Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 44.

Gomara, Crónica, cap. 32, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.—Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 2, lib. 5, cap. 1.—Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 1.—“Mui hermosas vegas y riberas tales y tan hermosas que en toda España no pueden ser mejores ansí de apaçibles á la vista como de fructíferas.” (Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.) The following poetical apostrophe, by Lord Morpeth, to the scenery of Cuba, equally applicable to that of the tierra caliente, will give the reader a more animated picture of the glories of these sunny climes than my own prose can. The verses, which have never been published, breathe the generous sentiment characteristic of their noble author: “Ye tropic forests of unfading green, Where the palm tapers and the orange glows, Where the light bamboo waves her feathery screen, And her far shade the matchless ceiba throws! “Ye cloudless ethers of unchanging blue, Save where the rosy streaks of eve give way To the clear sapphire of your midnight hue, The burnished azure of your perfect day! “Yet tell me not my native skies are bleak, That flushed with liquid wealth no cane-fields wave; For Virtue pines, and Manhood dares not speak, And Nature’s glories brighten round the Slave.”

“The same love of flowers,” observes one of the most delightful of modern travellers, “distinguishes the natives now, as in the times of Cortés. And it presents a strange anomaly,” she adds, with her usual acuteness; “this love of flowers having existed along with their sanguinary worship and barbarous sacrifices.” Madame Calderon de la Barca, Life in Mexico, vol. i. let. 12.

“Con la imaginacion que llevaban, i buenos deseos, todo se les antojaba plata i oro lo que relucia.” Gomara, Crónica, cap. 32, ap. Barcia, tom. ii.