There Is No Thicker
Foliage Or Fresher Green Than That Of The Mango, Which Daily Drops Its
Abundant Fruit For
Several months in the year, and the mamey and the
sapote, fruit-trees also, are in leaf during the whole
Of the dry season;
even the Indian fig, which clasps and kills the largest trees of the
forest, and at last takes their place, a stately tree with a stout trunk
of its own, has its unfading leaf of vivid green.
It is impossible to avoid an expression of impatience that these trees
have not been formed into groups, embowering the dwellings, and into
groves, through which the beams of the sun, here so fierce at noonday,
could not reach the ground beneath. There is in fact nothing of ornamental
cultivation in Cuba, except of the most formal kind. Some private gardens
there are, carefully kept, but all of the stiffest pattern; there is
nothing which brings out the larger vegetation of the region in that
grandeur and magnificence which might belong to it. In the Quinta del
Obispo, or Bishop's Garden, which is open to the public, you find shade
which you find nowhere else, but the trees are planted in straight alleys,
and the water-roses, a species of water-lily of immense size, fragrant and
pink-colored, grow in a square tank, fed by a straight canal, with sides
of hewn stone.
Let me say, however, that when I asked for trees, I was referred to the
hurricanes which have recently ravaged the island. One of these swept over
Cuba in 1844, uprooting the palms and the orange groves, and laying
prostrate the avenues of trees on the coffee plantations. The Paseo
Isabel, a public promenade, between the walls of Havana and the streets of
the new town, was formerly over-canopied with lofty and spreading trees,
which this tempest leveled to the ground; it has now been planted with
rows of young trees, which yield a meagre shade. In 1846 came another
hurricane, still more terrific, destroying much of the beauty which the
first had spared.
Of late years, also, such of the orange-trees as were not uprooted, or
have recently been planted, have been attacked by the insect which a few
years since was so destructive to the same tree in Florida. The effect
upon the tree resembles that of a blight, the leaves grow sere, and the
branches die. You may imagine, therefore, that I was somewhat disappointed
not to find the air, as it is at this season in the south of Italy,
fragrant with the odor of orange and lemon blossoms. Oranges are scarce,
and not so fine, at this moment, in Havana and Matanzas, as in the
fruit-shops of New York. I hear, however, that there are portions of the
island which were spared by these hurricanes, and that there are others
where the ravages of the insect in the orange groves have nearly ceased,
as I have been told is also the case in Florida.
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