COFFEE GROUNDS OF CUBA.
Going out of Town--On the Road--A Wayside Inn--A Cane
Field--West-Indian Fruit Trees--The Arrival--A Dinner in the
Country--The Evening Blessing--Tropical Reptiles--A
Farm-Yard--Slave Flogging--Coffee--Tropical Scenery--A Siesta.
My experience of the Spanish West Indies warrants me in the assertion
that a tropical climate has but one season throughout the year, and that
season is summer. The months of August and September, however, are
favoured with a special season of their own; but the prevailing
temperature can scarcely be defined by mounting mercury, neither can it
be adequately described. It is during these blazing hot months that the
ever-azure firmament seems to blink with blue: that the roads and
pavement blister the soles of your feet; and that the gay-coloured
house-fronts scorch your clothes of white drill and tan your Anglo-Saxon
complexion. The Cubans have a mania for painting the fronts of their
town residences a celestial blue, a blinding white, or a feverish yellow
ochre: colours singularly trying to the eyes, and figurative eyesores to
artists in search of the harmonious. It is at this oppressive season of
the year that I would relieve my exhausted vision with the grateful
greens of the dusky olive, the pale pea, and the lively emerald. I pant
for a plantation which shall shelter and not suffocate.
The realisation of my desire is kindly brought about by Cachita's
father, Don Severiano, who hospitably places at my disposal his hacienda
in the country. Thither he himself is bound, with Dona Belen his wife,
his children, certain friends and domestics. So I make one of his party.
Don Severiano is a wealthy planter, with I know not how many acres of
rich soil, where the coffee-plant grows, yielding a couple of crops or
so per annum to the labour of a small battalion of blacks.
On the morning of our departure for Don Severiano's coffee estate, Don
Severiano himself is in the patio, presiding over the saddling and
harnessing department; for some of us are to bestride horses. The ladies
and children are to drive; and mules, and carts drawn by oxen, are
reserved for the conveyance of the luggage and the domestics. By way of
dispelling our lingering somnolence, and fortifying us for the heavy
journey before us, cups of strong coffee are handed round; and, with a
view to getting over as much ground as possible before blinding daylight
shall appear, we start at three o'clock to the minute.
The quitrins--light gig vehicles on wheels six yards in circumference,
with shafts sixteen feet long, and drawn by mules bearing negro
postilions in jack-boots--lead the way. The equestrians follow at a
jog-trot; the extreme tips of their buff-coloured shoes lightly touching
the stirrups; their knees firmly pressed against the saddles; their
figures bolt upright and immovable. Then come the carts with shady
awnings of palm leaves, drawn by oxen with yokes fastened to the points
of their horns. The drivers probe them with long iron-tipped lances, and
further goad them by shouting their names and adjective titles. But they
move slowly, and are soon left miles behind. In their rear are about a
dozen mules with well-filled panniers, linked together in line by their
tails and rope reins, and led by a mounted driver with a long whip, who
grasps the end of the cord by which they are united, and shouts
ferocious menaces as he goes.
It is still dark. The dew lies thick on everything; myriads of frogs and
night insects yet hold their croaking concert; and the fire-fly cucullo,
with its phosphorescent lantern, darts about here and there, like
falling stars and fireworks. A stony stream has now to be forded. Into
it splash the gigs; our horses following willingly, for they are
thirsty, poor beasts, and the cool spring water is inviting. The roads
are, so far, favourable to our march; but we have arrived at a piece of
ground where muddy puddles lie horse-leg deep. A bridle road invites,
but the thoroughfare being intercepted by brushwood and overhanging
branches, it is not easy to effect a passage. Our leader, Don Severiano,
accordingly unsheathes the long machete, which he wears like a sword,
and hacks him an avenue for self and followers. The thicket is even
darker than the high-road we have deserted, and our leader curbs his
horse with caution while he lights a taper of brown wax; for the ground
is slippery, and abounds in deep holes and unexpected crevices. From my
position in the rear, the effect produced by the rays of the solitary
illumination is agreeable to the sight. The dark outlines of the riders
who precede me, appear like black silhouettes against a background of
green and brown, and nature by candle-light looks like stage scenery.
We emerge again upon the main road, and at full speed gallop after our
friends. We fall in with them at a tienda, or wayside inn, at which they
have halted. Dismounting from our horses, we assist the ladies to alight
from their carriages. Of course I attend upon the fair Cachita, whose
agreeable society I enjoy till our departure from the tienda. The tienda
is a queer combination of tavern, coffee-house, chandler's shop, and
marine-store dealer's. The walls and ceiling are completely concealed by
miscellaneous wares. Spurs and sardine boxes; candles, calico, and
crockery; knives and nutmeg-graters; toys, tubs, and timepieces; rows of
sweet hams, sheathed machetes, pulleys, coils of rope and farming
implements; Panama hats, buff-coloured country shoes; tin spoons,
preserves, and French brandy. The innkeeper or shopkeeper of this
out-of-the-world store is a native of Barcelona--by name Boy--who
pronounces Spanish with a very broad Catalan accent. We travellers are
his sole customers at present, and as we require only hot coffee at a
medio the cup, aguardiente brandy at a creole penny the nip, a handful
of cigars, and a packet of paper cigarettes, the profits derived from
our patronage cannot be very great.
We are off once more, not to halt again until a cane field stops the
way. The growing cane, with its bamboo-shaped fruit, and waving leaf of
long grass, crops up to the right and left of us for miles, and
terminates in the 'ingenio' or sugar-works. The entrance to the
proprietor's grounds is by a five-barred gate and a wigwam, both of
which have been designed and constructed by an aged and decrepit
African who occupies the latter. He crawls out of his domicile as we
approach, and his meagre form is barely covered by a grimy blanket
fastened to his girdle by means of a strip of dried palm bark. To all
our questions his solitary response is 'Si, snor, miamo,' being exactly
the creole Spanish for the creole English 'Yes, massa.' Having by this
means satisfied ourselves that 'miamo,' his massa, is at home and
willing to receive us, we proceed until we hear the clicking of a whip,
and observe indistinctly a row of naked blacks, who are engaged in some
earthy occupation. A big bronze-faced man, in a white canvas suit and a
pancake Panama hat, stands behind them and holds a long knotted whip,
which he occasionally applies to their backs as a gentle reminder that
time represents so many Spanish doubloons. This is the 'mayoral,' or
overseer. He seems to pride himself upon his masterly touch with the
thong, for when no black skin forms an excuse for the practice of his
skill, he flicks at nothing, to keep his hand in. The sorrow of this
sight is greatly augmented by the dead silence; for whenever the
chastising weapon descends, the sufferer is mute.
The lawful owner of these lashed shoulders and of a couple of hundred
more, has turned out to greet us. His unshaved countenance wears a
sleepy expression, but the stump of a lighted cigar is already in his
mouth. At a given signal, a couple of small slaves appear, with cups of
hot coffee and a tray of long home-made cigars. 'Candela!' Mine host
invokes fire, and a little mulatto girl, upon whom it devolves to
provide it, presents each smoker with a lump of red-hot charcoal in the
clutches of a lengthy pair of tongs. Daylight is appearing, and warns
us that we must be on the move again.
'Adelante, caballeros!' Leaving the level cane district, for the next
few hours we are winding up mountains. At every turn of the road, the
ingenio we have quitted grows smaller and smaller, till the planter's
residence, the big engine-shed, and the negro cottages, become mere toys
under our gaze. Now we are descending. Our sure-footed animals
understand the kind of travelling perfectly, and, placing their
fore-paws together, like horses trained for a circus, slide down with
the greatest ease.
Somebody ahead has exclaimed, 'Miren!' We look, and behold a distant
view of Don Severiano's 'cafetal.' The path has become narrower, and we
are encompassed by short thick hedges, dotted with red and black berries
of a form not unlike diminutive olives. I pick and open one of these
berries, and somebody observing, 'Que cafe tan abundante!' I discover
that what I have plucked is coffee in a raw state.
'Que admirable es la naturaleza!' sings a Spanish dramatist. Nature is,
indeed, much to be admired, especially when you are viewing her in
orange groves, where oranges, for the trouble of picking them, hang
invitingly over your very mouth, seeming to say, 'Eat me, stranger.'
Some are small and green as gooseberries; others are big as your head,
and of the bright hue to which they give a name. Next on the carte of
nature's dessert are the heart-shaped, smooth-skinned mangoes, with
their massive and symmetrical tree. They are followed by a procession of
lime-trees, citrons, nisperos, granadas, maranones, anones, zapotes,
mamoncillos, and a host of other fruits with strange shapes and equally
odd Hispano-Indian appellations. I grieve to relate that the king of
fruits--the princely pine-apple--is far from being the exalted personage
you would have expected him to be. Like a bachelor cabbage, he grovels
in solitary state under our feet! We play at marbles with pomegranates,
and practise tilting at the ring with citrons. Throw into the scene a
few parasite and plantain trees with slender trunks and colossal leaves;
fill in the foreground with gigantic ferns, aloes, and palmettoes, and
the background with spotless blue; select for yourself from the nearest
hot-house where specimens of exotic plants are nursed, and you are with
us, dear--and none the less dear for being imaginative--reader!
Distant barking denotes that we are within earshot of our destination;
and anon a couple of Don Severiano's faithful dogs come bounding along
the road towards us.
'Hey, Esperules, old girl! What, and Tocolo too?' Don Severiano caresses
them in turn as each leaps to his saddle. A dozen more lie in ambush at
the gate which leads to the coffee grounds, and through which we are now
passing. The mayoral, with his wife and children, turn out to meet and
welcome us. Crowds of Africans pay us homage and grin with delight. We
halt in the patio, and a score of half-naked grooms assist us in
alighting, and watch and help us at our lightest movement. As it is
evening dusk when we arrive, and as we are exhausted with our day's
pilgrimage, we betake ourselves to our dormitories without a word. Here
we are served by stalwart domestics, who bathe our burning feet in
luke-warm water, and sponge our irritated bodies with diluted
aguardiente. A clean shirt of fine linen; a fresh suit of whity-brown
drill; a toy cup of black coffee; and we are refreshed and ready to do
justice to dinner; to the 'aijaco' of chicken and native vegetables; to
the 'bacalao' or stock-fish, with tomato sauce; to the boiled meat,
cabbage, 'chocho,' bacon, and 'garbanzos'; to the stewed goat, with
accompaniment of yams, baked bananas, pumpkin and Indian corn; to the
guava jellies and guanavana preserves mashed up with insipid creole
cheese; to the juicy mangoes cut up in slices in the midst of Catalan
wine and sugar; to the excellent black coffee, and home-made cigars.
These we discuss in the broad balcony without, where, seated on
leather-bottomed chairs, we pass the rest of the evening.
The second overseer, with his staff of field slaves, fills the yard
which faces us. The faithful vassals have ended their day's toil, and
are come to beg the evening blessing of their lord and master. Blacks of
both sexes and all ages, stand before us in a row; some with machete
reaping-knives under their arms, or bundles of maloja-fodder for the
stable supply; others with the empty baskets into which they have been
plucking the ripe coffee berry. Their evening costume consists of a
loose garment of coarse canvas. The women wear head-dresses of
gaily-coloured handkerchiefs twisted and tied in a peculiar fashion; the
men have broad-brimmed straw hats and imitation panamas. The second
overseer, with his inseparable whip, leans against our balcony with the
air of a showman, as each black approaches with crossed arms to crave
his or her master's blessing.
'La ben'dicion, miamo.'
'It is given,' says Miamo Don Severiano with the supremest indifference.
Being in the country, and moreover tired, we retire for the night at a
reasonable hour. We have to make the best of our extemporised couches,
for our luggage and furniture are yet on their way, and probably will
not put in an appearance before morning. Some of the guests, therefore,
betake themselves to swinging hammocks, while others occupy the mayoral
Don Jose's catres--a species of folding bedstead not unlike an open
apple-stall with a canvas tray.
Not until we have fairly taken possession of our temporary couches, do
we fully appreciate Dona Belen's fore-thought in providing many yards of
mosquito netting. I have always dreaded a country life, no matter in
what part of the world, on account of strange vermin. A shudder runs
through me at the mention of earwigs and caterpillars; but give me a
hatful of those interesting creatures for bedfellows in preference to a
cot in Cuba without a mosquito net!
What is that sweet creature crawling cautiously towards me along the
brick floor, looking like a black star-fish with a round body?
'Oh, it is nothing, massa,' says my black valet 'I kill him in a minute,
massa.' Which he does with his naked heel. Only an 'arana peluda;' in
plain English, a spider of gigantic proportions, whose lightest touch
will draw you like a poultice. I let the 'cucurrachos' pass, for I
recognise in them my old familiar friend the cockroach, whose worst
crime is to leave an offensive smell on every object he touches. Neither
do I object to the 'grillo,' a green thing which hops all over the
room; for I know it to be but a specimen of magnified grasshopper, who
will surely cease its evening gambols as soon as the light is
extinguished. But oh, by Santiago or any other saint you please, I would
have you crush, mangle, kill, and utterly exterminate that dark brown
long-tailed brute, from whose body branch all kinds of horrible limbs,
the most conspicuous of which are a pair of claws that resemble the
handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the
tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the
language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less
than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the
stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should
drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of
'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for scorpion gymnastics), my
appearance at the breakfast-table to-morrow, and for days after, will be
hideous; to say nothing of personal discomfort and fever. Now, a
mosquito net stretched over you on its frame, effectually insures you
against such midnight visitors; and, if well secured on every side, will
even serve to ward off the yard and a half of 'culebra' or snake, which
at certain seasons is wont to invade your bedroom floor at night.
I am awakened at an early hour by Don Severiano's live stock, who hold
their musical matinee in the big yard exactly under my open window. The
bloated and presumptuous turkey-cock, 'guanajo,' is leading tenor in the
poultry programme. First fiddle is the 'gallo Ingles,' or English
rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the
balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls,
varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock,
perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds the performance below
in plaintive and heart-rending tones. Before I am up and stirring, a
dark domestic brings me a tiny cup of boiling coffee and a paper
cigarette, and waits for further orders. Don Severiano proposes a stroll
(he tells me) through his grounds. Our horses are soon led out, and we
bestride them, with an empty sack for a saddle and a bit of rope for a
bridle. Better riders than the Cubans I never saw in an equestrian
circus, and steadier and easier-going animals than Cuban horses I have
never ridden on a 'roundabout' at a country fair.
We come upon a sorry sight at one of the 'secaderos,' or coffee-drying
platforms. A young mulatto woman is undergoing 'veinte cinco' on a short
ladder: in other words, is being flogged. They have tied her, face
downwards, by her wrists and ankles, to a slanting ladder, while an
overseer and a muscular assistant in turn administer two dozen lashes
with a knotted thong. She receives her punishment with low groans; when
she catches a glimpse of the spectators, she craves our intercession.
'Perdona, miamo!'
The overseer laughs, and, turning to his visitors, offers his weapon
with a polite invitation that one of us will try our skill. We all
appeal to Don Severiano, and, at our earnest request, that humane
gentleman orders his mayoral to let the culprit off. Smarting salt and
aguardiente are then rubbed in for healing purposes, and the wretched
girl is conducted to a dark chamber, where her baby, five months old, is
shortly afterwards brought her for solace and aliment. I venture to
inquire the nature of her crime, and am assured that it is ungovernable
temper and general insubordination of more than a month's standing.
Our horses are halting on one of the four secaderos, or
'barbacues'--smooth platforms on which the ripe coffee-berry is laid and
raked out to be blackened and baked by the sun. Near the secaderos is a
circle of ground, hedged in like a bull-ring and containing a horizontal
fluted roller, turned by a crank. This roller, or pulping-mill, is made
to gyrate by a mule, crushing in its perpetual journey the already baked
coffee-berry, until the crisp husk peels off and exposes a couple of
whity-brown, hard, oval seeds, upon which are inscribed two straight
furrows. There are winnowing-machines, for separating the chaff from the
already milled grain. In that outhouse a group of dark divinities are
engaged in the difficult process of sieving and sorting. See with what
exceeding dexterity Alicia, Ernestina, and Constancia--the black workers
have the whitest of Christian names--handle their big sieves. Alicia,
cigar in mouth, takes an armful of the winnowed seed from the sack at
her side, and transfers it to her sieve, which she shakes until the dust
and remaining particles of husk fall like floating feathers to the
ground. Then, by an expert turn of the wrist, she separates the smaller
and better quality of seed from the larger and coarser; and by another
remarkable sleight of hand, tilts the former into its corresponding heap
on the ground, and pours the latter into a sack. Constancia is scarcely
as expert as Alicia though. The sieve's perforations are wide enough to
admit the small seed of the 'caracol,' and she separates the two
qualities by the ordinary process of sieving the small and retaining the
great.
Well seated on his chesnut charger, Don Severiano conducts us by a
circuitous path up an exceedingly steep hill. The trees are tall and
ponderous; the leaves are, for the most part, gigantic and easy to
count; the fruits are of the biggest; the mountain tops are
inaccessible; and the rivers contain fish for Titans. Surely giants must
have peopled Cuba, long before Columbus found out the colony! Don
Severiano takes little or no interest in the landscape, his attention
being wholly absorbed by the small round berries, which may before long
be converted into grains of gold, if the coffee crop yield as it
promises.
The pickers are at their work. A score of them are close at hand, with
their baskets already filled. Observe how they choose the dark red, and
eschew the unripe green, or the black and overdone berry. The second
overseer, whip in hand, is ever behind, to see that the pickers do not
flag. He is a genuine white; but his complexion is so bronzed, that you
would scarcely distinguish him from a mulatto, save for his lank hair
and thin lips. He volunteers explanation. He points to the big fruit of
the cacao, or cocoa plant, and shows which are the bread, the milk and
the cotton trees. Learning that I am a foreigner and an Englishman, he
offers some useful information respecting certain trees and plants which
yield invaluable products, such as might be turned to good account by an
enterprising European, but which are unnoticed and neglected by the
wealthy independent native. At our request, he unsheathes his machete
and cuts us a few odd-shaped twigs from a coffee bush, with which we may
manufacture walking-sticks. He exhibits one of his own handiwork. It is
engraved all over, polished and stained in imitation of a snake; and,
as it rests in the green grass, it looks the very counterpart of such a
reptile, with beady eyes and scaly back. On closer acquaintanceship, I
find the second overseer to be a great connoisseur in canes.
It is our breakfast hour, and Dona Belen and the other ladies will not
like to be kept waiting. So we return to the barbacue, where the
powerful odour of roasting coffee is wafted towards us. The black cook
is roasting a quantity of the drab seed, in a flat pipkin over a slow
fire. She is careful to keep the seed in motion with a stick, lest it
burn; and when it has attained the approved rich brown hue, she
sprinkles a spoonful of sugar over it to bring out its flavour, and then
leaves it to cool on the ground. Near her are a wooden pestle and mortar
for reducing the crisp toasted seed to powder; and a small framework of
wood in which rests a flannel bag for straining the rich brown decoction
after it has been mixed and boiled.
Substantial breakfast over, some of us carry our hammocks and betake
ourselves to the adjacent stream. Here, beneath the shade of lofty
bamboos, within hearing of the musical mocking-bird, the wild pigeon and
the humming-bird, in the midst of sweet-smelling odours, we lotus-eaters
encamp, affixing each a hammock between a couple of trunks of trees.
Here, we see nature under her brightest and sunniest aspect, and,
divesting our imagination of oil and canvas landscape, arrive at the
conclusion that trees and plants are very green indeed, and of an
endless variety of shade; that stones do not glitter, save where water
damps them; and that a Cuban sky is far bluer than the most expensive
ultramarine on a painter's palette.