surrounding the Spanish Captain General’s summer palace, where are
ponds and fountains, palms and blooming shrubs. All these are now
owned by the Republic of Cuba, and are some day to be converted into a
pleasure ground for the people, just as are in France the ancient
royal palaces and gardens of Versailles and Fontainebleau. As our
train rolled west, it gradually approached a range of hills, where are
now many pineapple farms, yielding pineapples which put the tiny
Florida plant to the blush--big, luscious and juicy. A young man from
Boston sat next me. He was looking for pineapple land. He meant to
quit the snow and ice of New England. He would buy a plantation and
settle and live in Cuba, where, thank God, the ice blight never comes,
where man has only to plant and nature abundantly does the rest. We
passed many orange groves, and lemon and lime and mango trees which
the Spaniards had failed to destroy. Their branches were heavy with
yellow, golden, ripe fruit. Here, where is no terror of frosts, many a
frozen-out Floridian is now arrived or is on the way. The orange of
Cuba is sweet, juicy and luscious, and some day Americans will here
raise them and sell them in New York, and in this way win back the
money they have lost in Florida. As we passed along, we traversed many
sugar plantations, once cultivated, now abandoned. The black and
ruined chimneys and dilapidated walls of their factories were eloquent
witness of devastation and war. But the smaller farmsteads looked
prosperous. Beside each dwelling was usually a grove of plantains and
bananas. The latter, commonly thin skinned and fragrant, are as small
as two of your fingers and most delicious. A young couple plant a
banana grove when they set up housekeeping, and thereafter have
bananas at hand all their lives.
At many of the houses we saw the Cuban flag floating from the staff
top. “_Cuba Libre_” is in the hearts of all these rural people. I told
a Cuban fellow-passenger, that I, too, had raised that flag, the first
to do so in my State, and he thereafter treated me like a brother. I
had touched his heart. We passed a deep, wide stream, flowing with a
clear full tide. It is the overflow from the wonderful spring which
supplies to Havana its water. It bursts from the ground a full-grown
river. Havana has dammed it, bridled it, and through huge pipes,
carries its abundant and pellucid flood into her streets and houses,
furnishing fresh, sweet, pure water for the multitude. A few miles
further on, we saw another river plunge suddenly into the bowels of
the earth. Full and brimming it flows along, and then all at once
disappears forever into a mysterious hole. The Spaniards have here
raised a chapel and set up a big cross, for must not this engulfing
cavern be one of the gates to hell? And what more certain than a house
of God to frighten off the devil!
We are now in the midst of some of the finest tobacco lands of the
world. This part of Cuba is founded on a coral reef. The lime of the
coral has here permeated the ground. Red and chocolate and
brown-black, the soil contains just those chemical ingredients which
tobacco needs. No other land has anywhere yet been found just like it,
and no other tobacco grows with quite the same fragrant quality of
leaf. All the world wants this Cuban tobacco. Therefrom the French
government makes and sells cigars and cigarettes and reaps great
revenues. The Germans also want the Cuban tobacco lands, and the
enterprising American intends sooner or later to have his share of
them. How would you feel, my smoking brother, to be able to enjoy a
delicious Havana cigar, to roll it between your lips and inhale the
perfume of its smoke, all for the price of three cents or perhaps a
nickel? The Americans are quietly acquiring as great an acreage as
possible of the tobacco lands of Cuba. These lands are mainly held in
small farms of four and five acres, each worked by a single family,
who devote all their attention to the planting of the seed, the
raising of the crop, the drying of the leaf, and even the final making
of the finished cigar. They sell the cigars at their door, or take
them to the town and sell them to the dealers, who buy and then put on
their own labels and place them in the market. Nowhere in the United
States will nature permit a tobacco leaf to stay on the plant until it
is fully ripe; there is too much fear of frost. But in Cuba the leaf
hangs to the stalk in the sunshine until it has reached that degree of
ripeness which insures the most perfect tone and flavor. Thus it is,
there can be no other tobacco just like Cuba’s, for nowhere on earth
’t is said, do soil and climate and human skill so aptly and
completely combine to make the product perfect. There are three
islands of the sea where the soil is rich and fertile beyond all other
lands; the island of Java, owned by the Dutch; the island of Luzon,
chief of the Philippines, and the island of Cuba. And in this one
product, it is claimed that Cuba surpasses them all.
[Illustration: ALONG THE MILITARY ROAD, A CEIBA TREE]
We left the train at Guanajay--once a tobacco town of importance, then
blasted and wasted by war, burned and ravaged, and now regaining its
life and vigor. Here we took an open carriage and drove toward Mariel,
upon a noble highway quite sixty feet wide, and all macadamized and
ditched--a Spanish military road, once lined and shaded with gigantic
and umbrageous trees; now bare of this magnificent bordery by reason
of the war. The Spanish soldiery cut them down, lest here and there an
insurgent might lie concealed. The road wound over a line of low
hills, and then descended to the sea. Along the ridge, at intervals,
were yet to be seen the “blockhouses” of the western Spanish Trocha.
My friend, Captain Reno, beside me, had been an officer of the
insurgent army. An American volunteer, with blood full of red
corpuscles, he served all through the revolutionary struggle, fighting
the Spaniards just for the joy of war. He crossed this Trocha with
Gomez in his famous raid. The Spanish soldiers hid within their houses
and shot from their loopholes. But Gomez and Reno cut down the wire
barriers, rode through and dared to enter the suburbs of Havana. The
superb road gradually winds toward the bay of Mariel. On our way, we
passed a new railroad being built by Americans, back to an asphalt
lake; Mariel will be their port, the bay their harbor.
Near to us on the left lay another American colony,--a group of
Western folk who have come to Cuba to stay. The bay of Mariel, next to
that of Havana, is the finest harbor on the western coast. At its
entrance, high on a reef, lies the Spanish warship, _Alfonso XII_,
driven on the rocks by American naval guns. Along the shores of this
beautiful bay, it is said, will grow up the Newport of Cuba. Nowhere
are there so well protected waters, nowhere is there so picturesque a
panorama. Here you see palms, royal, cocoanut, and date, and fields of
sugar cane and groves of bananas, oranges and pomegranates, and then
the foaming, restless sea far out beyond. On the corner of a shaded
street, close by the blue waters of the bay, we stopped at a modest,
unpainted house. Within it we met a clear-eyed, sweet-faced woman--a
lady from North Carolina, a Miss Edwards, who came to Cuba, after the
devilments of Weyler had wrought their sad havoc, and gathered up a
little company of starving girls, and here has given them a
home--forty or more of them. She asks no outside aid. She is spending
her own small means. The people of the town, with their Spanish
pitilessness of heart, do not understand why she should be doing so
strange a thing as to pick up and care for the dirty progeny of dying
and dead vagabonds. Better let such a litter die, they say. She told
us that she was much alone, that even yet the good people of Mariel
treated her with suspicion. If she were a government official, they
could comprehend, but they cannot understand how or why anybody should
take so great a care of waifs and strays, all for the sake of the
humanity of our Lord.
We spent the night at Guanajay in an old Spanish inn, very tumbled
down, partly as the result of time, largely as the result of war. We
ate our evening meal in a spacious, lofty chamber, sitting at a long
table. The company was chiefly made up of tobacco planters, and one or
two Cuban drummers, while right in front of us sat a Spanish marquis
and his wife with their English governess for the children. They were
visiting Cuba to inspect the ancestral sugar estates, and arrived only
the week previous from Spain. They treated the company with haughty
indifference, and ignored the poor English girl as though she were
socially altogether out of their sphere. They helped themselves and
talked to the children, while the governess foraged for herself or
went without. It reminded me of those mediæval times one reads about,
when the clergyman resident in the castle of the lord sat at a
table in the servant’s hall. We took pains to see that the English
girl received every attention, the Marquis glowering savagely upon us
when we passed a dish to the governess rather than to his wife. When
the meal was over the pair stalked loftily from the dining hall,
leaving the governess to smile upon us in return for our pronounced
civilities, momentarily made happy, for the first time perhaps in many
months.
[Illustration: THE BAY OF MARIEL]
In the evening we visited the large Reform School for boys, which has
been established by the military authorities of our government for the
care of waifs whom the cruel _reconcentrado_ policy of Weyler deprived
of kith and kin. The children looked well-fed and content, and the
courteous Governor, a major in the army, assured us that they throve
and learned, gave little trouble, and bade fair to become good men and
citizens. It is in this sort of thing, the Home for the little boys
near Matanzas, the charity of Miss Edwards at Mariel in caring for the
motherless little girls, the charity of our government in providing so
generously for these boys, that is seen the difference in spirit of
American civilization from the hard and callous pitilessness of Spain.
The Spaniard and the Cuban care for their own with tenderness, but
they look with indifference upon the suffering of others, nor do they
comprehend why they should lift a finger to help anyone beyond the
narrow circle of their own family or social set.
We have also called upon a big, gaunt, sunnyfaced man who is devoting
his life to these people as a missionary of the Congregational Church.
He is from Massachusetts, a man of education who preaches fluently in
Spanish, and whose labors have met extraordinary success among the
Cuban population of Key West. He has now been transferred to Guanajay,
and already is creating a profound impression in a community which has
never before known aught but an indifferent Roman priest.
The religious conditions of Cuba are peculiar, I am told. The Bishops
and Priesthood of the Roman Church have been supplied by old Spain
from time immemorial. The black sheep of the Church have found asylum
here. Drawing their salaries, fretting in exile, these ne’er-do-wells
of the motherland have cared little, and done less, for the spiritual
welfare of their flocks. Guanajay is reputed to be a community among
the most spiritually darkened of all Cuba. Hence, it is with no little
wonderment that the active, enlightening methods of Mr. Frazier are
viewed by those among whom he now ministers. The women come to him for
solace and advice, the children flock to his singing school, and the
Sunday-school in the afternoon is filled with old folks and young,
who come to him after the hours of Mass. Even the local _padre_
himself finds this strange heretic so pleasant a companion that he
frequently drops in to share a cigar and gossip of the times. If
Americans are to make impression spiritually upon this Latin-Catholic
population of Cuba, they will do it only through such intelligent
personal and sympathetic methods as are here employed. Mere
perfunctory Protestant ecclesiasticism makes no impression upon these
Latin-Catholic peoples.
Sunday morning we arose while the stars yet blazed, found a cup of
coffee for our _desayuno_ at a little restaurant across the street,
and at five o’clock were in the cars again traveling toward Havana.
The country we have been looking on is quite as beautiful as the more
flat-lying, but not more fertile region about Matanzas, and I have
felt that the many Americans we have met everywhere, all looking for
land to buy and to abide upon, are in happy quest. They are entering
into one of the veritable garden places of the earth and many more of
my fellow-countrymen will surely follow them.
XXIV
Steamer Mascot
STEAMER _Olivette_, BETWEEN HAVANA AND KEY WEST,
_December 31st_.
One learns to rise early in these tropical lands. The midday _siesta_
here affords the rest which we are wont to claim for the early morning
hours. I have readily acquired the habit. To lie abed is become a
burden. I stir abroad betimes as do all others. And I am sleepy also
toward midday, and quite inclined to take a nap when the heat is most
intense. I recall that two years ago when coming home from France, the
only stateroom I could obtain upon the _Wilhelm der Grosse_, was
already partly taken by a gentleman from Mexico. I doubted whether it
would be pleasant to chum with a stranger, but I had no choice, so
made the best of it. He had the upper berth, I slept below. But
although we were a week upon the sea, I never saw him, and I do not
to-day know who he was. I was asleep before he turned in. I was still
asleep when, at break of dawn, he passed out to pace the decks. He
took his midday _siesta_ when I was enjoying the midday sun, or
resting upon my sea-chair. I then wondered at the persistent habit
which drove him from a comfortable bed almost before the night was
spent. Now I comprehend his ways, and if I were to voyage seaward
to-morrow, I should be rising with the dawn. Yesterday morning I had
risen at four o’clock, and had taken my _desayuno_ at an hour when
those at home are sunk in sleep.
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE ALFONSO XII]
Overnight a great storm has arisen. I tried to find out at the hotel
about the weather, but in Havana weather reports are unknown. The
Spanish clerk at the hotel smiled at me most condescendingly for
asking so silly a question as, “Is a storm likely to be coming from
the North or the South, or anywhere; and what sort of a day are we
likely to have to-morrow?” Bowing politely, he spoke in sneering
undertone to his Spanish companion, and then in broken English said to
me, “I never hear even an American ask a question like that, _Señor_.
How we know what the weather is to be? God makes the weather _Señor_,
not you or I.” And they both smiled upon me with supercilious
contempt. They took me for a fool. Only a fool would pretend to ask
what Providence might have in store. So much for the Weather Bureau
and the yet mediæval Spaniard!
When we left the harbor a few hours later, a great sea was tossing
gigantic breakers above the ramparts of El Moro. We plunged into the
fury of a Norther, which turned out to be one of the wildest gales of
the midwinter. I might have put off departure a day or two if I had
known of it, but Spanish ignorance sent me out in a small and laboring
boat to make the dangerous ninety miles across the straits in the face
of such a storm.
After my breakfast, a Spanish hall-boy of the hotel had struggled down
the successive stairways with my valise. Ordinarily, we would have
taken the new electric elevator, but the American company which
recently installed it had recalled their experts, and the Spaniard
supposed to run it in their place had promptly put the machine out of
order. The cage now hung fast about half-way up the shaft awaiting
American skill to set it moving.
One of the many _cochas_ drawn up before the _loggia_ of the hotel was
soon carrying me to the Caballerio Pier, there to have my trunks and
bags stamped with the certificates of the health officers of the port,
and checked through for the journey to Tampa. And then I went up to a
little bird shop on Calle Obispo, and took charge of a clever parrot,
for which I had arranged the day previous,--a bird brought from the
Isle of Pines, with green body, white head, pink throat. She is named
Marie, and yesterday she talked to me long and loud in Spanish. Along
with her I purchased also a pair of pretty love birds. Perhaps I may
tell you that the Marie with which we reached Florida could talk no
Spanish, and the pair of pretty parakeets, instead of being loving
mates, turned out to be two fighting males. But all of this I only
learned when many leagues distant from the soft-eyed _señora_ who sold
them to me in the little shop on the Calle Obispo.
Our boat was named the _Mascot_, and well was it so christened, for
the fierce billows tried her seaworthiness to the limit. The Norther
which broke its fury upon the coasts of Yucatan did not arouse so
angry a sea as that which fought the currents of the Florida Strait.
The greater number of our passengers were Cubans going across to work
in the tobacco factories at Key West. It was apparently their first
experience of the sea. They filled the forward decks, and gay and
lively was their company as they waved their _adios_ to their shouting
friends ashore. The tempestuous waters caught us before we even left
the bay. We were steaming out dead in the teeth of the gale, and the
little boat pitched until she almost stood on end, and rolled as
though her gunwales would be every time awash. Our Cubans soon lost
their speech and then their breakfasts, and were at last filled with
fear alone. They were scarcely recovered when we made fast to the long
pier at Key West, and did not regain their cheerfulness until their
legs were firmly set upon the land.
Key West boasts a larger Cuban-Latin population than native American,
and sonorous Spanish speech falls more frequently upon my ear than
th-i-th-ing- s-i-s-sing- English; yet I behold the Stars and Stripes
floating above me and know myself at home.
My journey through Mexico and Cuba is at an end, and I am returned to
the United States. I now experience again the same shock of transition
which so moved me when a few weeks ago I crossed the Rio Grande and
entered Mexico. For many days have I beheld and felt the puissant
tenacity of a civilization older than my own; a civilization once
world-dominant and still haughty and assertive, which begat arrogant
war-lord and subservient slave, which exalted the few and crushed the
many, and which to-day while it applauds and assumes the outward
habiliments of democracy, yet underneath retains the flesh and blood
of despotic individualism; a civilization, nevertheless, marked by the
highest appreciation of all that appeals to the finer senses in
splendor of religious ritual, in sensuousness in art, and in the
graceful and the ornate in architecture; in music and in
belles-lettres.
For the masterful rule of Diaz I had come prepared, but of the
numerous well-ordered and well-built Mexican cities I had no thought.
The discovery that here had been successfully applied the principles
of municipal ownership of public utilities centuries before Chicago,
San Francisco, and New York had debated their problems, came to me as
a revelation, and when I beheld the noble cities of Mexico, of Toluca,
of Morelia, of San Louis Potosí, of Monterey, and many others, giving
for three hundred years free water and free illumination to their
people, and throughout these centuries adorned with well-kept parks
where flowers bloomed, artistic fountains flowed, and music played,
for the free enjoyment of the poorest peon as well as the millionaire
grandee, I was fain to bethink me whether the practical, money-getting
American might not after all take lessons from his Latin brother of
the South.
The romance of Mexico’s early history, the travail and triumph of
Montezuma and Malinche, of Pagan teocali and Christian cross, stirred
my imagination and aroused my interest to highest pitch, while the
present progressiveness of Mexico’s people, the enlightenment of her
leaders, the noble efforts she has made, and is now making to keep
step with the procession of human progress, excited my sympathy.
Nor have I ceased to marvel at the extraordinary geographic and
climatic gifts which nature has so lavishly bestowed upon this favored
land; a country where every climate from the heats of Yucatan to the
cool airs of Quebec are brought together within the compass of a
journey of a single day; where teeming tropics and fertile highlands
alike pour out their fruitfulness for the use of man; where alone upon
the North American Continent has beneficent nature presented
conditions which made it possible for mankind to develop an indigenous
civilization of advancing type;--upon these plateaus existed
well-built stone-and-mortar cities centuries before Cortez and the
Spaniard set foot upon her shores; here successful agriculture has
prevailed in uninterrupted continuity for a thousand years; here
precious metals have been dug and worked by man for unnumbered
centuries; and upon these salubrious highlands more than a mile above
the sea, beneath the shadows of her snow-capped Sierras, man has
developed, and may yet develop, the highest energy of the temperate
zones.
I confess that despite a general knowledge, I yet entered Mexico
ignorant, sadly ignorant, of one of the most splendid portions of the
earth’s domain, and while my glimpses of this great country have
necessarily been limited and partial, yet I have seen enough of her
mineral and agricultural wealth, the solidity and comfort of her
cities, the vigor and intelligence of her people, to assure me that
the Republic of Mexico is destined to be no puny factor in promoting
the advancement of the world, as well as the further increase in
riches and power of the sister Republic wherein I dwell.
[Illustration: KEY WEST LIGHT, THE SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF THE UNITED
STATES]
Nor has my transitory glimpse of Cuba, “Pearl of the Antilles,” as she
is, caused me the less to marvel at the abounding fertility which
constitutes her a veritable garden, and the charm of her climate, free
of all frosts, yet temperate enough, amidst the cooling breezes of the
all-surrounding seas, to make her the home of white races which hold
fast to their primitive energies although within the tropics. While in
imagination I behold her, at no distant date, taking her proud place
among the galaxy of States of the great Republic of the North and
vying with the most splendid of them in opulence and power.
INDEX
ACAMBARO, 46-87
ACAPULCO, HIGHWAY TO, 99
ALAMO, THE, 41
ANAHUAC, VALLEY OF, 52
ARIO, 107
ARRIVE AT CITY OF MEXICO, 54
AZTECA MINES, 135
BALSAS, THE RIO, 152
BOYS, THE LITTLE STOLEN, ETC., 214
BUENA VISTA, BATTLEFIELD OF, 46
BULL FIGHT, A, 75
CABAÑA LA, THE FORTRESS, 236
CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO, 61
CHARLESTON-KANAWHA, LEAVING, 15
CHOCOLATE, A CUP OF, 159
CHURCH, ROMAN, 61-63-178
CHURUMUCO, 155
CIMA, LA, 52
COMMENTS ON MUNICIPAL METHODS, 172
COPPER INDUSTRY AND UTENSILS, 102
COTTON LANDS OF MISSISSIPPI, LOUISIANA, TEXAS, 21-40-43
CROSSING FLORIDA STRAIT, 273
CRUELTY OF THE SPANISH BLOOD, 118
CRUELTY, SPANISH, BURYING ALIVE, 237
CUBAN, A MANSION, 232
CUERNAVACA, 188
CUYACO, THE HACIENDA LA, 123
CUYACO, THE RANCHO, 159
DESCENDING LA CHINA MINE, 137
EL PADRE, 95-187
ENGLISH, SPREAD OF THE LANGUAGE IN MEXICO, 174
FIESTA OF OUR LADY OF GUADALOUPE, 165-185
FONDA DILIGENCIA, 97
FRENCH MARKET, NEW ORLEANS, 31
FRENCH QUARTER, THE VIEUX CARRÉ, 30
GARCIA, SEÑOR DON LICÉNCIADO VICENTE GARCIA, 170
GUADALOUPE, FIESTA OF OUR LADY OF GUADALOUPE, 165
A GUEST OF “SEÑORA GENERAL” WOOD, 228
GULF OF MEXICO, CROSSING THE, 212
HABANA, 220
HAVANA, A PRIVATE HOUSE IN, 231
HAVANA, MARKETS OF, 225
HAVANA, THE OPERA HOUSE, 228
HOTEL CONCORDIA, 93
HOTEL ITURBIDE, 55
HOTEL JARDIN, MEXICO CITY, 264
HOTEL JARDIN, MORELIA, 181
HOTEL METROPOLITÁN, 204
HOTEL MORELLOS, 114
HOTEL PASAJE, 221
HOTEL ST. CHARLES, 25
INCIDENTS IN LAND OF HEAT, 161
INGURAN MINES, 117
ITALIANS IN MISSISSIPPI, ETC., 22
IZTACCIHUATL, VOLCANO OF, 53
IZUS HERNANDES, OUR MOZO, 95
JACKSON SQUARE, REFLECTIONS ON HISTORY OF, 29
JEFE POLITICO, A, 109
JESUITS IN MORELIA, 180
JORULLO, VOLCANO OF, 122
KENTUCKY, PASSING THROUGH, 17
LAKES--
CHALCO, 53-69
CUITZEO, 88
PATZCUARO, 88-99
TEZCOCO, 53-69
XOCHIMILCO, 53-69
LLANOS, CROSSING THE, 143
LAREDO, 43
LAWYER, A LAWYER OF ARIO, 115
MILITARY MACAWS, 131
MANTILLAS, BUYING, 202
MARIEL, 264
MASONIC BOND, STRENGTH OF IN MEXICO, 50
MASSO, GENERAL, AND THE REVOLUTION, 249
MATANZAS, 254
MEMPHIS, 21
MEXICO CITY, FIRST IMPRESSION OF, 56
MEXICO CITY, CHARACTERISTICS OF, 65
MEXICAN TRAVELERS, 160
MICHOACAN, THE CONGRESS OF THE STATE OF, 168
MINING, ANTIQUE METHODS OF, 129
MINA LA CHINA, THE CHINA MINES, 136
MINA LA CHINA, DESCENDING THE, 137
MINA EL PUERTO, 145
MINES, THE INGURAN, 117
MISSISSIPPI, TRAVERSING STATE OF, 23
MONTEREY, 45
MONTEREY, PASSING THROUGH, 45
MOONLIGHT, BRILLIANCY OF, 100
MORELIA, 89
MORELIA, DESCRIPTION OF, 172
MORELIA, LIFE IN, 176
NEW ORLEANS, LIFE AND COLOR OF, 25
NEW ORLEANS, WATER TRAFFIC, 37
NORIA MINES, 134-150
NUEVO LAREDO, 44
ORIZABA, VOLCANO OF, 203
ORPHANS FROM THE RECONCENTRADO CAMPS, 255
OROPEO, HACIENDA DE, 132