Forests, too, we passed.  You, doubtless, suppose that a forest in a soil and climate like this, must be a dense growth of trees with colossal stems and leafy summits.  A forest in Cuba—­all that I have seen are such—­is a thicket of shrubs and creeping plants, through which, one would suppose that even the wild cats of the country would find it impossible to make their way.  Above this impassable jungle rises here and there the palm, or the gigantic ceyba or cotton-tree, but more often trees of far less beauty, thinly scattered and with few branches, disposed without symmetry, and at this season often leafless.

We reached San Antonio at nine o’clock in the morning, and went to the inn of La Punta, where we breakfasted on rice and fresh eggs, and a dish of meat so highly flavored with garlic, that it was impossible to distinguish to what animal it belonged.  Adjoining the inn was a cockpit, with cells for the birds surrounding the inclosure, in which they were crowing lustily.  Two or three persons seemed to have nothing to do but to tend them; and one, in particular, with a gray beard, a grave aspect, and a solid gait, went about the work with a deliberation and solemnity which to me, who had lately seen the hurried burials at the Campo Santo, in Havana, was highly edifying.  A man was training a game-cock in the pit; he was giving it lessons in the virtue of perseverance.  He held another cock before it, which he was teaching it to pursue, and striking it occasionally over the head to provoke it, with the wing of the bird in his hand, he made it run after him about the area for half an hour together.

I had heard much of the beauty of the coffee estates of Cuba, and in the neighborhood of San Antonio are some which have been reputed very fine ones.  A young man, in a checked blue and white shirt, worn like a frock over checked pantaloons, with a spur on one heel, offered to procure us a volante, and we engaged him.  He brought us one with two horses, a negro postillion sitting on one, and the shafts of the vehicle borne by the other.  We set off, passing through fields guarded by stiff-leaved hedges of the ratoon-pine, over ways so bad that if the motion of the volante were not the easiest in the world, we should have taken an unpleasant jolting.  The lands of Cuba fit for cultivation, are divided into red and black; we were in the midst of the red lands, consisting of a fine earth of a deep brick color, resting on a bed of soft, porous, chalky limestone.  In the dry season the surface is easily dispersed into dust, and stains your clothes of a dull red.