Introduction of Sugar-Cane. -- Sugar Plantations. -- Mode of Manufacture. -- Slaves on the Plantations. -- African Amusements. -- The Grinding Season. -- The Coffee Plantations. -- A Floral Paradise. -- Refugees from St. Domingo. -- Interesting Experiments with a Mimosa. -- Three Staple Productions of Cuba. -- Raising Coffee and Tobacco. -- Best Soils for the Tobacco. -- Agricultural Possibilities. -- The Cuban Fire-Fly. -- A Much-Dreaded Insect. -- The Ceiba Tree. -- About Horses and Oxen. The first sugar plantation established in Cuba was in 1595, nearly three hundred years since. These plantations are the least attractive in external appearance, but the most profitable pecuniarily, of all agricultural investments in the tropics, though at the present writing there is a depression in prices of sugar which has brought about a serious complication of affairs. The markets of the world have become glutted with the article, owing to the enormous over-production in Europe from the beet. The plantations devoted to the raising of the sugar-cane in Cuba spread out their extensive fields, covered with the corn-like stalks, without any relief to the eye, though here and there the graceful feathery branches of the palm are seen. The fields are divided off into squares of three or four acres each, between which a roadway is left for ox-teams to pass for gathering purposes. On some of the largest estates tramways have been laid, reaching from the several sections of the plantation to the doors of the grinding-mill. A mule, by this means, is enabled to draw as large a load as a pair of oxen on plain ground, and with much more ease and promptness.