As we walked through the place in the dusk, we could dimly discern the inhabitants sitting in their thatched verandahs, in the thinnest of white dresses, gossipping, smoking, and love-making, tinkling guitars, and singing seguidillas. It was quite a Spanish American scene out of a romance. There was no romance about the mosquitos, however. The air was alive with them. When I was new to Cuba, I used to go to bed in the European fashion; and as the beds were all six inches too short, my feet used to find their way out in the night, and the mosquitos came down and sat upon them. Experience taught us that it was better to lie down half-dressed, so that only our faces and hands were exposed to their attacks. The Isle of Pines used to be the favourite resort of the pirates of the Spanish main; indeed there were no other inhabitants. The creeks and rivers being lined with the densest vegetation, a few yards up the winding course of such a creek, they were lost in the forest, and a cruiser might pass within a few yards of their lurking-place, and see no traces of them. Captain Kyd often came here, and stories of his buried treasures are still told among the inhabitants. Now the island serves a double purpose; it is a place of resort for the Cubans, who come to rusticate and bathe, and it serves as a settlement for those free black inhabitants of Florida who chose to leave that country when it was given up to the United States. One of these Floridanos accompanied us as our guide next day to the Baños de Santa Fé. When we left the village we passed near the mangrove trees, which were growing not only near the water but in it, and like to spread their roots among the thick black slime which accumulates so fast in this country of rapid vegetable growth, and as rapid decomposition. In Cuba, the mangoe is the abomination of the planters, for they supply the runaway slaves with food, upon which they have been known to subsist for months, whilst the mangroves give them shelter. A little further inland we found the guava, a thick-spreading tree, with smooth green leaves. From its fruit is made guava-jelly, but as yet it was not ripe enough to eat.