passage, and obtained with much difficulty and circumlocution, as the
rule is that baggage must be sent the night before--which ours was not.
No sooner are we settled in the cool cane seats than--will you believe
it?--a whistle, the modern screech of a steam-whistle, is heard, and we
start precisely punctual to the minute. Therefore, I assert, and will
maintain that it is conceivable, it is not contrary to all the laws of
nature, it is possible for a promise to be kept this side the Tropic of
Cancer. But how am I to become reconciled to all this comfort and speed,
this steam-engine, this trail insinuating itself so complacently through
these celestial plains, snorting and blowing and smoking through these
orange-groves, past these waving royal palms, in the midst of sights and
sounds such as lulled Eve into slumber upon the bridal night of her
birth! O insatiate Yankeedom! with all the lurid sins you have to answer
for, will not this alone secure you a life lease in Purgatory? But I
have no time for unpatriotic indignation. Fields of belligerent looking
pineapples; orchards of bananas twenty feet high, with immense leaves
all torn into rags by the wind; groves of cocoa-nuts that look like
sentimental palms in delicate health, with the green clustered fruit
hanging round their necks like an affectionate necklace; cacti, the
prickly pear growing fifteen feet high, and fences of the kinds I have
cultivated in pots with so much care; vegetables, familiar and
unfamiliar, for the Havana market; everywhere trees of gayest plumage,
the blossoms so large and brilliant, that you grow incredulous and
wonder if your eyes are not become telescopic. As you approach the
interior, immense corn-fields greet you with their sweetened breath,
looking like corn-fields of the Southern States grown delicate and pale
from close confinement, a thickened growth that excludes the air.
At nine o’clock the train stops at a village named Bejucal. But for some
reason it does not start again. B---- inquires to find we are to remain
three hours--some failure in the engine. So we do what nobody else does,
walk half a mile under our umbrellas to examine the town and get a
breakfast. See if you do not think this a droll sight for American eyes.
A village containing over a thousand inhabitants, every house in it,
except the church, of one high story, roofed with large red earthen
tiles, built of stone covered with clay or plaster, and painted in all
possible colors that are bright. Not a pane of glass visible, all the
immense windows being only grated and then filled with idle, staring
women and naked children. Every house opens directly upon the sidewalk;
and in the whole extent of streets, gardens, and courtyards, here in
this land of miraculous vegetation, not a tree to be seen. But I have no
eyes or curiosity left. I am one huge unreconciled appetite.
We stop at a house with larger rooms, larger windows, and larger
basements than the rest; where rows of breakfast-tables, each with a
caster in the centre and a tall black wine-bottle on either side,
promise a drop, possibly a mouthful, of comfort to the perishing inner
woman. But the tablecloths! Even my great hunger hasn’t stomach for
them all, overlaid and underlaid as they are
“With food-prints that perhaps another,
Sitting o’er their various stain,
A forlorn and famished sister
Seeing still might eat again.”
Not so I. Consequently a private room is ordered with a breakfast in it,
and while preparing to fill up the vaccuum, not of the within, we sally
out for a reconnoitre. Just at the back door, we stumble upon--you do
not guess?--a veritable theatre,--boxes, galleries, pit, stage with
decorations for scenes, painted curtains, trap-door opening upon the
prompter’s den, and niches properly placed for footlights. But the boxes
are only stalls with rough board partitions, the seats are wooden
benches, the galleries are an upper loft still retaining remnants of
former hay, the floor is of mother earth unmodified by pavement or
broom, and in fact we have every evidence that this temple is devoted to
horses and oxen by day, and to the muse of the histrionic art by night.
But this aching void which nature has the good sense to abhor! “Will
breakfast never be ready? It is eleven o’clock! I wish I hadn’t seen the
tablecloths.” Ah, here comes an agile quadroon announcing it in Spanish,
which does not get itself translated. We go to a little bedroom from
which a cot has been hastily ejected, and sit down to a table loaded
with fresh fruits of great variety and abundance, in addition to the
usual bountiful breakfast of the country, and, best of all, clean linen
under them. You are right: we revel, we luxuriate, and to this hour I
sit and think of that breakfast with a gastronomic satisfaction none the
less because we paid five dollars for it. We are now ready for any
adventure at the disposal of the remaining hour, and set out for the
ruins of an old castle said to have been built by the Marquis de San
Phillippi and honored by the presence of King Ferdinand VII. at a ball,
while he was _incognito_ in this country. Now the walls are crumbling to
dust; one or two window-shutters flap disconsolately in the wind,
parasitic plants grow over the mouldering arches where a dead past
sleeps its sleeps and dreams its dreams.
The church, Moorish in architecture, is just across the Plaza, and
invites, but the sun threatens, and we decide for a tempting grove near
the railway station.
As we walk over the very clean pavement, stared at by wondering groups
of villagers, a woman rushes up to us breathlessly explaining that she
knows where the English person who lives here is to be found, and will
be very willing to show us the way.
Mr. S---- thanks her, with the assurance that we are only waiting for
the train; and we soon find ourselves reclining beatifically under
deliciously breathing trees, whose shadows are thick as night with
darkness.
I must not forget to mention a primitive kind of well we saw when again
_en route_. It was like an ordinary well: an old white horse walking
away from it when the bucket was full and backing to it after it was
emptied into the cask on the cart, and must go down for more.
We came also for the first time upon a peculiar species of palm,
distinguishable from the royal palm only by an enormous swelling half
way up the trunk. I pronounced them dropsical. B---- was more brilliant,
declaring they resembled a snake, that had fallen into the misfortune of
swallowing a toad,--an idea which Mr. S---- developed in a drawing which
I copied and am saving to show you. Very many of these singular trees
grow crookedly--vegetable leaning towers suggesting the idea that a
variation from the perpendicular may be peculiarly incident to trees as
well as tropical towers and morality.
It is an interesting fact that instead of undressing with the indelicate
precipitancy of our trees at home, the palm-tree drops only one leaf
every lunar month,--a replenishing of its wardrobe which is dignified as
well as rhythmical.
On the subject of palms I find authors in Cuba again inaccurate. It is
asserted that they are of no use, when it is true that of all the
several hundreds of varieties found on the island every one is useful. A
gentleman who has lived here in the country many years says, “They are
the most useful tree we have.” They give food to animals, thatches to
roofs, brooms to housemaids, cords to tobacconists, hats to men, besides
being used for numerous other purposes.
The young palm often reminds one of an overgrown aquatic weed; very many
resemble a gigantic pencil-case, the trunk quite straight and equal
until you approach the top, where it suddenly diminishes, looking loose
as if it would shove up and down like the pencil point.
Arrived at Guiness, the volante does not come as we expected from the
plantation where we are invited to spend a week or more. We go--not to a
_fonda_, for they are usually only miserably dirty inns, but to a
private boarding-house, with which Mr. S---- is already acquainted. Here
we find what we have so much desired--a characteristic Cuban house with
characteristic Creole customs, although our landlord is a fat,
good-natured Frenchman, and his wife a tall, stately, imposing negress.
Her history is a little interesting. A sister of hers had a daughter,
whose father was a wealthy Spaniard, and who sent her to Paris to be
educated. Soon after she died, leaving this aunt $10,000, with which she
purchased her freedom, and, I conjecture, the French husband.
As we enter the door, large enough for a camel, she greeted us with a
hospitable smile and graceful bow, at the same time motioning us to sit
in the row of rocking-chairs standing accurately in front of the huge
window. I am told that unlike ordinary parallel lines these have been
known to absolutely meet. If I do not mistake, the occasion is apt to be
when an appreciative señor finds a pretty Creole for a _vis-à-vis_.
The house is a fac-simile of nearly all these houses. Massive stone,
directly upon the street. It is of one high story; tiles keep out the
heat; the pointed roof and bare rafters inside giving a bare-like
effect, which the brick-paved floor tries to counteract, and the
enormous doorways to maintain.
A curtain with curious embroidery at the bottom conceals this door which
separates this _sala_ from my chamber. There I find plenty of finest
linen and the clean odor which should always sanctify bedrooms. Canvas
stretchers across the cot-like bedsteads make a delightfully cool and
clean mattress. Carefully embroidered pillow-cases endeavor to excite
our admiration, and brightly colored pictures of saints and martyrs on
the wall, our devotion.
At three comes a Spanish jumble of sounds which mean, “Dinner is ready.”
We walk out on a back piazza, overlooking the pretty courtyard with its
shrubs and flowers, while we are sheltered from the sun by
thickly-growing and blossoming vines.
Our chairs are a curious kind of wooden frame covered with some sort of
hairy skin stretched tightly across the back and bottom; our floor is of
clean cement; our soup is colored a bright yellow with saffron; our fish
is fresh and white from the Carribean Sea; our rice is pearls set in
sweet oil; our green peas have lost their identity by the same process;
our water--unlike the quality of mercy--is strained, and through a
filter; while our beef, like all the beef we have found in Cuba, is
suspiciously dark and tough. Yet we have faith, remembering that the
colored bipeds are much higher in the market than the quadrupeds. In
addition to all this, our table is loaded with nondescript dishes of
Creole names and ingenuity, and all are ranged in one stiff row down the
middle of the table. Opposite me sits a Creole gentleman who has not
only belonged to the army (it has been asserted that Creoles are not
permitted to enter the army in any capacity), but has been an officer in
Spain. We strike up a conversation in French, and imagine my admiration
for the flexibility of his politeness, when he inquires how long I lived
in Paris. Between dessert and coffee he leaves the table to smoke,
apologizing to Mr. S---- by saying he is so much of a Spaniard that he
must smoke before taking coffee, and he does not like to do it at the
table in the presence of an American lady.
I confess it made me feel a little peculiar to see our French landlord
sitting complacently at the head of the table with his bona-fide negro
wife standing as complacently behind his chair to serve us.
After dinner I am attracted to the water-filter standing in one corner.
It is a large moss-covered porous stone, with a cavity in the top where
the water and charcoal are placed; the water creeping through the stone
drop by drop, into the vessel below. I wish I could remember the name of
the island where it is found, and, indeed, of which it is the
foundation.
[Illustration]
V.
_A Palm-grove--A Planter’s Household--Coolies as compared with
Negroes--Anecdotes of Coolies--Robbers--Heterogeneous
Dinner--Creole Politeness._
THURSDAY, March 22d.
This morning comes intelligence that death has occurred in the family of
the owner of the plantation and that his sister is become insane. Our
visit there is necessarily abandoned. However, we are not uncomfortable
in our present quarters, and its independence reconciles us to the
disappointment; for you must know a Cuban planter would as soon think of
taking pay for the air and sunshine you breathe in his house as for any
amount of board, lodging, or attendance he might give you.
To-day, we discovered an inviting grove of palms just outside the town,
and, unwisely careless of the threatenings of the sun, set out to find
them. They looked very near, over the tops of the houses, and so tall
that, like vegetable Mother Gooses, they seemed to be “sweeping the
cobwebs from the sky,” but, as we walk on, seem to recede farther and
farther. The sun waxes and waxes; our fatigue becomes exhaustion; but we
find, as did Macbeth, that to return is as difficult as to go on; so on
we go--melt--utterly dissolve--until, at last, we reach a lovely
garden, and with permission from the major domo, drop down upon the
roots of a tree in the midst of many of the best fruit and ornamental
trees of the country. Was there ever shade so profound, perfumes so
delicious, orange-trees so dark-leaved and bright-fruited!
The ground around us is covered with a great variety of fallen fruits of
which we do not even know the names. They are left quite at the mercy of
various fat, black, lazy, meandering pigs that at first look to you like
overgrown rats--for, like all the hogs of Cuba, they are entirely
without bristles, as smooth-shaven as if just from the razor of the
barber.
Presently, we discover a little house behind the trees, apparently
unoccupied. The same idea occurs to us all at once--if we could get it
to live in while we remain. We go for the major-domo, who conducts us
inside. Rude enough, indeed, for the most rural or romantic tastes, and
with eight great black--so black that you could not see them--negroes
sitting in the middle of the middle room. They are all dressed in spots;
that is, a few rags still cling, by chance, or by preternatural
adhesion, to different parts of the body; and all are busily filling
some sort of a demijohn with a kind of black bran much grown and used
here. Not too inviting, certainly, neither, is the stifling,
annihilating walk before us, in a sun whose furnace is heated seven
times hotter than before. We survive, I could never tell how, to find
that the dinner at home has scarcely survived an hour’s waiting for us,
and I go to rest till soup and fish are over.
Immediately after dinner, a Chinaman rides up to the door, leading three
horses. A friend of Mr. S----, a sugar planter, hearing of our arrival,
sends the horses, with an invitation for us to visit his estate. So soon
as habited, I select the horse that wears the side-saddle. He starts off
at once in the delightful and peculiar gait of Creole horses,--not an
ornamental one, as I somewhere said before, but well suited to the
climate, perhaps a result of it,--an amble, giving exhilarating
exercise, without fatigue.
The plantation is but a league distant, and very soon the tall white
chimneys and low roofs reveal our saccharine destination. Flocks of
decently dressed and moderately happy-faced negroes and coolies are at
work in the corn-fields. As we pass on an odor as of nice sweet cake
while in the progress of baking greets us from the boiling sugar, with a
savory familiarity; then a glimpse through the trees of blue walls and
red tiles suggests the family mansion.
What can be so fresh and peaceful as that pretty, low, rambling house,
nestled in among the greenery, with the huge trees behind it giving that
background so indispensible to beauty in houses, while on all sides
stranger varieties of trees, flowers, and shrubs breathe upon us the
sweetness of their welcome!
Our hostess, a charming lady from the United States, living here twenty
years, meets us on the piazza with a graceful hospitality. The gentlemen
go to the sugar-house or _ingenio_, which yields an income of from
seventy-five to a hundred thousand per year, with two hundred and fifty
negroes and coolies to perform the work. I am taken into the grounds and
gardens by Mrs. D---- and her son; where among all that is new I find a
great variety of cactuses, many twenty or thirty feet high; ripe
oranges, perfectly green in color; mignionette and allspice trees; tall
trees of blooming oleanders; also cape jasmines and the night-blooming
cereus.
We talk much of the coolie system. Although less amiable than negroes,
Mrs. D---- prefers them on account of their superior activity,
ingenuity, and intelligence. Nearly all of them can read and write, and
have some proficiency in arithmetic and geography. Beside being very
passionate, they consider their persons sacred: many of them would die
rather than endure any bodily chastisement. Several murders have
occurred on this plantation among them, but we learned on the way home
that Mr. D---- had the matter hushed up in some way to save their lives
and his money. To illustrate the character of these antipodes of ours: A
celestial in Havana, supposing himself detected in a theft, confessed
his guilt to the unsuspecting owner of the property, also a Chinaman,
who at once tied his hands behind his back and commenced leading him
through the streets backward. The authorities stopped this, to the great
indignation of the persecutor, because he could not do as people always
did in his own country. But the companions of the thief all deserted
him, refused to eat, sleep, or speak with him, not on account of his
guilt, but of the bodily degradation he had suffered, and the next
morning in despair he went and hanged himself. Mr. R---- told me of a
cook of his (they make the best cooks in the world) who was attacked by
a disease for which the doctor, fearing it to be infectious, sent him to
the hospital. While there he was attended by the noble Sisters of
Charity, of whose unselfish though sometimes mistaken devotion I hear so
much. When he was cured one of the nuns said to Mr. R----, “Do take care
of him, for he is a good Christian; and as he desired it, we have
baptized him.” Afterwards his master, knowing so well the tenaciousness
of the idolatry of the Chinese, said to him, “How come it that you were
baptized?”--“Oh,” said the fellow, “my head was very hot, and I thought
I would let them put a little water on to cool it.” This _was_ being
Cooley!
A little event has just occurred on our plantation, from which I am
wandering. One of the laborers, a Chinaman, it is suspected (because the
negroes are such cowards), threw into one of the wheels of the machinery
an iron bolt of some sort to prevent its operation, and so give them all
a holiday. The master, not being able to discover the offender, forced
them all to work harder than ever through the week, and all the
following Sunday.
But night is coming on and we must go in spite of urgent invitations to
remain, and many expressed regrets from our kind hostess that her house
is already too full of visitors to admit us permanently, and so,
promising to “Come soon and spend the day,” we encounter the darkness,
and I many misgivings of possible robbers. And why should I not? The
country, from all accounts is full of them. Everybody goes armed. Not
one man do you meet, from the elegant señor down to the stupidest negro,
without pistols in his saddle and a long sword at his side, which I
always see brushing against the hedges as they ride in the country, or
rattling on the pavement as they walk in town.
My fears are somewhat quieted by the assurance that nobody accompanied
by a lady has ever been attacked or in all probability will be, an
assurance more interesting than convincing, it must be confessed.
However, somewhat armed and strengthened by my weakness, we ride through
the bristling hedges and star-lighted air until tremor is forgotten in
the sweet enchantment of the scene, and we are sorry to see the lights
of Guiness rising one by one out of the darkness.
_Friday, March 23d._--These people have unquestionably the most
heterogeneous tastes in the world. At dinner to-day I counted ten dishes
entirely new to me,--all but two, intricate complications of flesh,
fish, or fowl, but mostly of vegetables, compounds which no ingenuity of
chemist could hope to resolve back to their elements. How think you, is
unsophisticated American digestion to make terms with this marked array?
How not to disappoint the attentive hostess who expects you to encounter
them all unflinchingly, and end them, not yourself, victoriously?
During dinner we happened to mention our intention of procuring horses
and riding twice a day in search of adventures and an appetite, when
what does a polite Creole opposite do but offer me the use of his own
horse as long as I stay: it is in Matanzas and he will be only too happy
to send for it.
I found my French useful to decline and to express thanks more ample
than the Spanish “_gracias_.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI.
_"Nice pretty House in the Country”--Wrong Side of the
Horse--Discovery in Mental Photography--Visit to the Country
House--Not to be obtained--Contrast of Palms and Bamboos--The Youth
of Tropical Nature--A Remarkable Phenomenon--House of the Marquise
of V----“Le Armistad”--Burial of an Officer’s Child--A
Shock--“Cafetal”--“La Providencia”--A Sugar Plantation--The “Royal
Highway”--A Grand View._
This evening comes Mr. S---- from Father P----, full of a nice pretty
house we are to get in the country. Immediately a horse resembling an
overgrown rat is procured, warranted amiable with ladies, and we prepare
for investigation.
Imagine my dismay when about to mount, to find the side-saddle turned to
the right of the horse instead of the left. It is indeed the ordinary
style of this extraordinary country. I remember seeing ladies in long,
white habits, riding in this way in the suburbs of Havana, quite at
ease, and unsuspicious of the droll figure they were making. I have,
however, seen or been told that ladies in the south of Europe are taught
both modes of riding, still, I am not inclined to try a new horse in a
new manner; so, after a change of saddles, we find ourselves sailing off
in the stereotyped gait of the Cuban horse, than which nothing can be
more safe, or less calculated for the display of horsewomanship. The
scene is exquisite; we could ask no change in “the day, the place, the
hour, the sunshine and the shade,” except that one might excuse the low,
red afternoon sun from peering up so inquisitively as it does under
one’s eyelids.
How dense and massive are these great cactus hedges on either side of
the road! and how their fierceness is softened or masked by thick vines
creeping and penetrating everywhere, with blossoms and perfumes in their
hands!
My equestrian experiences continually reimpress upon me a discovery I am
making in the philosophy of mental photography of scenery.
Riding towards the east is far more inspiriting than going towards the
west. Travelling to the south is equally more cheering than to the
north. I find that western views, however intrinsically beautiful, have
in them an accent of sadness, of departure, of farewells. It is there
that the sun, and moon, and stars go down to be buried, leaving behind
them a consciousness that all bright and fair and tender things must
also drop into a night of death.
Eastern views, on the contrary, however rude and desolate, are yet seen
and beautified through an atmosphere of hope. A sweet sense of promise
always comes up from under the orient; there is an inherent life and
light in it that no stalking shades can terrify.
Northern views, though outwardly full of grace and beauty, have always
about them a haunting desolation. You think only of those “thrilling
regions of thick-ribbed ice,” with no heart beating under the ribs, no
blood in the veins, no kindling in the fixed eye. You fall into
shivering reveries about the unbending attitude of those hyperborean
scenes, wondering if it is their backbone, the north pole that keeps
them there forever, so stiff and stark. You see those ice fields
inhabited mostly by the longing looks, the gasping yearnings of lost
souls who are condemned to burn forever in flames that do not purify or
consume.
But southern views, though they may be insipid or uncouth in material
form and feature, are always sweet with the very soul of passion and
poetry. They cry out for you in advance to all sorrow and hopelessness
and death,--
“Avaunt thy miscreated front.”
But the low roofs and bright walls of the house we are seeking have
discovered us through the trees.