana, was highly edifying. A man was training a game cock in the pit; he was giving it lessons in the virtue of perseverance. He held another cock before it, which he was teaching it to pursue; and striking it occasionally over the head, to provoke it, with the wing of the bird in his hand, he made it run after him about the area for half an hour together. I had heard much of the beauty of the coffee estates of Cuba, and in the neighborhood of San Antonio are some which have been reputed very fine ones. A young man, in a checked blue and A drive of four miles, through a country full of palm and cocoa-nut trees, brought us to the gate of a coffee plantation, which our friend in the checked shirt, by whom we were accompanied, opened for us. We passed up to the house through what had been an avenue of palms, but was now two rows of trees at very unequal distances, with here and there a sickly orange tree. On each side grew the coffee-shrubs, hung with flowers of snowy white, but unpruned and full of dry and leafless twigs. In every direction were ranks of trees, prized for ornament or for their fruit, and shrubs, among which which were magnificent oleanders loaded with flowers, planted in such a manner as to break the force of the wind and partially to shelter the plants from the too fierce rays of the sun. The coffee estate is, in fact, a kind of forest, with the trees and shrubs arranged in straight lines. The mayoral, or steward of the estate, a handsome Cuban, with white teeth, a pleasant smile, and a distinct utterance of his native language, received us with great courtesy, and offered us cigarillos, though he never used tobacco, and spirit of cane, though he never drank. He wore a sword, and carried a large flexible whip, doubled for convenience in the hand, He showed us the coffee plants, the broad platforms with smooth surfaces of cement and raised borders, where the berries were dried in the sun and the mills where the negroes were at work separating the kernel from the pulp in which it is enclosed. "These coffee estates," said he, "are already ruined, and the planters are abandoning them as fast as they can; in four years more there will not be a single coffee plantation on the island. They cannot afford to raise coffee for the price they get in the market." I inquired the reason. "It is," replied he, "the extreme dryness of the season when the plant is in flower. If we have rain at this time of the year, we are sure of a good crop; if it does not rain the harvest is small; and the failure of rain is so common a circumstance that we must leave the cultivation of the coffee to the people of St. Domingo and Brazil." I asked if the plantation could not be converted into a sugar estate. "Not this," he answered; "it has been cultivated too long. The land was originally rich, white shirt, worn like a frock over checked pantaloons, with a spur on one heel, offered to procure us a volante, and we engaged him. He brought but it is exhausted"-tired out was the expresus one with two horses, a negro postilion sitting on one, and the shafts of the vehicle borne by the other. We set off, passing through fields guard sion he used--" we may cultivate maize or rice, for the dry culture of rice succeeds well here, or we may abandon it to grazing. At present we keep a few negroes here just to gather the ber- the tobacco of the ries which ripen, without taking any trouble to the railway preserve the plants, or replace those which die." licen I could easily believe, from what I saw on this estate, that there must be a great deal of of vegetation in a well-kept coffee pl the formal pattern in which i beauty of arrangemen Returning to our inn, we din In passing through the town, I was struck with the neat attire of those who inhabited the humblest dwellings. At the door of one of the cot-1. tages, I saw a group of children, of different ages, ev all quite pretty, with oval faces and glittering in black eyes, in clean, fresh dresses, which, one tanz would think, could scarcely have been kept a mo- ing t ment without being soiled, in that dwelling, with the co its mud floor. The people of Cuba are sparing to the in their ablutions; the men do not wash their At le faces and hands till nearly mid-day, for fear of a long t spasms; and of the women, I am told that many into whic do not wash at all, contenting themselves with town lay a rubbing their cheeks and necks with a little aguar- by hills, wi diente; but the passion for clean linen, and, themselves. among the men, for clean white pantaloons, is perous town, universal. The montero himself, on a holiday or indicated by th any public occasion, will sport a shirt of the finest linen, smoothly ironed and starched throughout, from the collar downwards. The next day, at half past eleven, we left our inn, which was also what we call in the United States a country store, where the clerks who had just performed their ablutions and combed their hair, were making cigars behind the counter from As we pass extensive, heal growing on one diente de perro. ged teeth of whit. stems of the plan height, and as large stalks of the plantain T Dog-breaking. By Lieut.-Col. W. N. HUTCH- | based on compulsion; he watches willingly over INSON, (20th Regiment.) London. 12mo. our couch by night, and wakes the cheerful com 1848. able-Talk and Table-Talk. By HARRY HIE 1846. VER. The 2d Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. ondon. 12mo. 1848. t Sports in the United States and the British winces of America. By FRANK FORESTER. don. 2 vols. 8vo. 1848. panion of our walks by day; the chances of time or place, the changes of fortunes for better or Worse, effect no alteration in his free full love; with a fidelity above suspicion His honest heart is still his master's own : He labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone. But although poets-Burns and Byron-have done ced no apology to our readers for coup-justice to these dog-like excellences, prose-writers. Is with horses; destined for each other, like us, must blush at their non-appreciation by run lovingly together from time im- the world at large. The turbaned infidel Asiatic and will keep company to the end of agrees with his antipodes, the hatted and hated ; the connection is natural, and we Christian European, in using the poor dog worse chase being mimic war-few will than one, in holding him dog-cheap, and giving ge that military men, in these piping him a bad name, insomuch that, whatever the sex eace, should take first and foremost to which the name is applied, whatever the metace conduct of perdricide and vulpi- phor to which it is adapted, it is anything but s, or that those who mould their complimentary. 1-pens, should feel themselves fully A portion of our provincial readers must par› teach the young idea both how don the suspicion that they imperfectly understand in at the death-the end of coun- the philosophy of sport, the physiology of the dog, is there anything new in such and his psychology, so to speak, for we admit the s; Colonel Hutchinson and Cap- words are somewhat hard; test however the amount it follow where Generals Xeno- of information possessed on these points, by disled before; the former, unri-cussing them postprandially at most of the tables r and retriever, consoled him- of forty out of the fifty-two counties:-let the y by composing Hippics and deipnosophists be of good gaudet equis canibusque e Greek, which no private breed, born to inherit broad acres, to consume cehould be without; the latter reals, and deprive feræ naturæ of a share in na and richly supplemented him ture's banquet :—how jejune their chase reasonon coursing, for which task ings-how rarely do any two disputants coincide > not unfit, from having been in opinions, but each, swearing by his own sysjoxovdanas, zvvnyéσiar, tem, votes all beyond it leather and prunella! (YLAN. Meanwhile, as We would fain hope that the Hutchinsonian duoys a bore, we recommend decimo will prove useful to many of these good as coverts which may be lords of the soil. This serious and earnest treat without fear of a blank tise elevates dog-breaking to the dignity of a science; notwithstanding the modest statement of its opening paragraph, that, so far from being a mys tery, it is an art easily acquired, when commenced on rational principles, and continued by instructors possessed of temper, judgment, and consistency; moral desiderata, be it said at starting, scarcely anywhere so plentiful as blackberries. in have many kindred Much, however, depends, according to our considerate author, on the degree of finish required in educating a four-footed recruit; whether, for instance, he is to be drilled to perfect manœuvring in the field, and to veteran steadiness under fire, or trained cyclopædia of duty to only such a respectable mediocrity as satisfies drummer-boy to those whose best beat is from Albemarle street thor, during pro- | to the Athenæum; in either alternative we agree r of the globe, with Lord Chesterfield, that, if a thing be worth ation, and took doing at all, it is worth doing well, and we also me, love my quite agree with our gallant colonel, however unver his stanch fashionable the opinion, that more than half the burning plains pleasure of the chase consists in watching the ada; and we hunting of well-broken dogs, and that it is nearly Tections mis-doubled if they chance to be of one's own breakd of the dog; ing the better the dog, the better the sport; for rve him his when neither temper nor nerves are ruffled by bad divided nor behavior, the shooting is calm and killing. The keep a few negroes here just to gather the berries which ripen, without taking any trouble to preserve the plants, or replace those which die." I could easily believe, from what I saw on this estate, that there must be a great deal of beauty of vegetation in a well-kept coffee plantation; but the formal pattern in which it is disposed, the straight alleys and rows of trees, the squares and parallelograms, showed me that there was no beauty of arrangement. We fell in, before we returned to our inn, with the proprietor, a delicatelooking person, with thin white hands, who had been educated in Boston, and spoke English as if he had never lived anywhere else. His manners, compared with those of his steward, were exceedingly frosty and forbidding, and when I told him of the civility which had been shown us, his looks seemed to say that he wished it had been otherwise. Returning to our inn, we dined, and as the sun grew low, we strolled out to look at the town. It is situated on a clear little stream, over which several bathing houses are built, their posts standing in the midst of the current. Above the town, it flows between rocky banks, bordered with shrubs, many of them in flower. Below the town, after winding a little way, it enters a cavern yawning in the limestone rock, immediately over which a huge ceyba rises, and stretches its leafy arms in mid heaven. Down this opening, the river throws itself, and is never seen again. This is not a singular instance in Cuba. The island is full of caverns and openings in the rocks, and I am told that many of the streams find subterranean passages to the sea. There is a well at the inn of La Punta, in which a roaring of water is constantly heard. It is the sound of a subterranean stream rushing along a passage in the rocks, and the well is an opening into its roof. the tobacco of the Vuelta Abajo, and returned by the railway to Havana. We procured travelling licences at the cost of four dollars and a half each, for it is the pleasure of the government to levy this tax on strangers who travel, and early the following morning took the train for Matanzas. W. C. B. Los Guines, April 18th, 1849. IN the long circuit of railway which leads from Havana to Matanzas, I saw nothing remarkably different from what I observed on my excursion to San Antonio. There was the same smooth country, of great apparent fertility, sometimes varied with gentle undulations, and sometimes rising, in the distance, into hills covered with thickets. We swept by dark green fields planted with the yuca, an esculent root, of which the cassava bread is made, pale green fields of the cane, brown tracts of pasturage, partly formed of abandoned coffee estates, where the palms and scattered fruit trees were yet standing, and forests of shrubs and twining plants, growing for the most part among rocks. of those rocky tracts have a peculiar appearance; they consist of rough projections of rock a foot or two in height, of irregular shape and full of holes ; they are called diente de perro, or dog's teeth. Here the trees and creepers find openings filled with soil, by which they are nourished. We passed two or three country cemeteries, where that foulest of birds, the turkey vulture, was seen sitting on the white stuccoed walls, or hovering on his ragged wings in circles over them. Some In passing over the neighborhood of the town in which I am now writing, I found myself on the black lands of the island. Here the rich dark earth of the plain lies on a bed of chalk as white as snow, as was apparent where the earth had been excavated to a little depth, on each side of the railIn passing through the town, I was struck with way, to form the causey on which it ran. Streams the neat attire of those who inhabited the hum- of clear water, diverted from a river to the left, blest dwellings. At the door of one of the cot- traversed the plain with a swift current, almost tages, I saw a group of children, of different ages, even with the surface of the soil, which they keep all quite pretty, with oval faces and glittering in perpetual freshness. As we approached Mablack eyes, in clean, fresh dresses, which, one tanzas, we saw more extensive tracts of cane clothwould think, could scarcely have been kept a mo-ing the broad slopes with their dense blades, as if ment without being soiled, in that dwelling, with the coarse sedge of a river had been transplanted its mud floor. The people of Cuba are sparing to the uplands. in their ablutions; the men do not wash their faces and hands till nearly mid-day, for fear of spasms; and of the women, I am told that many do not wash at all, contenting themselves with rubbing their cheeks and necks with a little aguardiente; but the passion for clean linen, and, among the men, for clean white pantaloons, is universal. The montero himself, on a holiday or any public occasion, will sport a shirt of the finest linen, smoothly ironed and starched throughout, from the collar downwards. The next day, at half past eleven, we left our inn, which was also what we call in the United States a country store, where the clerks who had just performed their ablutions and combed their hair, were making cigars behind the counter from At length the bay of Matanzas opened before us; a long tract of water stretching to the north-east, into which several rivers empty themselves. The town lay at the south-western extremity, sheltered by hills, where the San Juan and the Yumuri pour themselves into the brine. It is a small but prosperous town, with a considerable trade, as was indicated by the vessels at anchor in the harbor. As we passed along the harbor I remarked an extensive, healthy-looking orchard of plantains growing on one of those tracts which they call diente de perro. I could see nothing but the jagged teeth of whitish rock, and the green swelling stems of the plantain, from ten to fifteen feet in height, and as large as a man's leg, or larger. The stalks of the plantain are jucy and herbaceous, and |