Cigar-making is extensively carried on in Key West, thus giving employment to hundreds of exiled Cubans. The establishment of Seidenberg & Co. is the largest in the city, employing six hundred operatives. Upon the first floor are seated eighty females, engaged in stripping tobacco from the stems. Here mother and daughter work side by side, the daughter earning five dollars per week on account of her more nimble fingers, and the mother three. The daughter puffs a delicate cigarette, while the mother smokes a huge cigar, it being considered a disgrace for the young ladies to use--only cigarettes. Two hundred and fifty men are occupied in one room upon the second floor, all forming those cylindrical tubes through which is to be drawn so much enjoyment in the present, while a perfect _abandon_ of all anxiety for the future is felt. These operatives employ a reader, who reads aloud from newspapers printed in Spanish, while they are working, for which luxury each one bears his proportion of the expense. When any news favoring the cause of the insurgents is read, the house echoes with shouting and stamping of feet. The remaining laborers are employed in assorting and packing the cigars for market. Only the choicest tobacco is used in this factory--each first-class cigar made here being warranted equal to any Havana brand. Thirty-five thousand cigars are manufactured daily, consuming thirty thousand pounds of tobacco monthly. The most amusing sight of all is to see these workmen drink water: it is contained in a kind of earthenware vessel which they call a "monkey-jug," made from a porous earth obtained in Cuba, and shaped something like our American gallon-jug, only the orifice is on the side. These jugs are suspended by a cord in some cool place, where the air circulates most freely, a slight percolation constantly taking place from the water inside. When they drink, the vessel is raised to an angle of twelve degrees above their mouths, and, after setting their heads back on their shoulders, with their months wide open, they turn the water down their throats, without any perceptible act of deglutition. After they have finished drinking, they close their mouths with a peculiar "umph," at the same instant exclaiming "_Ave Maria!_" to indicate the act is finished, and returning thanks to the Virgin for the privilege. The cochineal insect is indigenous here, and is found upon the _Cactus opuntia_. In appearance it resembles a tiny ball of cotton attached to the plant; but, on being pressed, a scarlet fluid exudes, which is the life-blood of the insect, produced by the colored cactus-fruit upon which it feeds. This furnishes the beautiful dye of commerce, for which it yields its life.