"After seven days' delay, I received intimation that my fellow-traveller, Don Carlos Saldivar, was now ready, and awaited my joining forces with him at eleven that night, so as to get a long cool march by moonlight. About half-an-hour after the appointed time, we filed off down the street, the cavalcade consisting of about twenty-four horses, the head of one being tied to the tail of the other; and Don Carlos and myself brought up the rear. I have met with very few, even old residents, who have ever crossed the island by the road we took. It leads all the way over highlands, rocky passes, and through mountainous streams, except where it crosses some immense savannas; whereas the main road is mostly all the way on the banks of the Cauto, the principal river of Cuba. But the main road, though short and level, is dreadfully muddy and clayey in rainy weather, and for that reason our arrieros chose the other. After passing a small _ingenio_ or sugar-mill, worked by oxen, which Don Carlos pointed out on the side of the road, we entered a perfect forest of orange trees, whose ripe and tempting fruit hung in profusion from every tree, and lay also on the ground by cart-loads. I let the party get ahead some distance, and then, quietly dismounting, eagerly clutched the finest and ripest I could see. My mind misgave me a little on applying the test of smell, although that was very refreshing; but my worst fears came out on removing the peel, when I found my orange was both bitter and sour, being of the kind called in England "Seville," indigenous to and abundant in all the forests of Cuba, as well as the lime. I rode up to my friends, feeling considerably "sold," and now began to be aware that good fruit, although abundant enough in Cuba, is not to be had on every tree. We had accommodation, none of the best, the four nights we passed on the road. One of them saw us in a small _rancho_, the dwelling of a solitary negro, who, it seemed, was a tailor, and where the only place I could find for passing the night was on a _barbacoa_, or platform of small round sticks; and of all the beds I ever tried to sleep on, this was the most hopeless! I suffered much on this journey for want of a hammock, and seriously counsel all who may have to make a journey, long or short, in Cuba, to travel always with one. But how different the mode of travelling in Cuba, where Coolies are not to be had for a song, as they are here where I am writing, (Ceylon.) A Ceylon planter or merchant cannot move through the jungle or take any trip at all, without the attendance of six or eight of these poor creatures, toiling under a weight of baggage, bedding, &c. A Spaniard will travel seven or eight hundred miles, suppose from the Havana, to Holguin, on one and the same horse, and carry all he requires