Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/223

Rh dexterous are negroes as handicrafts-men. The greater number of artisans in Cuba, are negroes, and as such they gain so much that they can easily purchase their own freedom.

When at sunset I walk with Madame C., quietly conversing in some of the many alleys of the coffee plantation, I cannot help stopping again and again, enraptured by the beauty and grace both in the form and movement of the young palm-trees which grow there. There is an incomparable grace about the branches of the cocoa-palm in its youth. Regularity and ease, precision and freedom, majesty and gentleness, reveal themselves here in living symbols. There is also among the beautiful features of this place, a gigantic berceau, or lofty arcade of bamboo, called in Spanish cagna brava, which forms the termination of a magnificent guadarajah of king-palms. When I behold the setting-sun through this light-green temple arch, and see the delicate branches of bamboo forming lofty, gothic arcades,—the grace of which is indescribable—against the pale-red and golden clouds of the western heaven, I feel, with a mixture of melancholy and joy, that the creative artist must here drop his pen and pencil and say, discouraged like Carlo Congo, in the dance, “No! it is of no use!” No, it is not of any use to lift the hands to imitate, only to worship; but it is of use to see these fashionings of the greatest artist, to learn from them to worship, and that the mind, and art itself may be ennobled and inspired by them!

I rise early in the mornings, to draw and to see from my window two large bushes of hybiscus with their fiery red flowers, surrounded by a vast multitude of smaragdus-green humming-birds. There are also in the large plane-trees, which grow just by, a great many birds which are very amusing to me. Foremost of these are two long-legged, long-necked, pale-red flamingoes, which were taken when young on the sea-shore, and which are now perfectly