manufacture of various articles of commerce turn to the nearest cocoa-tree and beckon from the productions of the cocoa-palm. to a negro, who skillfully scrambles up the These cocoas, although probably not indige- stem like a monkey, and throws down plennous in the West Indies, have thoroughly ty of green nuts. naturalized themselves there, and grow freely, requiring no cultivation, propagating themselves perpetually. Every nut which falls and lies throws out, during the wet season, its roots into the sand, and is ready to take the place of its parent when the old tree dies down. Two or three blows with the cutlass at the small end of the nut cut off not only the pith-coat, but the point of the shell, and disclose-the nut being held carefully upright meanwhile-a cavity full of perfectly clear water, slightly sweet and deliciously cool, the pith-coat being a good non-conductor of heat. After draining this natural cup you are presented with a spoon made from the rind with which to scoop out and eat the cream which lines the inside of the shell. The construction and germination of these famous and royal nuts is a mystery and a among the cream layers at the larger end of the nut you will find, gradually separating itself from the mass, a little white lump, like the stalk of a very young mushroom. That is the ovule. In that lies the life of the future tree. How that life works according to its kind, who can tell? What it does is this: it is locked up inside a hard, woody shell, and outside that shell are several inch About thirty to fifty feet is the average height of those cocoa-palms. They never spring upright from the ground. The butt curves, indeed lies almost horizontal in some cases, for the lowest two or three yards; and the whole stem, up to the top, is inclined to lean; and it matters not toward which quar-miracle well worth considering. Searching ter, for they lean as often toward the wind as from it, crossing each other very gracefully. The cocal (as these palm nurseries are called) which Mr. Kingsley visited lay along a flat, sandy, surf-beaten shore, stretching in one grand curve over fourteen miles in length. He rode along, mile after mile, in that peculiar amber and topaz shade cast by the cocoas, and over beach shingle covered with bivalves of delicate purple, species of tough, tangled fibre. How can it get mens of corallines and brittle sea- urchins, out, as soft and seemingly helpless as a baby's and many varieties of tropical sea-side beauty. finger? After sunset, as the fleeting Southern twilight was fast deepening into night, he became aware of lights through the trees, and soon found himself in the collection of dwellings, barns, sheds, and engine-houses comprising the cocoa-works. Here during the night his slumbers were disturbed by a detestable voice shouting "Hut-hut tut-tut" close by his window. The sound was repeated again and again, and he learned the next morning that it was the cry of a large goat-sucker, which goes among the negroes by the name of jumby - bird. This bird is believed by the superstitious blacks to be in close league with the devil, and they consider an encounter with him at night to be a sure precursor of death. Consequently the cry of "Dar one great jumbybird a-comin'" is enough to set all the negroes of the cocal flying at full speed over the sand in search of a place of shelter where the glaring eye of the jumby-bird is not likely to penetrate. The next morning was spent in inspecting the works, and in studying the mysteries of cocoa-nut growth. On all sides the negroes were busy splitting the cocoa-nuts with a single blow of that all-useful cutlass, which they handle with surprising dexterity and force, throwing the thick husks on one side, the fruit on the other. The husk is then carded out by machinery into its component fibres for cocoa-rope matting, coir-rope, saddle-stuffing, brushes, and a dozen other uses; while the fruit is crushed down for the sake of its oil. Being thirsty, one has only to All know that there are three eyes in the monkey's face, as the children call it, at the butt of the nut. Two of these eyes are blind and filled up with hard wood. They are rudiments-hints-that the nut ought to have, perhaps had, uncounted ages since, not one ovule, but three, the type number in palms. One ovule alone is left, and that is opposite the one eye which is less blind than the rest-the eye which a school-boy feels for with his knife when he wants to get out the milk. As the nut lies upon the sand, in shade and rain and heat, that baby's finger begins boring its way with unerring aim out of the weakest eye. Soft itself, yet with immense wedging power, from the gradual accretion of tiny cells, it pierces the wood, and then rends right and left the tough fibrous coat. The baby's finger protrudes at last, and curves upward toward the light to commence the campaign of life; but it has meanwhile established, like a good strategist, a safe base of operations in its rear from which to draw supplies. Into the albuminous cream which lines the shell, and into the cavity where the milk once was, it throws out white fibrous vessels, which eat up the albumen for it, and at last line the whole inside of the shell with a white pith. The albumen gives it food wherewith to grow upward and downward. Upward, the white plumule hardens into what will be a stem; the one white cotyledon which sheathes it develops into a flat, ribbed, forked, green leaf, sheathing it still; and above it fresh Passing through regions of provision ground, the traveler saw growing in great abundance many fruits and vegetables known only by name outside of the tropics; the bread-fruit-tree, with huge green fruit and deeply cut leaves a foot or more across; the mango, avocado pear, mammee sapota, and guava, from the fruit of which last is made the well-known sweetmeat, guava jelly. leaves, sheathing always at their bases, be- | dry. When thoroughly dried they are caregin to form a tiny crown, and assume each, fully assorted, the better quality separated more and more, the pinnate form of the from the worse, and at last sent down on usual cocoa leaf. But long ere this, from the mule-back to the sea, from there to be shipped butt of the white plumule just outside the all over the world. nut, white threads of root have struck down into the sand; and so the nut lies, chained to the ground by a bridge-like cord, which drains its albumen through the monkey's eye into the young plant. After a few months the draining of the nut is complete, the cord dries up and parts, and the little plant, having got all it can out of its poor wet-nurse, casts her ungratefully off to wither on the sand; while it grows up into a stately tree, which will begin to bear fruit in six or seven years, and thenceforth continue, flowering and fruiting the whole year round, without a pause, for sixty years and more. In the vicinity of Valencia and San Josef, through which Mr. Kingsley passed on his return to Port of Spain, are extensive plantations of cacao, from whose nuts chocolate is manufactured. The cacao-bush is similar in appearance to the common nut-tree, with very large, long ΠΑΟΛΟ. leaves. Each tree is trained to a single stem. Among them, at some twenty yards apart, are the stems of a tree looking much like an ash. They are bois immortelles, fifty or sixty feet high, one blaze of vermilion against the blue sky. Those who have stood under a Lombardy poplar in early spring, and looked up at its buds and twigs, showing like pink coral, and have felt the beauty of the sight, can imagine faintly the majestic glory of these "madres de cacao"-cacao-mothers, as they call them here, because their shade shelters the cacao-trees, while the dew collected by their leaves keeps the ground below always damp. The cacao pods, or cacao nibs, are brilliant in coloring, and appear like clumps of gay flowers of crimson or yellow or green clinging to the stems and branches of the bushes. They are the size and shape of a small hand, closed, with the fingers straight out. When ripe they are picked to pieces by the hands of the negroes, and the seeds laid on a cloth in the sun to Between the banana and plantain it is hard for a stranger's eye to distinguish the difference, which practically is that the plantain bears large fruits which require cooking, the banana smaller and sweeter fruits, which are eaten raw. As for the plant on which they grow, no mere words can picture the simple beauty of its form. The lush fat green stem; the crown of huge leaves, falling over in graceful curves; and below, the whorls of green or golden fruit, with the purple heart of flowers dangling below them. This splendid object is the product of a few months, the whole growth and death taking place in the short space of one year, during which time one plant will bear from thirty to sixty pounds of rich food. Yams, ochra, sweet-potato, with its creeping plants covered with purple, convolvulus-like flowers, grow with almost no cultivation, and the West Indian peasant finds some excuse for his idleness in the fact that so little exertion is required to procure his necessities. But Mr. Kingsley's weeks of travel were drawing to a close, and at last he set sail from Port of Spain, and passed up the islands out toward the northern sea. With wistful eyes he watched the sun by day, and Venus and the moon by night, sink down into the gulf, to lighten lands he might, perhaps, never see again. The "warm Champagne" atmosphere grew sharp and chilly, and low ahead, with the pointers horizontal, glimmered the cold pole-star, for which he was steering, out of the summer into the winter once more. The monotony of the homeward voyage was somewhat relieved by watching the little wild beasts which some of the ship's company were endeavoring to carry alive to a foreign country: an unsuccessful attempt in most cases, as it proved. The little alligator, who was kept in a tub on the cabin floor, awoke one night with doleful wails, and was discovered dead in the morning. A curiously marked ant-eater from the Isthmus of Panama departed next. | the fog appeared the coast-outlines of EnAs no ants were procurable it was fed on gland. raw yolk of egg, which it contrived to suck in with its long tongue. But the nourishment obtained was not sufficient to enable it to stand the cold, and it succumbed before the first Northern blasts. This animal can be carried North only in warm weather. Fine The harsh and keen wind of the North was not pleasant after the balmy and spicy air of the tropics, and in closing Mr. Kingsley says: "At first, I must confess, an English winter was a change for the worse. old oaks and beeches looked to us, fresh Some monkeys and parrots fared better, from ceibas and balatas, like leafless brooms and one kinkajou was so lively that he sev- stuck into the ground by their handles; eral times got loose and displayed his nat- while the want of light was for some days ural inclinations by dashing about between- painful and depressing. But we had done decks in search of rats, to the great terror it. As the king in the old play says, 'What of the stewardess, who looked upon him as has been, has been, and I've had my hour.' a loose wild beast. Colder and colder grew At last we had seen it, and we could not the wind, lower the sun, darker the cloud-unsee it. We could not not have been in world overhead; and glooming dim through the tropics." WHY MUGGINS WAS KEPT. bearded men, with a vista of years lengthening behind us. Yet I had found Brinton almost unchanged-grave, "MUGGINS'I was marveling at so pecul- of naunch, td grave, somewhat langhty iar an appellation, a broad-faced, stout, half-ence in all he did or said, yet warm-hearted witted-looking individual made his appear- and energetic, with a low, deep voice, and a ance, and was dispatched by Brinton for firm grip of the hand. I was gratified to matches. He presently returned, smiling, find his confidence in me unimpaired, and with a bunch of tooth-picks in his hand. appreciated the delicacy which would spare Somewhat to my surprise (for I remembered his wife the embarrassment of listening to Brinton as rather a stern, severe man), in- the story of some previous attachment. stead of getting a sound scolding, he was And I was all ears for the story. merely informed of his error and sent back to rectify it. I am fond of eliminating romance from common materials-proud of so doing, I might say, for I sometimes flatter myself I have an especial gift that way. It struck me that Muggins might be a romance in disguise, so I remarked, with an affectation of carelessness, "Why do you keep such a crazy fellow as that about the house, John? Aren't you afraid he might do a mischief some day?" Brinton's answer was delayed by the reappearance of Muggins, this time with the matches. Meanwhile I reflected that my question might be imprudent; for although John and I had been boys together, we had scarcely seen each other since; and besides, that sweet, delightful Mrs. Brinton was sitting close by me. So I resolved to explain. "You remember my weakness, John; and I'm sure I can't be wrong in thinking that some interesting story is attached to your connection with this Muggins. Ah! you smile. I thought it was so. Now tell it, like a good fellow." Brinton looked at me fixedly a few moments, then at the smoke of the outwardbound steamer just vanishing beneath the horizon, and then at his wife, all the time with a musing, thoughtful smile glimmering over his face. At last he said: "It happened about eight years ago," began Brinton, placing his feet upon the window-sill, folding his arms, and gazing contemplatively out to sea. "I had had Muggins, at that time, about four years-ever since I had driven over him, a boy, in the street, and knocked out of him what little brains ever were in him. That incident, and the fact that he was always devoted to me, had been the causes of my retaining him in my service thus far; but it was at the time of which I am now about to speak that he performed for me that extraordinary service which no kindness of mine can ever repay." Here my friend paused, and pulled at his black, bristling mustache a while in silence. Though much interested at so suggestive a commencement to my romance, I forbore to interrupt him, and he soon resumed. "We'd been traveling some months in Europe. I met a Miss Rupert and her father there-Southerners, with all the fine and generous traits of their race; and though we were politically at swords' points, we ultimately became inseparable friends. Indeed, Miss Rupert and I were engaged to be married. I don't mind confessing now," said Brinton, lowering his voice, "that I loved her with my whole heart. She was beautiful, proud, tender, fiery, affectionate — you know what I mean. Though our temperaments were as dissimilar as possible, we met and sympathized on all vital points. And she loved me as only such a woman can love, idealizing me till I was a fit subject for adoration; and I let her do it to her heart's content, knowing that time would set her right. And so it did, rather sooner than I "You're a keen observer, Simpson. You deserve a story, and you shall have this one. My dear," he added, to Mrs. Brinton, "won't you go and see about our supper?" Mrs. B., with what seemed a half-deprecating glance at him, and, as I thought, a somewhat reluctant farewell smile at me, accepted this deli-expected. cate dismissal, and retired, like an angel in white muslin, as she was. "You see," explained John, "what I'm going to tell you involves speaking of my first love experience, and you understand-" I understood perfectly. As I have said, Brinton and I had been friends at college, and had exchanged many a youthful confidence there. But since then our paths had widely diverged, and while I had been a traveler, and withal somewhat of a student and recluse, Brinton had risen high in the world, had married, and children were about him. To-day we who parted youths met as "We were traveling in Egypt, as I said " "You said Europe," ventured I. "Of course-I mean Europe," said Brinton, hastily. "It all happened so long ago that my memory has become a little rusty. Well, we were in Geneva about the latter part of May, and, of course, we were perfectly happy. We were delighted with every thing, for we were every thing to each other. And if it hadn't been for a certain Polish count, who in some way became acquainted with us, our happiness might have been uninterrupted to the present day." This seemed to me a singular remark for a married man, and a man like Brinton, to "but before I had time to ask him the carmake; but I forbore to interrupt. riage drew up at the hotel, and he walked off, saying he would give 'us young people' a chance to say a few words to each other. I noticed then, for the first time, that there were traces of tears in Miss Rupert's eyes, and her hand trembled on my arm. 'What's the matter, dear?' I asked. She clung to me, convulsively almost, for a few moments, unable to speak, as it seemed. At last she looked up in my face. "Don't mind my foolishness, John,' she said; and though her voice was steady and her lip firm, the effort filled her eyes again. 'Don't fear, I'll be as brave and calm as you when the time comes. But it's all so sudden; and, oh, my darling, the risk will be so great!' "What risk?' said I, puzzled again. "The count's name," continued John, was Grodjinski; one of those graceful, elegantly mannered fellows, with a great deal of aristocratic breeding and polish, and very little honorable reputation of any kind-among women especially. He was very attentive to Miss Rupert, who set it all down to the way' of foreigners; quite correct, no doubt, but it's a way I didn't approve of. Well, not to make a long story of it, we all four went one night to a grand ball given there. Miss Rupert looked superbly, dressed as only a Southerner can dress; indeed-for you know I'm a little old-fashioned-I should have preferred to let the exquisite symmetry of her neck and arms be left rather more to the imagination. The count had danced several times with her during the evening, and as I "Now, John dear, don't hesitate to put was standing in the hall waiting for her to confidence in me. Indeed, I can bear any come out after the ball was over, he stepped thing almost. See how brave I am!' and she up to me and whispered something in my looked up with a heart-rending little smile. ear. I won't repeat what he said, but it'Now won't you promise to tell me every embodied a gross insult to Miss Rupert, and thing, darling?' through her to me. It could only be answered by a blow, and it was so I answered it, striking him full in his smooth, pale, insolent face. The blood spurted from his cheek over my hand, and his cool smile changed to a look of deadly malice. Of course it created considerable disturbance; but I haven't any very distinct remembrance of what followed till I found myself in the carriage, driving home with the Ruperts. "Well, of course they were anxious to know all about it, and I told them all I could, omitting, however, to mention that Polinski had insulted me only by insulting Miss Rupert." "Polinski!” said I, timidly, "I thought it was Grodjinski." "I was at my wit's end then. 'My dear,' said I, seriously, 'there's nothing to tell that you don't know already. What is it you want to know?' "Oh, of course it hasn't come yet,' said she, apparently half hurt: 'what I mean is, that you should tell me as soon as it does. It would be far better, dear, than to wait till afterward, when her voice faltered'it may be too late.' "Well,' said I, trusting to time to clear up the misunderstanding which I saw existed between us, 'I'll promise to tell you whatever happens as soon as I know it myself.' That seemed to satisfy her somewhat, and, soon after, Mr. Rupert came back, and we all retired. "So it was; I believe you are right!" ex- "It certainly was very stupid and thickclaimed John; "but the fact is, all I remem-headed of me," commented Brinton at this ber about his name is that it ended in inski. Perhaps we had better call him Inski, and let the first half of his name go." Of course I acquiesced, and he went on. "Well-but where was I? Oh! I remember; about the insult. When I got through telling the story Mr. Rupert said: "I am very sorry it happened, John, though I dare say you acted rightly and as I should have done under the circumstances. But you know the count's reputation.' "Supposing he meant his bad name among women, I replied, 'I certainly do, Sir, and perhaps I struck him the harder on that account.' point, rubbing his chin thoughtfully; "but then, you know, I was young, and having been bred a Northerner, was an entire stranger to some European customs. But next morning a cool, quiet sort of fellow, with patent-leather boots, was ushered into my room as I was putting the finishing touches to my toilet, and handed me a neat envelope, the contents of which explained the whole mystery most satisfactorily-the old gentleman's compliments, the anxiety of his daughter, and all. It was a challenge from the count!" Here Brinton made an impressive pause, and looked at me as if he expected me to "Mr. Rupert took my hand, pressed it say something. So I remarked, appreciasilently, and then said: "I know you'll do yourself honor in any case, John, and I only hope your good fortune may equal your courage." "What did he mean by that?" inquired I. "Just what I asked myself," said Brinton; tingly: "I see, of course; and the Ruperts, being Southerners, had foreseen it all along. Yes, yes! By-the-way, John," added I, with a smile, "that reminds me of when we were boys, and you used to vow that nothing |