THE ALLOTMENT OF THE LAND.
The chief of the immediate problems which confronted the colonists and
the officers of the company was the allotment of the land. The company
had purchased it, or secured options on it, in large tracts, some of
these tracts containing over ten thousand acres each. The colonists had
contracted for it in small holdings, varying from a town lot, 25 x 100
feet in size, to a forty-acre tract of plantation land. No more than
forty acres were sold to any one on a single contract. The contracts
which could be made were, respectively, as follows: Town lots, three
sizes, 25 x 100 feet, 50 x 100, and 50 x 150; plantation land, 2-1/2
acres, 5 acres, 10 acres, 20 acres, and 40 acres. The purchaser paid in
full or on monthly instalments, as he preferred, being allowed a
discount of ten per cent. for cash. According to the terms of the
contracts, he did not purchase the land at all, but bought stock in a
coöperative company and the land was a gift to him. However, the
coöperative company feature was always in the background in the mind of
the colonist, and he felt that he was buying the land and almost
invariably so termed the transaction. It was the land he had his eye on,
and his present anxiety was to have a good piece promptly allotted to
him.
At the company's headquarters in New York, no plan of subdivision had
been formulated further than a general promise in advertising circulars
to allot the land in the order of the numbers of the contracts. At first
glance, this seemed both fair and feasible, but once on the ground at La
Gloria, some very formidable difficulties loomed up. Of the four or five
thousand persons who had invested up to that time less than three
hundred were at La Gloria, and there was not in Cuba even a list of the
people who had made contracts with the company, to say nothing of their
respective holdings and the status of their payments. No such list could
be obtained from New York under several weeks or perhaps months, and
when obtained would be of little value for the reason that there could
not possibly be land enough surveyed by that time to allot one half of
the thousands of investors. Surveying in this dense tropical forest was
necessarily slow work, and progress had been impeded by the
long-continued rains.
It was manifestly impossible to make a general allotment of the land at
once, and yet it was essential that the colonists who had actually
arrived on the spot should be given their tracts promptly and permitted
to go to work upon them. The life of the colony seemed to hinge on
action of this sort. Quite early the company had stated that the
subdivision would be made about January 1, and when General Van der
Voort arrived in New York in the latter part of December, he assured the
colonists who were preparing to sail with him to Cuba that they should
have their land by January 15. This promise was carried out to the
letter, and was the only rational course of action that could be pursued
under the existing circumstances. It undoubtedly saved the colony at
what was a critical stage. During the voyage down, the colonists on
board the _Yarmouth_ were greatly exercised over the method of
allotment; that is to say, many of them were, while others declared that
they would be satisfied if they only got their land promptly. General
Van der Voort gave the subject much anxious consideration, seeking to
devise a plan which should be at once just and practical. He finally
decided that the fairest and best thing to do was to place the matter in
the hands of a committee of the colonists, giving them the power to
prescribe the method of allotment within certain limitations, subject to
the approval of the colonists on the ground. The general described this
as the "town-meeting" principle, and his decision gave entire
satisfaction to the pioneers.
General Van der Voort arrived in La Gloria Thursday, January 11, having
remained behind at Nuevitas to see the baggage of the colonists through
the custom house. This accomplished, he took passage for La Gloria on
board the lighter carrying the trunks, etc. The voyage was not a smooth
one. The boat came near being wrecked in the rough sea, and suffered the
loss of its rudder. Finally an anchorage was effected about a dozen
miles from the La Gloria shore, and General Van der Voort and others
were taken off in a small boat. The trunks and other baggage were not
landed until nearly a week later, and it was several weeks before much
of the luggage reached La Gloria city. The contents of many of the
trunks suffered serious damage from water and mould, although in some
cases the things came through entirely uninjured.
General Van der Voort rode from Port La Gloria to the camp on horseback,
a hard trip, for the road had not improved. The mud and water and debris
made it a slow and exhausting journey. He assumed charge of the
company's business in the colony at once. Arrangements were made for a
prompt allotment of the land, and a committee of nine colonists, with
Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., as chairman, was chosen to devise a
plan of distribution. After several prolonged sessions, the committee
unanimously reported a scheme by which those present should select their
land from the official map in the order of the priority of their
purchases. After these, the investors having authorized representatives
on the ground, the latter holding powers of attorney, were to have their
chance. In this second class, also, priority of purchase governed the
order of selection. The report further provided that the investor should
be allowed a second choice if he found his land to be unsatisfactory.
This plan, which I believed then and believe now was the best that could
have been devised, was adopted by the colonists with but a single
dissenting vote.
On Saturday, January 13, the allotment began, in what was known as
headquarters tent. The committee which had formulated the plan of
distribution was in charge, assisted by Chief Engineer Kelly, Architect
Neff, and others. The town lots were given out first, and by night
nearly all who were entitled to make selections in these classes had
been served. The town lot distribution was completed Monday morning, the
15th. The town was one mile square, and had been laid out and surveyed
under the supervision of M. A. Custer Neff, civil engineer and
architect. It was traversed and counter-traversed by streets and
avenues, appropriately named. These were as yet, for the most part, only
surveyors' paths cut through the forest, but they were much used as
thoroughfares to reach town lots and the plantation lands beyond. They
were rough roads, filled with mud, water, stumps, stubble, and roots,
but with the advent of the dry season they became more easily passable.
The highway running through the centre of the town to and from the coast
was known as Central avenue, and the road passing through the centre at
right angles was called Dewey street. Around the intersecting point, the
exact centre of the town, space had been reserved for a large plaza.
Central avenue and Dewey street were each designed to be one hundred
feet wide, and were naturally the paths most used by the colonists. The
former actually extended from the rear line of the town northward to the
bay, five miles away, while the latter continued from the side lines of
the town out into the plantation lands to the east and west. The town
site was well chosen. It has a fair elevation above the sea, a firm,
hard soil, with steadily rising ground. The front line of the town is
about twenty feet above tidewater; the centre about one hundred feet,
and the rear line nearly or quite two hundred feet. Around the town was
a belt of land a quarter of a mile wide reserved by the company; then
came the plantations on every side.
When the committee finished the allotment of town lots on the morning of
January 15, it was found that nearly five hundred lots had been taken up
out of a total in all classes of about three thousand six hundred. The
colonists had not been slow in selecting corner lots, and the lots on
Central avenue and those facing the plaza on all sides were early
preëmpted. The colonists had faith that a real city would rise on the
chosen site. When the demand for town lots had been satisfied, the
committee began at once to give out the plantation land. The choice was
necessarily restricted to about eight or ten thousand acres to the west,
southwest, and northwest of the town, which was all that had been
surveyed up to that time. When this condition was discovered by the
colonists, the unsurveyed land to the north, south, and east began,
naturally enough, to appear far more desirable in the eyes of the
investors than that which had been surveyed to the westward, and some
refused to make a selection at all, preferring delay to a restricted
choice. The great majority, however, mindful that they were privileged
to change if the land was not satisfactory, went ahead and made their
selections. As a matter of fact, the surveyed tract to the westward was
probably as good as any, all of the land held by the company being rich
and highly productive.
The first man to choose his plantation was Dr. W. P. Peirce of
Hoopeston, Ill., who, it so chanced, was chairman of the committee on
allotment. Dr. Peirce's contract was No. 2, and it was dated in January,
1899. But few contracts were made before April of that year. Contract
No. 1 was not on the ground, and no one present knew who was the
holder. The allotment was well conducted, and went on quite rapidly. It
was eagerly watched by a large group of interested spectators,
impatiently awaiting their turn. Some tried to extract inside
information from the surveyors, who were supposed to know the relative
value of every square foot of the land, but the majority either made
their choice blindly, with knowledge of nothing save the proximity of
the tract to the town, or trusted to the meagre information they had
acquired regarding the character of the land in different localities
during their tramps in the few days since their arrival.
It was a strange scene. Men of all ages and occupations, coming from
nearly every one of the United States, and several other countries,
strangers until a few days before, were crowded together in a large
tent, each anxious to do the best possible for himself, and yet in few
instances discourteous to his neighbor. It was a good-natured,
well-behaved crowd, and there was no friction in the proceedings. The
colonists were satisfied that the plan of allotment was a fair one;
there was no complaint about anything except the restricted choice.
Monday night saw the allotment well advanced, and Tuesday it was
finished. Everybody then on the ground who wished to make a selection
for himself or those whom he represented had been accommodated, and the
committee's duties were at an end. Nearly seven thousand acres of
plantation land had been allotted.
[Illustration: ROBERT C. BEAUSEJOUR.
(_One of the Early Colonists._)]
As soon as they had selected their land from the map the colonists
scurried out into the surrounding country to find it. The woods were
full of men hunting their plantations. It was no easy matter to find
them, since there was nothing to go by but the numbered stakes of the
surveyors. These were anything but plain guides to the uninitiated, and
even the more understanding were sometimes baffled by reason of
indistinct figures or missing stakes. The result was that many viewed
other people's land for their own, while some, conscious of their
helplessness, gave up the search for the time being. The majority,
however, found their land with no more difficulty than was inevitable in
a long tramp through the rough and muddy paths of a jungle. The
mosquitoes kept us company, and the parrots scolded us from overhead,
but there were no wild beasts or venomous snakes to be dreaded. Probably
there are no tropical forests in the world so safe as those of Cuba;
one may sleep in them night after night without fear of death or
disease. This is true, at least, of the country within a radius of forty
miles from La Gloria, as I can testify from personal experience and
observation.
In most cases the colonists were pleased with their land when they found
it, and the changes were comparatively few. A little of the lowest land
was more or less under water, but even this was rarely given up, the
holders discovering that it was very rich, and realizing that it would
be all right in the dry season, and that it could be drained for the
wet. Some experienced men from Florida showed a decided preference for
this land, and later it developed that their judgment was good. This
lowest land was of black soil; that slightly higher was apt to be
yellow, and the highest red or chocolate. All these different colored
soils were embraced in the allotment which had been made, and they all
represented good land. The colonists could never agree as to which was
the best. Undoubtedly some were superior for certain purposes to others,
but all appeared to be fertile and gave promise of being very
productive. The black and yellow soils were almost entirely free from
stone, while the red and chocolate had some, but seldom enough to do any
harm. The colonists set to work with energy clearing their town lots,
and a few began work at once on their plantations. The colony was soon a
busy hive of industry.
[Illustration]