RAINY SEASON--CULTIVATING ABANDONED FIELDS--DON FULGENCIO’S MODE--FIRST
SUMMER AT DESENGAÑO--BOOKS.
Summer on a sugar-plantation is what is known in common parlance as the
“dead season.” The days are long and hot. Work begins before the dawn,
pauses at midday, and ends when it is too dark to see. And the latter
is an uncertain hour, for the radiance of the moon in that latitude is
quite surprising. The middle of the summer’s day is devoted to rest.
From the tap of the great bell at noon, to two taps at 3 P. M., no work
is done, everybody eats and sleeps. When it is unusually rainy, and
summer is the rainy season, still less work can be accomplished. As the
day waxes and the heat becomes so intense that it seems impossible to
be hotter, the rain, the blessed rain, descends in torrents, often from
a cloudless sky.
We frequently walked fifty yards to the garden, when the sun was
glowing with tropical fervor, to enjoy the shade of the umbrageous
fruit-trees, and in five minutes there would descend such a flood of
rain that we would be drenched before reaching the house.
It was never comfortable or safe to ride on horseback ever so short a
distance without umbrella and extra coat--water-proofs they had never
heard of. Portable sheds were erected at suitable distances in the
fields for refuge from showers that were due at any moment from noon
to sunset. Many a time, from the garden, I have seen the laborers in
the field, working under the broiling sun, suddenly drop their hoes
and run to shelter; it was raining on them, and not where I stood. We
frequently looked out from our veranda while all was bright sunshine
about us, and, pointing to a gray belt on one side, “It is raining at
the Lima,” to a belt on another side, “It is raining at the Josefita”;
another belt midway, “Now, see, it rains at Palos,” just as distinct
little belts of falling water as though they were gray ribbons
stretched from sky to earth, and all around and between a clear blue
sky and a blaring sun.
There was a large field near the house that, after years of
cultivation, had been pronounced exhausted, and was abandoned to the
weeds. Lamo, feeling confident that, with proper treatment, it could
be made fruitful, imported from Louisiana subsoil plows, and, with
four yoke of heavy oxen to each plow, set about breaking up the land.
Horses and mules are not used for plantation purposes. Oxen are the
sole beasts of burden. A heavy beam across the nape of the necks,
secured by rawhide thongs passing around the horns and across the
forehead, attaches the animal to the plow (or cart), and the draught
comes upon the head. Lamo’s immense plows were unheard-of innovations,
and so at variance with any cultivation ever before seen, that the
strongest field-hands could not manage them, and my husband himself had
to run a furrow to show what could and must be done. Once thoroughly
understanding, the stalwart men, with ebon backs glistening with
moisture, drove the plows deep into the earth, the teams were started,
and, as the straining oxen slowly moved, furrows of rich earth were
rolled up, fully confirming Lamo’s faith in the latent wealth of the
soil.
We rode from our fields to see how one of our near neighbors was
cultivating, and paused in the shade of a zapote-tree to see Don
Fulgencio plow. The old planter said he was eighty-four, and he looked
every day of it. His weazened, weather-beaten, tobacco-smoked face was
so seamed with thready wrinkles that it scarcely looked human; but
Don Fulgencio had some energy, and was plowing the poor, rocky field
that he inherited from his father, and that had never known any better
cultivation than it was receiving then--a stake that raked the ground
producing very little more impression than the broom-stick a boy rides
on a dusty road. An ox, attached to the stake by a rope fastened around
its horns, walked sleepily along, with scarcely energy enough to switch
its tail. Don Fulgencio pushed the primitive plow, while a little
blackie ran by the side of the animal, clicking and occasionally poking
it in the well-defined ribs with a long stick when it went entirely
to sleep. In the distance was the cot of the patriarch, a simple,
home-made, palm-thatched cot, with neither chimney nor window, and
with dirt floors. Wide-open doors led out to a covered veranda, where
his two pretty-faced daughters were sewing, with a half-dozen little
naked negroes playing at their feet. The old mother, deaf and almost
blind, sat in the doorway and smoked, smoked, smoked strong, home-made
cigars till she was perfectly stupid, and dried like a herring. The
sons--there were several of them--were probably at a cock-fight or in
the nearest _bodega_. As the aged Don approached with his plow, we
exchanged salutations. In his slippered feet and coarse linen shirt
hanging outside the pantaloons, he had the graces and courtesies of
the most polished gentleman. “Wouldn’t we alight? Wouldn’t we accept a
cup of coffee, the day is so warm, or a lemonade? His house, himself,
all he owns is at our disposal.” This with a bow and a wave of the
toil-stained hand that almost confused us with its lordly style. We
were not quite familiar with such high-flown speeches, and simply
paused to exchange the courtesies of the day, then rode back to our own
well-cultivated fields.
It was a hard task to get comfortably through the first summer at
Desengaño. It was an unusually wet season. Sometimes for days we saw
the sun only when it rose in ethereal fields of glory, and when it
descended amid billows of gorgeous golden and crimson clouds. All day
long the rain fell in torrents, and the waters poured and rushed in the
furrows through the fields. The negroes huddled under the broad eaves
of the sugar-house and other farm-buildings; and Lamo walked restlessly
about the dwelling, noting great patches of grass here and there
through the fields, that had sprung up like magic since yesterday,
choking the tender young cane. It either poured in a deluge or dripped,
dripped, with a damp, splashing sound that made one almost shiver,
though the atmosphere was hot and musty.
On those days we had to rub mold off the shoes every morning, and wear
damp clothes--and sometimes move the table into the parlor, when an
unusual down-pour flooded the venetian protected dining-room. On those
wet, miserable days, cunning little green lizards crept in from the
dripping vines that garlanded the iron-barred windows; ants swarmed
in from their flooded nests, and there was unusual visitation of the
insect life that crept or flew about us more or less all the time.
Milk foamed and seethed like yeast in the pans before the cream had
had time to rise to the surface. Meat cooked one day was sour and
rancid the next. Oh, those wet, summer days, how long and tedious and
uncomfortable they were! In Cuba there are no fireplaces or places for
fire in the houses. Cooking is done in small charcoal furnaces set
in solid masonry, arranged so as to concentrate the heat beneath the
cooking-utensils, and radiate as little as possible. Thus, even the
kitchen afforded no facilities for drying clothing or warming one’s
self. There was no glass in the windows; when it rained in on one side,
we closed the solid wooden shutters, and moved to the other side with
our sticky sewing and rusty needles. The table-linen, bedding, books,
everything became damp and clammy, with the peculiar odor of mold.
There were two weeks of such weather at one stretch, preceded and
followed by showery, sunshiny days, when the rains were short, sudden,
and partial, so that field-work was not entirely suspended.
In our spring rambles down the avenue and through the fields, Ellie and
I picked up a number of dainty little white shells; and Henry returned
from his explorations in the woods with pockets full of red and yellow
beans, such as are now brought in quantities from Florida, whither
they have been borne by the Gulf Stream from the tropical zone, and
scattered along the sandy beach.
When that dull, rainy spell set in, we amused ourselves by ornamenting
a tall, three-cornered, home-made stand of shelves that was found
in the infirmary. A portion of each day was spent gluing the beans
and shells in pretty combinations of color and design all over the
_étagère_, as we now called it.
In due time we produced a piece of furniture that was really a beauty;
the wood completely covered, so that the entire exterior was a mosaic
of odd forms and varied colors. It was proudly moved into a conspicuous
corner of the parlor, a few vases and knickknacks arranged upon it, and
there it stood, the admiration and wonder of every one that entered the
house so long as we remained at Desengaño.
Of the china, pictures, books, etc., sent to various supposed places
of safety when our Louisiana home was threatened, nothing could be
found, when we had once more an abiding-place, but a box of books. The
house where the pictures were stored was robbed in the absence of its
owner, and years after I heard that some of our family portraits had
been seen in the cabins of neighboring negroes. The china--a wedding
anniversary gift, and therefore doubly prized--had never been wholly
unpacked; the few sample pieces that were taken out at Arlington were
carefully replaced, and the cask sent to my widowed sister’s plantation
on Bayou Fordoche. While General Lawlor was in command in the vicinity,
the enterprising colonel of a New York regiment “captured” it while
passing through the plantation. Some efforts were made for the recovery
of the china, but they were unsuccessful, and later my sister was
informed that it had been shipped North. When the books arrived, we
felt very much like the parson whose hat was passed around and returned
to him empty, “thankful that nobody took the hat.” In the general and
indiscriminate custom of “appropriating” that prevailed during that
exciting period we were thankful that nobody took the books.
Rejoicing to see their dear old faces, we planned a tier of shelves
in the parlor for their reception. With the exception of a fine
French and Spanish library in the office of our merchant in Havana,
ours was the only receptacle for books that I ever saw in Cuba. There
were scattered volumes about the houses, but barely enough to make it
necessary to provide a place for them. The universal exclamation of
visitors, on entering the parlor at Desengaño, was, “_Ay! que libros!_”
(“What a number of books!”) No Cuban woman could understand why we
read so much. Her everyday literature consisted of simpering “to be
continued” stories in the daily newspapers, which were so completely
under government espionage that their news consisted of an editorial
laudatory of Spain; a paragraph relating the killing of, perhaps,
one insurrectionist and the capture of two others, and a horse, in
some engagement of the previous week; some legal notices, arrivals
and departures of steamers, notices of funeral services, where any
“visiting priest desiring to _assist_ would receive the gratuity of
_un escudo_ ($2.12¹⁄₂),” etc. Our private mail, on steamer days, was
greater than that of all the neighbors combined; besides numbers of
letters, we regularly received papers and periodicals from the States.
Twice a week the whole family assembled on the veranda to greet Zell,
with the anxiously looked-for mail-bag! American engineers in that
vicinity, even miles remote, availed themselves of every opportunity
to borrow newspapers from us; apparently caring very little how old
the dates, so long as they brought tidings from home. We willingly
obliged them, and the courtesy was so thoroughly appreciated that at
any time, when accidents to the machinery rendered skilled mechanical
labor necessary, we could command the best talent in the _partido_,
often without recompense. In fact, the rumor that the engine at “Los
Americanos” had broken down would bring with dispatch volunteer aid
for leagues around. Oftentimes persons whom we had never seen, brought
their own introductions, and expressed themselves as gratified at being
able to make some return for the rare pleasure they had derived from
the newspapers and magazines we had so freely circulated.