The first impression made upon me, as I sauntered into this green maze, was one of absolute amazement, not unmingled with a certain sense of terror. The vegetation around me was of such unusual proportions that I felt myself a mere pigmy, a sort of Jack the Giant-Killer wandering in quest of the Ogre's Castle. And indeed the thick growth of tree trunk and palm stems, absolutely leafless for some forty or fifty feet, might easily be mistaken for the dead walls of some enchanted fortress. Looking up, however, one beheld, instead of blue sky, an aerial canopy of the densest foliage, varying in tint from the deepest to the tenderest green. These Cuban forests are pathless: to traverse them you must cut or burn your way; their labyrinths remind you at every turn of the opening lines to Dante's _Inferno_: "Nel mezzo de cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva, oscura Chè la diritta via era smarrita." As you pass along, clouds of winged creatures rise out of the grass, some of them infamously unkind and pernicious, others beautiful and harmless. In the openings the most inconceivably lovely flowers bloom, and humming birds flash hither and thither, sparkling like variegated jewels in the few rays of sunshine that penetrate the massive canopy of leaves. Now and again their passage is barred by the rope-like branches of some uncanny creeper, that come pouring down from above like the tangled rigging of a wrecked ship. You draw back in alarm, lest the strange thing should suddenly come to life, and turn into a chain of angry serpents. To your surprise you perceive one side of it to be literally blazing with flame-coloured orchids, red and orange. In the centre of yonder little open space is a dead tree that some huge parasite has seized upon, dragged out of earth and imprisoned in a woody cage, every bar of which is tapestried with the most exquisite orchids. Yonder growth, which reaches far above your knees, consists of the great wheel-shaped maiden-hair fern, whose fronds are so exquisite and so brittle that you feel remorse at trampling so tender and delicate a carpet under foot. Presently you find yourself ascending a rocky eminence, crowned by half a dozen soaring cabbage palms, and thence you plunge into a shrubbery where the exquisite Tabernæ-montana, or the resplendent Calycophyllum, fills the hot moist air with an overpowering perfume, recalling that of our homely syringa. On and on you go, through groves of palm trees, tied together by entwined lianas, looking, for all the world, like motionless boa constrictors, and on which countless tiny lizards, or harmless little snakes, glisten in the sunlight. Now and then a flying squirrel flashes past, or a monster bat is disturbed, or you form the acquaintance of an ugly old iguana, who winks at you with a knowing eye, and withdraws, as suddenly as he appeared, behind a trap door of broad glossy leaves. Here are clusters of begonias, there a