IN AND AROUND LA GLORIA.
A very good Book that I wot of contains an Apocrypha. This will have no
Apocrypha, but I will here relate an incident which did not come under
my personal observation, but which was told of by my ordinarily
veracious friend, Colonel Maginniss. At one time during the winter,
Colonel Maginniss and his assistants had for three days, been searching
for a company horse that was lost, when a man named Ramsden came to the
colonel's tent and reported that there was a horse hanging in the woods
not far away. The colonel and Mr. Jones went to the spot and found a
large white horse, that had weighed twelve hundred pounds, dead in the
thicket, hanging by the neck. No formal inquest was held, but it was the
colonel's theory that this American-born horse could not live on Cuban
grass, and had deliberately hanged himself. A somewhat similar case I
was personally cognizant of. A sick horse was reported drowning in a
shallow pond near the camp. Colonel Maginniss went to the scene on a
Cuban pony, with a dozen colonists, and after a hard struggle the horse
was dragged one hundred yards away from the mud and water, and left on
dry land. Early the next morning it was discovered that the horse had
worked his way back into the pond and drowned himself. Was this a case
of animal suicide? It may be said that none of the colonists ever
resorted to this desperate expedient, even when the sugar gave out.
Colonel Maginniss was "a master hand in sickness." An English woman who
came to the colony was very ill, and blood poisoning set in. The
colonel's experience as a family man was now of service. He had the
woman removed to a large tent, attended her personally and looked after
the children, calling four or five times daily, and administering such
remedies as he had. The woman recovered, and gratefully expressed the
belief that the colonel had saved her life.
Near the end of April there was a sudden and surprising rise of water
along Central avenue between La Gloria and the port. One afternoon Mr.
Lowell and his men at work upon the road noticed that the water was
rising in the creeks and ditches along the way. This was a surprising
discovery, inasmuch as there had been no rain of any account. The water
continued to rise rapidly, and when the men left off work late in the
afternoon it was several feet higher than it had been at noon. It came
up steadily through the night, so that pedestrians to the port the next
morning found the water even with the new road all along and over it
where the creeks came in. Further down toward the port, the savanna was
flooded in places to a depth of one or two feet. Among the pedestrians
that morning were several colonists who were on their way home to the
States, and who, singularly enough, were obliged to walk out of La
Gloria through mud and water very much as they had walked in several
months before, although between the two periods there had been for a
long time a good dry road.
It was that morning that we, in the camp, heard a peculiar rushing sound
which we at first mistook for water sweeping through the woods. On going
down the road to investigate, however, we found that the noise was the
deafening chorus of millions of little frogs--some contended that they
were tree toads--which had come in with the flood or with the rain
which fell in the night. Never before had I seen such a sight. The frogs
were everywhere, on logs, stumps, in the water, and along the road; bits
of earth jutting out of the water would be covered with them. They were
all of one color--as yellow as sulphur--and appeared to be very unhappy.
I saw large stumps so covered with these frogs, or toads, as to become
pyramids of yellow. Whether frogs or toads, they seemed averse to
getting wet and were all seeking dry places. I saw a snake about two
feet long, who had filled himself up with them from head to tail,
floating lazily on the surface of the water. No less than five of the
yellowbacks had climbed up on his head and neck, and he had only energy
enough left to clasp his jaws loosely upon one of them and then let go.
The snake seemed nearly dead from over-eating. The frogs disappeared in
a day or two as suddenly as they had come.
At the time of this small-sized flood, a party of surveyors were camped
upon the savanna near Central avenue and about a mile from the port.
Their camp was high enough to escape the water, but they were pretty
well surrounded by it. One of the men, finding deep water running in the
road, went a-fishing there and boasted that he had caught fish in
Central avenue! The water soon subsided, and the generally accepted
explanation of the sudden flood was that it had been caused by the
overflow of the Maximo, and that there had been heavy rains, or a
cloudburst, twelve or fifteen miles away.
April was a warm month, but by no means an uncomfortable one. The lowest
temperature recorded was 67°; the highest, 94°. The weather was
delightful; the breezes were fresh and fragrant; flowers were blossoming
everywhere; and the honey bees of this incomparable bee country were
happy and industrious. So, too, were the colonists. The work of the
latter was well advanced by the first of May, or, at least, that of some
of them. As an example of industry, D. Siefert is worthy of mention. Mr.
Siefert hailed from British Columbia and came to La Gloria on the first
_Yarmouth_. On the voyage down he was somewhat disturbed over the
question of getting his deed, but once in La Gloria, he put his
apprehensions behind him, secured his allotment of a five-acre
plantation, indulged in no more vain questionings and waited for no
further developments, but each morning shouldered his axe and attacked
the trees on his land. He kept up the battle for months, rarely
missing a day's work. The result was that by May 1, Mr. Siefert, alone
and unaided, had cleared his five acres of timber land, burned it over,
and was ready for planting. Other colonists worked hard and effectually
in the forest, but this was the best single-handed performance that came
under my notice.
[Illustration: DR. PEIRCE'S PINEAPPLE PATCH.]
Another enterprising and highly intelligent colonist was Max Neuber of
Philadelphia, who has been before alluded to as one of the teachers in
the evening school. Mr. Neuber pushed the work upon his land, doing much
of it himself. Early and late his friends would find him chopping,
digging, and planting. When he left for the States in April he had five
boxes packed with the products of his plantation, such as lemons, limes,
potatoes, and specimens of mahogany and other valuable woods.
A group of industrious workers, most of whom had earlier been attached
to the survey corps, were in May located and well settled in a place
which they called Mountain View. This was a partially open tract four or
five miles west of La Gloria and about a mile from Mercedes. Here the
young men pitched their tents and swung their hammocks, confidently
claiming that they had the best spot in all the country round. From here
the Cubitas mountains could be plainly seen; hence the name of Mountain
View. A person following the rough trail from La Gloria to Mercedes
might have seen on a tree at the left, shortly before reaching the
latter place, a shingle bearing the inscription, "Change Cars for
Mountain View." If he should choose to take the narrow, rough, and
crooked trail to the left through the woods, he would ere long come out
into the open and probably see Smith Everett, formerly of Lenawee
county, Michigan, lying-in his hammock watching his banana trees grow.
I have before mentioned the irregularity and infrequency of the mails.
The remedy was slow in coming. The chief cause of the irregularity was
The Sangjai, which, though designed to be an aid to navigation, was
often a great hindrance to it. The Sangjai was a very narrow and very
shallow channel, partly natural and partly artificial, through what had
once been the Sabinal peninsula. The artificial and difficult part of
the channel known as The Sangjai was about half way between La Gloria
and Nuevitas. It had to be used in following the short or "inside"
water course. This was the route over which went our mail in a small
sailboat. The Sangjai at one point was so shallow that it contained only
a few inches of water at low tide and less than two feet when the tide
was high. It was a hard place to get through at best, and many a
passenger on craft which went this way had to get out and walk, and help
push the boat besides! Boats always had to be pushed or poled through
The Sangjai. If the winds permitted the sailboat to reach this
aggravating channel at the right time, there was no great delay; but
otherwise, the boat would be held up for ten or twelve hours. This was
altogether unpleasant, especially as the mosquitoes and jejines claimed
The Sangjai (pronounced Sanghi, or corruptly, Shanghi) for their own.
The mail, like everything else, had to await the will of the waters, or,
perhaps I should say, the convenience of the moon. The Sangjai played a
very important part in the early history of La Gloria.