But on descending to the plains, where there is less moisture, and where vegetation therefore is scantier, we find the unwonted forms of growth more distinct, and have the full sense of being in a southern land. Here the thorn palms, the cactus hedges, the penguin fences, resembling huge pineapple plants, and various trees and shrubs, being seen more isolated, make a stronger impression of the peculiarities of tropical forms. Here too we meet in greater abundance with the cocoanut tree, occasionally forming long avenues of lofty palms on the estates. And here we see more frequently the huge squares of many acres, heavy with the luxuriant wealth of the cane, and thronged by dusky laborers. The heat, which in the uplands is pleasant, though rather too steady in the plains, becomes oppressive and enervating. The distinction between the wet and dry seasons, also, is much more distinctly marked, and, in short, everything corresponds more fully with the usual idea of a tropical land. The luxuriance and the glory of nature are the same now as ever; but everywhere over the island the traveller sees the melancholy evidences of the decay of former wealth. You may travel over miles and miles on the plains once rich with the cane, or ridge after ridge in the uplands once covered with the dark-green coffee plantations, which now are almost a wilderness. To quote the language of another, 'ridges, overgrown with guava bushes, mark the cornfields; rank vegetation fills the courtyard, and even bursts through the once hospitable roof. A curse seems to have fallen upon the land, as if this generation were atoning for the sins of the past. For while we lament the ruin of the present proprietors, we cannot forget the unrequited toil which in times gone by created the wealth they have lost; nor that hapless race, the original owners of the soil, whose fate darkens the saddest page in history.' A passing traveller will see little to compensate the sadness occasioned by old magnificence thus in ruins, strewing the whole island with its melancholy wrecks. What there is to set off against it, we shall consider hereafter.