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.
A drive of four miles, through a country full of palm and cocoanut trees,
brought us to the gate of a coffee plantation, which our friend in the
checked shirt, by whom we were accompanied, opened for us. We passed up to
the house through what had been an avenue of palms, but was now two rows
of trees at very unequal distances, with here and there a sickly
orange-tree.
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