with him. Folded partly over the cantle of his saddle, and hanging on each side, the two capacious pockets of his _seron_ hold his coffee-pot, bread, and provisions on one side, and several changes of garments on the other. In front are strapped his cloak and holsters; behind, his hammock; and his trusty _machete_ hangs by his side. He is a perfectly independent man--a man after Sir Charles Napier's own heart; can carry two or three days' provisions in his _seron_, and cares not a fig where night overtakes him. To be sure there are, fortunately, no venomous reptiles or wild beasts in Cuba. Here, in Ceylon, perhaps it would not do to try on that 'dodge' too far. You might find a cobra de capello alongside of you in your hammock, or be unceremoniously ejected therefrom by an inquisitive elephant, a playful cheetah or an affectionate bear." The above extracts, culled from half-a-dozen pages of Mr Taylor, give a fair idea of the texture of the earlier portion of his book, which, it will be seen, is slight but agreeable. He is not strictly correct in stating Cuba to be exempt from the plague of venomous reptiles. The island certainly produces nothing to compare to the _cobra_, but it has varieties of the serpent tribe that would be found anything but pleasant bedfellows--to say nothing of most formidable scorpions, and of gigantic spiders whose sting brings on fever. In his later chapters, Mr Taylor grapples with graver subjects--gives us a few statistics, describes the culture and preparation of sugar, and argues the question of slavery, for the gradual extinction of which he propounds a project. Although he passed upwards of three years in Cuba, the greater portion of the time was spent in the plantations; and he saw nothing of the great towns, except St Jago, where he slept through an earthquake, in the next room to a man with the yellow fever, and where he was duly impressed with the merits of Madame Sauce's boardinghouse and Bordeaux wine. For sketches of Cuba's capital, the gay coquettish city of the Havana, we must revert to M. Marmier, whom we find, with his national versatility, driving in _volantes_, (the light cabriolets which are almost the only equipages used in Cuba,) quoting Horace, Byron, and Lamartine, lauding Havanese courtesy, glancing at Hegel's philosophy, criticising Spanish colonial government, telling anecdotes of General Tacon, (the stern but efficient governor to whom Cuba is indebted for many reforms,) admiring the Creole beauties in the theatre, and cooling his heated interior in the vast coffee-houses, where the delicious fruits of the island--the orange, the pine, the guava, and many others for which English names are wanting--are transformed into preserves, ices, and frozen drinks. At one of these coffee-houses, an ingenious French _glacier_ had so multiplied his refreshing inventions, that he had exhausted his Spanish vocabulary, and was driven to politics and