waiting at the pretty and fanciful American depot for the Havana train.
As soon as fairly seated in the American car, in came our jolly friend
the priest, accompanied by a large number of officers; we find that he
is chaplain of the regiment. Officers have taken the little private
sitting-room one always finds in these cars. They amuse themselves more
than us by uproarious singing and laughter. As we start the priest
crosses himself, laughing, and accompanying it by a muttered prayer; all
we hear is “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” He says this is so that if
any accident happens it shall not be his fault. One of the sharply
moustached officers is the first to get out his cigars and offer one to
me, with a look of some concern that I decline, but all the rest of the
ladies accept, and soon every man in the car, but one woman, is smoking
and happy. But presently Father M---- discovers a pretty Creole lady
acquaintance quietly smoking her cigar, at the other end of the car; he
leaves me with a phrase characteristic of Spanish politeness,--“I kiss
your feet, señora.”
_Saturday._--San Nicola and the other little towns on our way present
uniform features. In all varieties of new palms in groves and avenues;
hogsheads of molasses waiting to get their tickets on the cars; low huts
with thatched roofs, or else the ordinary Cuban house with nearly all
its rooms opening on the street, exposing the occupants to the curiosity
of travellers. These people seem to be as ignorant of private life as
unconscious that they are leading a public one. How much is the privacy
and sanctity of domestic life a matter of climate?
This being within a few days of the season of cock-fighting, these
redoubtable warriors, tied securely by unwilling feet, were being
carried in large numbers to the numerous fighting rendezvous. Their
spurs _were_ very long with which to “prick the sides” of their masters’
“intents,” otherwise I saw nothing to distinguish them from our humble,
domestic, barnyard citizen at home, who crows and struts out his day,
and dies “unwept, unhonored,” etc.
The approach to Matanzas, through a ravine between two mountains, is far
famed, and certainly deserves no small credit for the hasty glimpse it
gives you of an ordinarily interesting town and an extraordinarily
interesting bay, and beyond this an even range of mountains which surely
were not born great, nor have they achieved greatness, although many
travellers and descriptions have thrust greatness upon them.
I will not blacken and mar the myriad-hued brightness of that bay with
ink; nor will I attempt to chronicle the phosphorescent miracles which
are all day long being performed by the gulf stream and the concealed
rocks over which it washes and breaks in sunny foam and dripping
rainbows. It is so marvellously uttered in colors that words would do it
wrong.
_Evening._--It being well established that the only sane thing to do
upon our arrival was, soon as possible, to see the renowned valley of
the Yumuri, we accordingly walked from the dinner-table into our waiting
volante to go and see the renowned valley of the Yumuri.
We drove at once as far up the Cumbri mountain as is consistent with
horse and carriage possibility, the rest of the way trusting to the
unwillingness of feet that walk under the burden of an old fatigue and a
new dinner.
Inversely, like Milton’s pandemonium, above the highest peak, a higher
peak still beckoned us up with false assurances, until at last this is
really the very final topmost top, and we are distinctly rewarded for so
much patience.
On one hand the heavy-walled, gaudily-painted city, with its tumultuous
life, its busy human ascent of toil and gain and fashion; on another
side the throbbing pulse of the bay, sometimes quickening to a fever
like a poet’s eye in fine frenzy rolling, and again stilling to an echo
silent as a dream of silence; on another side still, interwinding hills
and mountains clad in ample verdure, and pretty country seats; and here,
on this side, lies the peaceful little mountain-ringed Yumuri valley. It
is a tiny, but deep and choicely-inlaid casket. There are groves of dark
palms; pale, pea green cane-fields interspersed with dark patches of the
brown soil for contrast; little glancing quicksilver brooks; thatched
cottages buried among flowers and trees, whence come happy voices of
children; here a herd of cattle quietly grazing, there a solitary
market-boy wending sleepily home on his sleepy horse,--and all this full
to the brim, to the very mountain-ring of the faint, fading glance of a
sun that is just breathing his last upon his bed on the western horizon.
And now, the thickening twilight is just able to reveal to us the path
leading to our volante; the famous cave is far off and out of the
question; and soon we are leaving nature and her spells behind; faster
and faster we descend, until soon city lights and city sounds direct us
to the Plaza. Here the band is playing and promenading, bare-headed
ladies are enjoying the cool air and the warm admiration so grateful to
us women in warm climates.
We leave our volante to join the gauzy, chattering stream, and suddenly
stumble upon--none other than the gentlemanly Creole officer who was our
table _vis-à-vis_ at Guiness. Offering me his arm, the rest following,
we walked round and round the flower-scented grounds, listening to all
the music that could insert itself between the pauses of our
conversation. Very soon fatigue and faintness drive us in to the
_Dominica_, a restaurant of which Matanzas is justly proud,--to my
taste, with its cheerful frescoes, much more inviting than the one at
Havana. Here we find ice-cream, frozen juice of pineapples and other
fruits, _orchata_ (almond juice), and a strip, a mere parallelogram of a
breath of sponge-cake to eat with them. But I am too weary for any
refreshment that can be found outside a pair of clean linen sheets.
B---- hisses “ps-s-s-s-st” for a volante and directs the driver to go at
once to the “Ensor House.”
_Easter Sunday, April, 8th._--Just too late for the grand procession
which celebrated this morning, glorious as all Easter mornings should
be. We tried to reconcile ourselves by attending high mass at the
Cathedral. Even here, at eight o’clock, the ceremonies were closing; we
had only time to catch a glimpse of the gold-laced robes of the priest
as he disappeared behind the chancel, and a hasty scrutiny of the
perfect flower-bed of kneeling beauties covering the entire floor of the
building. I was taken completely by storm. So much and so rare beauty
concentrated in so little time and space! Every woman, old and young,
was in full dress: white silk, with lace flounces, a long white lace
veil thrown, like an exquisite fancy, over head and shoulders, instead
of the usual black mantilla, was the most favorite and _recherché_
costume.
Here in Matanzas is a decided sprinkling of the Anglo-Saxon blood, just
enough to flush and brighten the skin and to remove two or three of the
strata of fat, which are so universal with the white ladies of Havana.
Many are even so delicate in coloring, that the winds of heaven must
have considerately passed by them on the other side. Still the ladies of
Matanzas almost invariably retain the classically regular features, the
dark fascinating eyes, the grace of posture, the meaning movement, the
language of the fan, the perfect busts and arms copied from a more
luxurious Venus de Medici. I cannot indeed say how much of all this
effect was owing to the contagious admiration of a circle of señors, who
had also come to the sanctuary for worship, preferring however, in all
good taste, truly to offer their devotions at the shrines of living
virgins in flesh and blood and moire antique, to that of a dead one in
tinsel and wax. Nor can I vouch for the effect of cascarilla
artistically applied; for these ladies are all allowed amateurs in its
use. I tried however, to forget all this--to enjoy by faith as well as
by sight; and I did succeed in bringing away with me an impression of
loveliness that would be an actual inheritance to an artist.
From the Cathedral we drove to the somewhat incipient Paseo. It is an
unfinished sentence, yet prettily punctuated,--here by commas in the
shape of vine-porched cottages, there by a long dash of green fields;
now a parenthesis made by brackets of palm-trees including a little
bright piece of the bay, uttering itself in a low tone of voice;
presently an exclamation point, made of mounted cannon; and finally a
full architectural period at the end--the country house of Count
Somebody, or possibly of the Austrian Ambassador.
I am not sorry that we leave by steamer to-night for Havana. Most
travellers, I believe, prefer Matanzas; but to me it lacks the chief
charm of its elder sister,--the quaintness and novelty, while I find
little to supply their place. Undoubtedly it is far more modern in its
spirit, and for a resident might have more social congeniality: but when
you consider that the sights are all seen; the heat so terrific that the
presentation of our letters of introduction becomes formidable; that
there is little left for us but a questionable amalgamation of American
and Spanish cookery, and unutterable suffocation in a room carefully
constructed to admit all of the sun and none of the air,--will you not
allow that in this instance a moderate, though possibly somewhat
habitual desire for change is fairly legitimate?
_Havana, April 9th._--The hour of nine o’clock last night, if it had not
been totally blind with the darkness, would have seen us tumbling down
from the shore to one of the little row-boats that serve you up to the
waiting steamer for Havana. Learning that the cabins below were mere
dens, we all remained on deck till the clocks on shore struck eleven,
then twelve; then till the steamer began to manifest signs of life; then
until
“The ship was cleared,
The harbor cleared,
Merrily we did drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top,”
and we began to plunge in darkness and the broad ocean; and then one
little hour more for the moon to rise out of this black sepulchre like
its guardian ghost; we wait for it to say its say of beauty, and to
brighten the farewell we take of Mr. S----, who leaves in the morning
before we are awake, and whose constant kindness has been beyond return.
Now at last we really go; and what think you is the way to the ladies’
cabin? None other than directly through the gentlemen’s saloon, where
the occupants all lie in open berths, and in most ghostly states of
attire. I catch one glimpse of horizontal whiteness, draw my veil, seize
B----’s arm, eventuate at the farther end. Here numerous nasal
ebullitions (why will nobody submit to calling the thing snoring, if he
himself is the offender?
“All men think all men” snorers “but themselves”)
are exchanged for intimations of equally fabulous sea-sickness, and I
find myself safely arrived in the ladies’ cabin, where babies are
prevailing to a sleepless extent.
Here my mattress, sheets, counterpane, are utterly ignored or forsworn
in a cane-bottomed berth. Without any unpinning or unhooking delay, I
follow the example of the groups of shady-faced ladies around me, not of
Christabel when
“Her gentle limbs she did undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.”
This morning, after a delightful slumber all the sweeter because
unexpected, I was awakened at daylight by a rattling of spoons, cups,
and saucers. It is my companions taking their cup of coffee,--that
inevitable potion without which you could never convince newly awakened
Cuban men and women of their personal identity, or of the possibility of
the world wagging one step farther.
We had already been lying an hour or more in the bay of Havana. Very
soon all the passengers are gone but ourselves; we, the only foreigners,
are left alone to wait the hour when a volante can be obtained. B----
goes as fast as possible to secure rooms at the hotel. One Chinese
waiter offers me milkless coffee; another bushy-headed antipode stands
in the door, with pail and mop in hand, waiting for me to go. At last,
with patience in a precarious condition, I rush out on one side of the
vessel to get out of the way, and I am driven thence by the observing
disposition of a swarthy man lying in his berth in a little vessel
moored next to our own: he leans on his coatless elbow with an air of
cool curiosity that is unendurable. Then I go to the other side, where
dirty drippings from the upper deck, suggest anew the superfluity of my
presence and drive me, this time fluctuating on the precincts of
ill-temper, out to the gentlemen’s cabin. Here I met B---- tired out
with looking for a volante, and the disappointment of not finding rooms
at Mrs. A----’s where we hoped to go for a change.
At last, after a deal of English and Spanish nobody understands, and of
pantomimes that would have enlightened “blocks, and stones, and worse,”
etc., we find ourselves re-established at Queen’s Hotel, in a room
which, it is plain to see, if there were light enough in it to see
anything, was made for some uncompleted individual,--one in whom had
never been breathed the breath of life, or who had breathed it all out
again, with little hope of a second respiratory experiment.
_Tuesday, April 10th._--Last night arrived a young Bostonian, who, like
ourselves, has been adventuring in the interior. He tells us he knows
well the young man who gave a well-known author on Cuba all the facts in
his book except the few the author learned personally. He says the
person is a great practical joker, and plumes himself on the humbugging
he achieved.
The day has passed in farewell sight-seeings and shoppings, the latter
consisting mostly of the purchase of Spanish fans and linen dresses. And
now I am ready to part from Cuba with scarcely a regret, yet carrying
with me only fresh experiences and smiling memories. The sun in this
social as well as material firmament has been cloudless, or with only
rare veils to brighten its brightness.
I have, it may be, hung on the walls of my life some new pictures, which
will help to keep it from the ravages of time, somewhat as the paintings
of Protogones saved the city of Rhodes from the destruction of its
enemies.
I do not yet recover from the impression that I have committed a kind of
theft upon nature, or the almanacs, or the thermometers--or all of them;
for I have stolen and luxuriated in an extra summer; so that this
twice-flowered year is likely to be for me the impendingly pious
“Next year after never,
When two Sundays come together”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IX.
_A Discovery for the Benefit of Smugglers--The Steamer
Karnak--Adieu, Cuba!--An English Ship--Nassau--The Negro
Custom-officer--English Hotel--An Ex-President--What the Island is
and has--The Negro Element--The “Eastern Road”--The Air--The Beau
Monde--Turtle Houses._
APRIL 11th.
Last evening, after visits from nearly all our friends; after a long
walk in search of Spanish books, to find them much dearer than in New
York; after looking as a matter of curiosity at the diamonds which are
so lavishly displayed in the shops, to find them all singularly
yellow,--I retired to sleeplessness and suffocation in my air-tight
room. I awoke this morning with only life enough left in me to rejoice
in the prospect of the little sea-voyage before us.
At ten comes Mr. R---- to accompany us to the wharf, where we found
other friends awaiting us, with row-boat and swarthy boatman ready to
carry us out to the steamer.
And here, as a conscientious narrator of important and dignified
historical events, I have to record an item of experience, an
unintentional experiment, that possibly may be of service to future
female travellers.
So soon as our volante reached the landing, the custom-house officer
appeared, received my keys, proceeded with official composure to examine
the trunks. But the instant the top of the first was raised, up popped,
most ferociously, in his face, a white skeleton--a hooped petticoat! At
the last moment I discovered it lying on the top of the wardrobe in the
hotel, and in great haste had stuffed it in the top of the trunk I was
locking. As you may guess, a general shout of laughter followed from the
watching bystanders and my friends, and I soon found my chagrin giving
way before the irresistibly funny scene, and joined in the merriment.
B---- took the thing, flourished it for my benefit, and crowded it back
again. He then pointed to the other trunks, but the nonplussed officer
solemnly shook his head, declaring himself quite satisfied. He expressed
doubts about our being people likely to carry contraband articles.
Hereafter, when you wish to smuggle cigars, linen, or guava jelly, you
have only to cram an apparition of this sort--a jack-in-the-box--in the
top of your trunk, and you are safe.
But here we are at the steamer. Our friends come on deck; we sit talking
until the last moment arrives for setting sail; they descend the
step-ladder to the little boat, and their waving handkerchiefs are soon
lost among the shipping.
A pretty, fair-haired girl sits near me, whom, from her resemblence to
the captain, I perceive to be his daughter. Presently she asks me to go
to the other end of the ship to see the anchor drawn up--always a
cheerful sight when fifteen or twenty ruddy Englishmen march regularly
round and round at the work, while the pleasant roundelay all sing
directs their movements.
And now “the last link is broken which binds me to” this happy clime; we
float down through the winding bay; past ships of all nations; past our
favorite Cortina; the Punto; the Morro, that was the first to welcome
and is the last to leave us; and now the low shores are receding fast in
the distance, and the bright walls and brown tiles and pleasant friends
fade out again into the past and the forever.
_Thursday, 12th._--We are glad of this opportunity to know a thoroughly
English ship-captain, officers, crew, custom, and discipline. Nothing
can be better fitted to inspire confidence than the fresh, honest,
intelligent face of Captain B----, with his rough sailor dress, and
manners whose bluffness cannot conceal the completely affable and
well-bred gentleman under them.
The passengers are so few that we are beginning to know them all.
Various miscellaneous gentlemen of as many different nations; three or
four Spanish ladies and gentlemen, some with children and servants;
captain’s daughter and ourselves, complete the list. One of the
Spaniards, who is to leave wife and eldest son in New York while he
goes with the youngest son, a poor little sea-sick thing, to Germany, to
school, speaks English and French with some fluency, while--a not
unfrequent occurrence in Cuban families--the wife knows and cares only
for Spanish. He has been pronouncing difficult Spanish words to me while
his pretty wife laughs kindly at my attempts and helps him in his
self-appointed task. So what with this novel sociality and a summer sea
as beautiful and almost as calm as the sky, we get, instead of
sea-sickness, delicious sleep and rare gusto for this English roast
beef; instead of enervation, health that waxes with every hour.
_Evening._--Nothing could be more enchanting than this air and sunshine,
this bright crystal sea, this gently-moving ship, this entire voyage. A
few low reefs and coral islands are becoming visible with our glasses;
also many vessels lying quietly here and there,--wreckers I am told,
which do a most flourishing business in these regions; indeed I learn
that wrecking is the chief and all-absorbing occupation of Nassau, for
which we are bound.
If genuine storms and honest ignorance of these dangerous passages do
not supply a sufficient number of wrecks to satisfy the gambling tastes
of the wreckers, and of the merchants who make fortunes by their spoils,
it is found easy enough to make bargains with unprincipled captains, by
which, for a certain sum, a wreck can be achieved at a given time with
unfailing certainty. This is so managed that captain and wreckers shall
make a comfortable little speculation of the affair and nobody lose
anything except the all unsuspicious insurance company or the innocent
owners of the vessel.
_Nassau, New Providence, Royal Victoria Hotel, April 13th._--After being
rocked gently to sleep, and then sung into deep slumbers all night by
these pure-voiced ocean nurses, I was awakened this morning by the
firing of guns announcing our entrance in the bay of Nassau. This city
is to be our destiny for the next month, at the end of which the next
regular steamer goes north. It is thought prudent to graduate in this
way the change from the heat of Havana to the probable cold of New York.
We hung on deck to reconnoitre this little item of our future, and to
find ourselves anchored in the brightest, lightest possible pea-green
water, through which the clean, beautiful bottom is so clearly revealed,
that the numerous swarming boats seem to be floating in an atmosphere
only a little more dense and colored than the delicious nectar we are
breathing.
While waiting for the inevitable custom-house officer, we lean over the
deck railing to watch this phantom loveliness, and the boatmen that are
urging us in English that sounds as droll as did the Spanish at first in
Havana, to buy their wares. These consist of the only exports of the
island,--sponges, bananas, pineapples; some of the larger boats have the
bottoms covered with living turtles, others are half full of huge conch
shells, or varieties of smaller shells arranged regularly in partitional
boxes.
Presently the captain comes and points out the just arrived
custom-house officer, a regal-looking negro, dressed in uniform. While
B---- goes with him to examine the luggage, the captain shows us the
white pilot-boat from which one of his men was knocked overboard on the
last voyage, by the rough waves in this bay. The negroes who were rowing
him fled in affright: before help could arrive he had gone down for the
last time, and was never seen again. But a few days after, a shark was
caught and killed, and safely in his stomach lay the man’s hand,
immediately recognizable by the sleeve and cuff; beside it lay a goat’s
head and horns, and various other trophies of a shark’s victories.
But now we must go: the boat waits for us here, and the hotel carriage
on shore. A farewell with our Spanish friends, by whose cards I find, as
I have before been informed, that the husband and wife in Cuba have
distinctly different names; the name on the card of one gives you no
clue to name or address of the other.
An English carriage brought us up the English road, past the English
faces to the English-built hotel here on the hill, overlooking the
English town, the bright bay, and outstretched ocean that owe allegiance
to Her Majesty. Even the hotel belongs to the British government.
The high upper parlor opens upon a piazza commanding a noble and
extensive view. While waiting here for my room,--its occupants go north
in this steamer,--a quiet, elderly gentleman, with much blandness and
benevolence in his not extraordinary face, entered, and sitting down by
the table addressed some kind and casual remarks, evidently intended to
make a stranger feel at home, while I, tired of this long silent sitting
and waiting, was glad enough of any change. On going down stairs I found
I had been conversing with ex-President P----, who has been here since
January for the health of his invalid wife, and also possibly to find a
place where he can escape being lionized, and enjoy the retired literary
leisure of which he is fond.
At half-past two came dinner. It is so late in the season, that not more
than a dozen guests are left. Turtle soup of nicest and freshest quality
commenced the ceremony, turtle pie helped to continue it, so did turtle
steak, otherwise you might imagine yourself at an ordinary American
hotel except that beef and mutton, and ducks and chickens, appear in an
excellent state of mummification, as if they had all died of a lingering
consumption, and would severally assist us to follow their example. The
climate of the tropics is ill-adapted to our domestic animals. We are
told that the best American cows die here after a few months, even if
brought in the fall. Still it is a question, if want of care, and a
general shiftlessness in all matters of the sort, have not more sins of
animal murder to answer for than this delicious climate. The residents
confess as much. By the way, can you guess the proper, legitimate name
of the natives of New Providence? Not, as they are sometimes called,
“Bahamaites,” or “Nassauers,” or “West Indians,” but _Conchs_.