III.
THE SEA -PORT.
Under the Cocoa-nut Palm.—The Plaza.—The Cathedral.—No Distinction on account of Color either in Worshiper or Worshiped.—The Watering-place of Cortez.—I low the Palm looks and grows.—Other Trees of the Tropics.—Home Flowers.—July Breakfast in January.—Per Contra, a Norther.—Its Utility.—Harbor and Fort.—Size and Shape of the City.—Its Scavenger.—Its Houses.—Street Life.—The Lord's Day.—First Protestant Service.—The Railroad Inauguration.
My friend, Theodore Cuyler, has written many a racy talk for The Evangelist, with the heading "Under the Catalpa." He is outdone this time—a hard thing to do. He can not write "Under the Cocoa-nut Palm;" nor can he write, as I might also, "Under the Tulipan," whose great scarlet blossoms are now blushing over my head; nor "Under the Chinese Laurel," which a slight change in my seat would enable me to do; nor "Under the Australian Gum-tree," a tall elm-like tree, first brought here by Maximilian, and which rushes up to forty and sixty feet in a few years, in this hot air and soil. I have made a point on him, though it took many a point by sea and land, and many a mile from point to point, to gain even this slight advantage.
I am sitting on a green slat-wood and iron lounge, such as are scattered about the Public Garden of Boston and the Central Park of New York, though they are not much occupied there after this fashion on this New-year's-day. The Plaza de la Constitution, the only plaza of Vera Cruz, is where this bench is located, a square of about three hundred feet to a side, which is well filled with trees and shrubs of every sort of tropical luxuriance, with flowers of many hues and odors, a large bronze fountain in its cen-
