Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/225

Rh longing for it now in Cuba. And the hot air and the red dust causes the longing for rain here to be a something burning and tormenting. I have said a great deal about the deliciousness of the air and the beauty of the vegetation of Cuba, and I have enjoyed both extremely, yet even here, in the midst of all this magnificence I feel as if I had a sort of foreboding of what home-sickness must be. There are moments when I do not dare to think of our cool summer nights, and the white soft mists which arise in the evening, and lie like white veils over the meadows below the house at Årsta, those mists beneath which the oxen lie so comfortably chewing their cuds and reposing! I know that if I should be ill here I should, like the poor little Laplander, Tantas Potas, when he was dying in Italy, desire amid all the tropical magnificence that which I could not obtain—“a little snow to lay upon my head!”

May 3rd.—A shower! a shower! and the flamingoes have water to bathe in, and have had a great bathing, and the geese cackle, and vegetation shines out, and the animal creation raises its head. Now the coffee shrubs will set their beans, and the Palma Christi will stretch forth its green hands vigorously to the winds. The pappaya-tree shakes the rain-drops from its crown, and cuculios come in swarms!

To-morrow, Sunday, the negroes will have a dance beneath the great almond-tree in front of the bohea. It will be my last day at La Concordia. The day after to-morrow I shall go to Havannah accompanied by Sidney S.

Whilst I have it fresh in my memory I must tell you a circumstance which has lately occurred not far from here, and which proves that, according to the treatment