Of late years, also, such of the orange-trees as were not uprooted, or have recently been planted, have been attacked by the insect which a few years since was so destructive to the same tree in Florida.  The effect upon the tree resembles that of a blight, the leaves grow sere, and the branches die.  You may imagine, therefore, that I was somewhat disappointed not to find the air, as it is at this season in the south of Italy, fragrant with the odor of orange and lemon blossoms.  Oranges are scarce, and not so fine, at this moment, in Havana and Matanzas, as in the fruit-shops of New York.  I hear, however, that there are portions of the island which were spared by these hurricanes, and that there are others where the ravages of the insect in the orange groves have nearly ceased, as I have been told is also the case in Florida.

I have mentioned my excursion to San Antonio.  I went thither by railway, in a car built at Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, and worked by an American engineer.  For some distance we passed through fields of the sweet-potato, which here never requires a second planting, and propagates itself perpetually in the soil, patches of maize, low groves of bananas with their dark stems, and of plantains with their green ones, and large tracts producing the pineapple growing in rows like carrots.  Then came plantations of the sugar-cane, with its sedge-like blades of pale-green, then extensive tracts of pasturage with scattered shrubs and tall dead weeds, the growth of the last summer, and a thin herbage bitten close to the soil.  Here and there was an abandoned coffee-plantation, where cattle were browzing among the half-perished shrubs and broken rows of trees; and the neglected hedges of the wild pine, pina raton, as the Cubans call it, were interrupted with broad gaps.

Sometimes we passed the cottages of the monteros, or peasants, built often of palm-leaves, the walls formed of the broad sheath of the leaf, fastened to posts of bamboo, and the roof thatched with the long plume-like leaf itself.  The door was sometimes hung with a kind of curtain to exclude the sun, which the dusky complexioned women and children put aside to gaze at us as we passed.  These dwellings were often picturesque in their appearance, with a grove of plantains behind, a thicket of bamboo by its side, waving its willow-like sprays in the wind; a pair of mango-trees near, hung with fruit just ripening and reddish blossoms just opening, and a cocoa-tree or two lifting high above the rest its immense feathery leaves and its clusters of green nuts.

We now and then met the monteros themselves scudding along on their little horses, in that pace which we call a rack.  Their dress was a Panama hat, a shirt worn over a pair of pantaloons, a pair of rough cowskin shoes, one of which was armed with a spur, and a sword lashed to the left side by a belt of cotton cloth.  They are men of manly bearing, of thin make, but often of a good figure, with well-spread shoulders, which, however, have a stoop in them, contracted, I suppose, by riding always with a short stirrup.