CHAPTER I.
THE ISLE OF PINES.
In the spring of 1856, I met with Mr.Christy accidentally in an omnibus at Havana.

He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical jungles, cruising for a fortnight in an open boat among the coral-reefs, hunting turtles and manatis, and visiting all sorts of people from whom information was to be had, from foreign consuls and Lazarist missionaries down to retired slave-dealers and assassins.
As for myself, I had been travelling for the best part of a year in the United States, and had but a short time since left the live-oak forests and sugar-plantations of Louisiana.

We agreed to go to Mexico together; and the present notes are principally compiled from our memorandum-books, and from letters written home on our journey.
Before we left Cuba, however, we made one last excursion across the island, and to the _Isla de Pinos_--the Isle of Pines--off the southern coast.

A volante took us to the railway-station.

The volante is the vehicle which the Cubans specially affect; it is like a Hansom cab, but the wheels are much taller, six and a half feet high, and the black driver sits postillion-wise upon the horse.