Chapter VI.
COLONEL WARLOW'S STORY—CONTINUED.
"Our ship touched at Havana, and in company with several other passengers, who lived in the Mississippi Valley, I decided to stop here until a vessel sailed for New Orleans, which would not occur for ten days yet; but years might be passed in that beautiful city of enchantment, the 'Queen of the Antilles,' and we found our stay one round of perpetual delight.
"A day was devoted to a sail around the sunlit harbor, environed by mansions, castles, and palm-decked hills—the sapphire sky bounded only by the purple mountains or pale-green sea. Then we visited Old Moro Castle, its portcullis, donjon-keep, and 'sounding barbacan,' its gloomy grandeur of turret and tower—
'Its loop-holed grates, where captives weep,'—
all recalling the feudal days of Scotland and Spain. Next we drove through the Prado of San Isabel, with its triumphal arches of snowy marble, its rose-decked alamedas lined with palm, cypress, and magnolia, its clear fountains foaming amid thickets of acacia and blooming oleander; and then on to the great theater of Tacon, where the evening was passed as if in fairy-land.
"Christmas-day we drove out to visit a coffee-plantation a dozen miles from the city walls. The dew was still glittering on the foliage as we whirled rapidly along in our easy volantas, and the air was rich with the odor of orange-blossoms and a myriad of other tropic flowers. We halted at the Bishop's Gardens for an hour, and I can but faintly describe their gorgeous floral wealth. These gardens are centuries old, dating back to the days of Charles V., when the Spanish banner of crimson and gold waved around the world.
"There were palm, myrtle, and mangoe trees growing beside canals where the clear rushing water rippled along over the bottom of gaily-colored tiles. Then there were plantations of yucca, the broad-leaved bread-fruit, lemons, guavas, and figs, with great basins of marble brimming with water, on which floated lilies white as snow. But, entrancing as were those avenues of whispering myrtle, orange, and pine, we drove on through the warm sunlight until near noon, when we arrived at our destination.
"The coffee-plantation contained a league of land—three miles square—and was divided into innumerable plats by long avenues that cut each other at right angles, like streets, extending through the plantation. These avenues were lined on either side by palms of a hundred different species, and in their great width of full fifty paces, and three miles long, they were set in Bermuda-grass, mown like a carpet of velvet. The squares, however, were carefully cultivated, and no weeds were visible in the red, mellow soil.
"Next to the row of palms grew a line of orange-trees; then lemons, almonds, pomegranates, and olives, followed by a row of evergreens of infinite variety, the remainder of the square being planted to coffee-trees.