I had a pleasant drive into the country, over fine English roads, Macadamized with volcanic stone by chain gangs. Our fancy-turbaned Lascar driver kept up the while a noise like that of our swamp-sparrows, to encourage his horses. We saw the large fields of sugar-cane, rustling in their deep green, with here and there the tall white chimneys of a sugar-house, or the painted roofs of the chateaus of the Creole, who live very luxuriously, rising in the midst of the promising crops, whose aggregate yield it was thought would be one hundred and sixty millions of pounds of sugar. The foliage that encroaches on the roadside with its luxuriance, or stretches way back to the base of the steep volcanic hills in sight, says “Tropical, tropical;” “the acacia waves her yellow hair,” you have the wide-spreading banyan, the tall rough barked cocoa, the cabbage-tree—its branches interlocked, the banana, the plantain, the ever-graceful palm,— each one of its leaves large enough to make a fan; and then too the traveller’s tree, which on being tapped, affords the weary and athirst a substitute for water. Underneath this mass of rank green, you notice the straight-stemmed aloe with its graceful top-knot, and in the hedges that porcupine plant, the cactus, whose prickly leaf and long thorn, prevent the hump-backed, or Hindoo cattle of the country from getting in the fields of green cane. Then the birds are beautiful to see: the pure white boatswain, the noisy little paroquet, the black frigate bird, and the pretty little cardinal with his feather cowl. The morning scene along the roads is at all times animated. With his proverbial industry, in rope-harness, one John Chinaman is pulling and another John Chinaman is pushing, heavy burdens in a small wagon; or, footing it in a trot to the town, with his bamboo-baskets strapped on shoulder, goes the chicken-merchant with his juvenile Shanghaes. Walking past you in groups, their hands clasped one with another, or stretched on their back, the rays of the sun kept off by the shady branches of the palm, or sitting under a roof made of its leaves, having his head shaved, or the hairs of his moustache plucked out here and there, to make the outline more graceful, is the semi-denuded and meat-hating Lascar. This is a very small picture.