Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/122

Rh bodies. Such is the story which was told me. It occurred not so long since, and the farm is now possessed by one of the sons who remained.

Such are the traditions of Yumori Valley: and Matanzas—Matanzas, where the wafting breath of life plays round you with such enchanting vitality—Matanzas is the name for “the field of blood,” or “the battle-field,” and is so called from a bloody battle which was fought here many hundred years ago, by the Indian aborigines. It is sorrowful to think of it. It is not, however, without pleasure that I feel the breath of God in the wind pass over the formerly bloody field. It seems to say, when all scenes of murder and violence cease on the earth, He is still the same, and His life the same, eternally efficacious, eternally salutary, regenerating; and these beautiful palms, Cupid's tears, and humming-birds, and all the beautiful existences and shapes of life, shall appear with it, and—remain.

Mrs. B.'s volante came to fetch me and Cecilia in the deep twilight. We took with us sugar-cane from the plantation, which Cecilia desired for the little girls at home; and as a token of her hearty good-will, my good fermière gave me as a parting gift her indulgence for forty days' sins, and which I shall take with me to Sweden and present to Bishop Fahlcrantz.

I returned home, half-roasted, in my rural abode, and for three days afterwards had to work hard in freeing myself from swarms of fleas, which I brought back with me from my Arcadian excursion.

The number of small insects of various kinds is really one of the torments of this country, and I found this plague also in South Carolina and Georgia. If one left a little piece of cake or bread lying in the rooms, it was immediately surrounded by a swarm of little worms and creeping things. Here in Cuba it is the ants which are especially troublesome, one small kind of which will, it is said, undermine a large house.