From the indigo estate, bearing the name of some favorite saint, which I have forgotten, we rode a mile or two further, to the sugar plantation of San Geronimo. The ground which it occupies is perfectly level, and by means of ditches, designed particularly for purposes of irrigation, is laid out in squares, or manzanas. The cane on some of these squares had been newly planted, and on others lately cut, while upon others it was now in perfection, and ready for use. The mills are here kept running steadily the year round, and by the time the cutters have gone through all the fields, those which were first cleared are ready for the knife a second time. Under favorable circumstances, three crops can be taken yearly; and the ground does not require to be replanted oftener than once in ten or fourteen years. A two-story house, newer and better built than that which I have already described, stood upon one side of the cane-fields, on the banks of a stream, and in the vicinity of the mills. It was approached by a broad avenue, kept scrupulously clean, and its white walls and red roof stood out against a dense background of trees, now in the perfection of their foliage, and loaded with fruit. The lower story was occupied by the mayor-domo and his family, and the upper by a bachelor brother of our host, whom we found in his shirt sleeves, swinging in a hammock suspended in the corridor on the shaded side of the building, and engaged in reading a translation of Sue’s Mysteries of Paris! He rose hastily, uttered some indistinct apologies, and led us into the body of the building, where in an instant we were surrounded by a playful troop of blooded dogs, which our friend, who was a good deal of a Nimrod, had expressly imported from England and the United States. In one corner of the room stood an elegant rifle, with a brace of pistols, a sword, and a variety of bits and spurs grouped, around it. In another corner was a guitar and a saddle, and on the table, in that delightful confusion seen only in bachelor establishments, a flute, some music, and books, and an infinity of cigars. An engraved portrait of Lola Montez was the only decoration on the walls, unless the skin of a monstrous tigre, stretched at one end of the apartment, might be called a decoration.