The offers for exchanges from our correspondents have come in so fast of late that we have been obliged, for the present, to place a large portion of them on the third page of the cover, in order to make room for letters, answers, and puzzles, which fill the two pages allotted to the Post-office Box.
New York City.
We children have just had a box of odd things from our auntie, who lives in Cuba, and I thought the readers of Young People would like to hear about it. It was a great big box, and the first thing we saw when papa took off the cover was a lot of sugar-cane. It looked very hard and dry, but when papa cut off the outside, how nice and white the inside was! We sucked the juice, and it was sweeter than sugar. Then papa took out a bundle done up in yellow paper, and marked, "Open carefully." It was full of pinol, which is a kind of corn meal made by the country people in Cuba. They roast the corn, and then grind it fine, and mix it with brown sugar. They eat it just that way, and sometimes they wet it with milk, and make little cakes. Auntie wrote that the school-boys in Cuba take a mouthful of pinol, and then try to say fou-fou without blowing out any meal. We tried, but the meal, which tastes very nice, was like dry powder, and we couldn't do it.
There was a little box full of what we always called guinea-peas, but which are called pepusas in Cuba. They are a bright red pea, with a little black spot on one side. Auntie always writes a description of everything, and so we know that these grow on bushes, like our hazel-nuts. The bushes are covered with husks, which crack open when they are dry, and show a whole bunch of pepusas inside.
THE SAND-BOX.
There were so many candied fruits that I couldn't tell about half. There was one very curious, which they call marañon in Cuba, but papa says in Jamaica it is called cashew. The fruit is yellow and red, and is shaped something like a pear. The curious thing about it is that the seed, which is a kind of nut, is outside the fruit, and hangs on the lower end. If this nut is roasted when it is fresh, it is nicer than a chestnut.
There were a great many corojo nuts in our box, and we have enough to play with for a year; for we are going to do just like the Cuban children—carry them in our pockets, and use them for marbles until we are tired of them, and then crack them and eat the meat. They are a small, round, green nut, and the meat is like a tiny piece of cocoa-nut. The corojo nuts grow on a palm-tree, and hang in great bunches right under the crown of glistening green leaves.
My letter is growing too long, but I must tell about something auntie sent us a year ago. There is a very beautiful tree, which grows all through the Cuban woods, which they call salvadera. In Jamaica they call it the sandbox-tree, because they get the pretty, fluted seed cases, and make sand-boxes of them. If they are picked just at the right time, they last for years. If they are left on the tree, they ripen until they are dark brown, and then they fly open with a bang, and send the seeds in all directions. You can hear them sometimes in Cuban woods popping on every side, like hundreds of pistols.
Well, last year auntie sent us a very handsome sand-box, all varnished, and mounted on a wooden stand. We stood it on the mantel-piece. One evening we were all sitting in the parlor, when some one, as it seemed, fired off a pistol right in the room. Papa ran to the door, thinking it was in the street, and we children all crept close to mamma, and got hold of her dress. Pretty soon papa came back, looking very much puzzled, for the street was all quiet. He came and stood in front of the fire, wondering what the noise could have been, till all of a sudden he began to laugh and point to our sand-box. There stood the wooden stand, but every bit of the box had disappeared. We found it afterward in little pieces scattered all over the room. I suppose it had been picked too dry, and the heat of the fire had finished it.
Hallie J. R.
The sandbox-tree is one of the most beautiful growths of West Indian forests. As we are sure our little readers will like to see a picture of the seed case which "flies open with a bang," we take the accompanying illustration from A Christmas in the West Indies, by Charles Kingsley, published by Harper & Brothers.