In the spring of 1856, I met with Mr. Christy accidentally in an
omnibus at Havana. He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an
adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and
coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical
jungles, cruising for a fortnight in an open boat among the
coral-reefs, hunting turtles and manatis, and visiting all sorts of
people from whom information was to be had, from foreign consuls and
Lazarist missionaries down to retired slave-dealers and assassins.

As for myself, I had been travelling for the best part of a year in the
United States, and had but a short time since left the live-oak forests
and sugar-plantations of Louisiana. We agreed to go to Mexico together;
and the present notes are principally compiled from our
memorandum-books, and from letters written home on our journey.

Before we left Cuba, however, we made one last excursion across the
island, and to the _Isla de Pinos_--the Isle of Pines--off the southern
coast. A volante took us to the railway-station. The volante is the
vehicle which the Cubans specially affect; it is like a Hansom cab, but
the wheels are much taller, six and a half feet high, and the black
driver sits postillion-wise upon the horse. Our man had a laced jacket,
black leather leggings, and a pair of silver spurs fastened upon his
bare feet, which seemed at a little distance to have well polished
boots on, they were so black and shiny.

The railway which took us from Havana to Batabano had some striking
peculiarities. For a part of the way the track passed between two walls
of tropical jungle. The Indian fig trees sent down from every branch
suckers, like smooth strings, which rooted themselves in the ground to
draw up more water. Acacias and mimosas, the seiba and the mahagua,