THE SUBURBS OF HAVANA, AND THE INTERIOR OF THE ISLAND.
The Gardens.--The Paseo de Tacon.--Guiness an inviting
resort.--Scenery on the route.--Farms.--Hedges of Lime and
Aloe.--Orange Groves.--Pines.--Luxuriance of the
Soil.--Coffee and Sugar Plantations.--Forests.--Flowers and
Birds.--The end of the Road.--Description of Guiness.--The
Hotel.--The Church.--The Valley of Guiness.--Beautiful
Scenery.--Other Resorts for Invalids.--Buena Esperanza.--The
route to it.--Limonar.--Madruga.--Cardenas, etc.--Cuba the
winter resort of Invalids.--Remarks of an intelligent
Physician.--Pulmonary Cases.--Tribute to Dr. Barton.--The
clearness of the Moon.--The beauties of a Southern Sky.--The
Southern Cross.
The neighborhood of Havana abounds with pleasant rides, and delightful
resorts, in which the invalid may find the sweetest and most delicious
repose, as well as invigorating recreation; while the man of cultivated
taste, and the devout worshipper of nature, may revel in a paradise of
delights. Among the many attractive localities, in the immediate vicinity
of the city, the gardens of the Governor and the Bishop are pre-eminent.
Outside the city wall is the "Paseo de Tacon," which is a general resort,
not only for equestrians and pedestrians, but also for visitors in their
cumbrous _volantes_. The stranger will find himself richly rewarded on a
visit to this frequented resort. It consists of three ways: the central,
and widest, for carriages; and the two lateral, which are shaded by rows of
trees and provided with stone seats, for foot passengers. It presents a
lively and picturesque scene, crowded as it is with people of all classes,
neatly, if not elegantly dressed.
A delightful excursion to Guiness occupies but four or five hours by
rail-road. It is much frequented by invalids, as an escape from the
monotonous routine of city life, and presents many advantages for the
restoration of health, and the gratification of rural tastes and pursuits.
Surrounded by luxurious groves of orange and other fruit trees,--by coffee
and sugar plantations,--in full view of the table lands, proximating
towards the mountains, and enjoying from November till May, a climate
unequalled perhaps by any other on the face of the globe; the fortunate
visitor cannot but feel that, if earth produces happiness in any of its
charmed haunts, "the heart that is humble might hope for it here;" and the
invalid, forgetting the object of his pursuit, might linger forever around
its rich groves and shady walks. During three months of the year, the
thermometer ranges about 80 deg. at sunrise, seldom varying more than from 70 deg.
to 88 deg. Nearer the coast, there is more liability to fever.
In the trip to Guiness, we did not fly over the ground as we often do on
some of the rail-roads of our own country, the rate seldom exceeding
fifteen miles an hour. And it would be more loss than gain to the
passengers to go faster. The country is too beautiful, too rich in
verdure, too luxuriant in fruits and flowers, and too picturesque in
landscape scenery, to be hurried over at a breath. Passing the suburbs of
the city, and the splendid gardens of Tacon, the road breaks out into the
beautiful open country, threading its arrowy way through the rich
plantations and thriving farms, whose vegetable treasures of every
description can scarcely be paralleled on the face of the earth. The farms
which supply the markets of the city with their daily abundance of
necessaries and luxuries, occupy the foreground of this lovely picture.
They are separated from each other, sometimes by hedges of the fragrant
white flowering lime, or the stiff prim-looking aloe, (_agave americana_,)
armed on every side with pointed lances, and lifting their tall flowering
stems, like grenadier sentinels with their bristling bayonets, in close
array, full twenty feet into the air. Those who have not visited the
tropics, can scarcely conceive the luxuriant and gigantic growth of their
vegetable productions. These hedges, once planted, form as impenetrable a
barrier as a wall of adamant, or a Macedonian phalanx; and wo to the
unmailed adventurer, who should attempt to scale or storm those self-armed
and impregnable defences.
Within these natural walls, clustered in the golden profusion of that
favored clime, are often seen extensive groves of orange and pine apple,
whose perennial verdure is ever relieved and blended with the fragrant
blossom--loading the air with its perfume, till the sense almost aches with
its sweetness--and the luscious fruit, chasing each other in unfading
beauty and inexhaustible fecundity, through an unbroken round of summers,
that know neither spring time, nor decay. There is nothing in nature more
enchantingly wonderful to the eye than this perpetual blending of flower
and fruit, of summer and harvest, of budding brilliant youth, full of hope
and promise and gaiety, and mature ripe manhood, laden with the golden
treasures of hopes realized, and promises fulfilled. How rich must be the
resources of the soil, that can sustain, without exhaustion, this lavish
and unceasing expenditure of its nutritious elements! How vigorous and
thrifty the vegetation, that never falters nor grows old, under this
incessant and prodigal demand upon its vital energies!
It is so with all the varied products of those ardent climes. Crop follows
crop, and harvest succeeds harvest, in uninterrupted cycles of prolific
beauty and abundance. The craving wants, the grasping avarice of man alone
exceeds the unbounded liberality of nature's free gifts.
The coffee and sugar plantations, chequering the beautiful valleys, and
stretching far up into the bosom of the verdant hills, are equally
picturesque and beautiful with the farms we have just passed. They are,
indeed, farms on a more extended scale, limited to one species of lucrative
culture. The geometrical regularity of the fields, laid out in uniform
squares, though not in itself beautiful to the eye, is not disagreeable as
a variety, set off as it is by the luxuriant growth and verdure of the
cane, and diversified with clumps of pines and oranges, or colonnades of
towering palms. The low and evenly trimmed coffee plants, set in close and
regular columns, with avenues of mangoes, palms, oranges, or pines, leading
back to the cool and shady mansion of the proprietor, surrounded with its
village of thatched huts laid out in a perfect square, and buried in
overshadowing trees, form a complete picture of oriental wealth and luxury,
with its painful but inseparable contrast of slavery and wretchedness.
The gorgeous tints of many of the forest flowers, and the yet more gorgeous
plumage of the birds, that fill the groves sometimes with melody delightful
to the ear, and sometimes with notes of harshest discord, fill the eye with
a continual sense of wonder and delight. Here the glaring scarlet flamingo,
drawn up as in battle array on the plain, and there the gaudy parrot,
glittering in every variety of brilliant hue, like a gay bouquet of
clustered flowers amid the trees, or the delicate, irised, spirit-like
humming birds, flitting, like animated flowerets from blossom to blossom,
and coqueting with the fairest and sweetest, as if rose-hearts were only
made to furnish honey-dew for their dainty taste--what can exceed the fairy
splendor of such a scene!
But roads will have an end, especially when every rod of the way is replete
with all that can gratify the eye, and regale the sense, of the traveller.
The forty-five miles of travel that take you to Guiness, traversing about
four-fifths of the breadth of the island, appear, to one unaccustomed to a
ride through such garden-like scenery, quite too short and too easily
accomplished; and you arrive at the terminus, while you are yet dreaming of
the midway station, looking back, rather than forward, and lingering in
unsatisfied delight among the fields and groves that have skirted the way.
San Julian de los Guiness is a village of about twenty-five hundred
inhabitants, and one of the pleasantest in the interior of the Island. It
is a place of considerable resort for invalids, and has many advantages
over the more exposed places near the northern shore. The houses in the
village are neat and comfortable. The hotel is one of the best in the
island. The church is large, built in the form of a cross, with a square
tower painted blue. Its architecture is rude, and as unattractive as the
fanciful color of its tower.
The valley, or rather the plain of Guiness, is a rich and well watered
bottom, shut in on three sides by mountain walls, and extending between
them quite down to the sea, a distance of nearly twenty miles. It is,
perhaps, the richest district in the island, and in the highest state of
cultivation. It is sprinkled all over with cattle and vegetable farms, and
coffee and sugar estates, of immense value, whose otherwise monotonous
surface is beautifully relieved by clusters, groves, and avenues of stately
palms, and flowering oranges, mangoes and pines, giving to the whole the
aspect of a highly cultivated garden.
I have dwelt longer upon the description of Guiness, and the route to it,
because it will serve, as it respects the scenery, and the general face of
the country, as a pattern for several other routes; the choice of which is
open to the stranger, in quest of health, or a temporary refuge from the
business and bustle of the city.
One of these is Buena Esperanza, the coffee estate of Dr. Finlay, near
Alquizar, and about forty miles from Havana. One half of this distance is
reached in about two hours, in the cars. The remainder is performed in
_volantes_, passing through the pleasant villages of Bejucal, San Antonio,
and Alquizar, and embracing a view of some of the most beautiful portions
of Cuba. Limonar, a small village, embosomed in a lovely valley, a few
miles from Matanzas--Madruga, with its sulphur springs, four leagues from
Guiness--Cardenas--Villa Clara--San Diego--and many other equally beautiful
and interesting places, will claim the attention, and divide the choice of
the traveller.
An intelligent writer remarks that, "with the constantly increasing
facilities for moving from one part of this island to the other, the
extension and improvement of the houses of entertainment in the vicinity of
Havana, and the gaiety and bustle of the city itself during the winter
months, great inducements are held out to visit this 'queen of the
Antilles;' and perhaps the time is not far distant, when Havana may become
the winter _Saratoga_ of the numerous travellers from the United States, in
search either of health or recreation." He then proceeds to suggest, what
must be obvious to any reflecting and observing mind, that those whose
cases are really critical and doubtful, should always remain at home, where
attendance and comforts can be procured, which money cannot purchase. To
leave home and friends in the last stages of a lingering consumption, for
example, and hope to renew, in a foreign clime and among strangers, the
exhausted energies of a system, whose foundations have been sapped, and its
vital functions destroyed, is but little better than madness. In such
cases, the change of climate rarely does the patient any good, and
particularly if accompanied with the usual advice--to "use the fruits
freely." Those, however, who are but slightly affected, who require no
extra attention and nursing, but simply the benefit a favorable climate,
co-operating with their own prudence in diet and exercise, and who are
willing to abide by the advice of an intelligent physician on the spot, may
visit Cuba with confidence, nay, with positive assurance, that a complete
cure will be effected. This is the easiest, and, in most cases, the
cheapest course that can be pursued, in the earlier stages of bronchial
affections.
As a lover of my species, and particularly of my countrymen, so many of
whom have occasion to resort to blander climates, to guard against the
insidious inroads of consumption, I cannot leave this subject, without
making use of my privilege, as a writer, to say a word of an eminent
physician, residing in Havana, who enjoys an exalted and deserved
reputation in the treatment of pulmonary diseases. I refer to Dr. Barton, a
gentleman whose name is dear, not only to the many patients, whom, under
providence, he has restored from the verge of the grave, but to as numerous
a circle of devoted friends, as the most ambitious affection could desire.
His skill as a physician is not the only quality, that renders him
peculiarly fitted to occupy the station, where providence has placed him.
His kindness of heart, his urbanity of manners, his soothing attentions,
his quick perception of those thousand nameless delicacies, which, in the
relation of physician and patient, more than any other on earth, are
continually occuring, give him a pre-eminent claim to the confidence and
regard of all who are brought within the sphere of his professional
influence. To the stranger, visiting a foreign clime in quest of health,
far from home and friends, this is peculiarly important. And to all such, I
can say with the fullest confidence, they will find in him all that they
could desire in the most affectionate father, or the most devoted brother.
In the interior of the island, I observed that the moon displays a far
greater radiance than in higher latitudes. To such a degree is this true,
that reading by its light was discovered to be quite practicable; and, in
its absence, the brilliancy of the Milky Way, and the planet Venus, which
glitters with so effulgent a beam as to cast a shade from surrounding
objects, supply, to a considerable extent, the want of it. These effects
are undoubtedly produced by the clearness of the atmosphere, and, perhaps,
somewhat increased by the altitude. The same peculiarities have been
observed, in an inferior degree, upon the higher ranges of the Alleghany
mountains, and in many other elevated situations, where, far above the dust
and mists of the lower world, celestial objects are seen with a clearer
eye, as well as through a more transparent medium.
In this region, the traveller from the north is also at liberty to gaze, as
it were, upon an unknown firmament, contemplating stars that he has never
before been permitted to see. The scattered Nebulae in the vast expanse
above--the grouping of stars of the first magnitude, and the opening of new
constellations to the view, invest with a peculiar interest the first view
of the southern sky. The great Humboldt observed it with deep emotion, and
described it, as one appropriately affected by its novel beauty. Other
voyagers have done the same, till the impression has become almost
universal, among those who have not "crossed the line," that the southern
constellations are, in themselves, more brilliant, and more beautifully
grouped, than those of the northern hemisphere. In prose and poetry alike,
this illusion has been often sanctioned by the testimony of great names.
But it is an illusion still, to be accounted for only by the natural effect
of _novelty_ upon a sensitive mind, and an ardent imagination. The denizen
of the south is equally affected by the superior wonders of the northern
sky, and expatiates with poetic rapture upon the glories which, having
become familiar to our eyes, are less admired than they should be.
If any exception should be made to the above remarks, it should be only
with reference to the Southern Cross, which, regarded with a somewhat
superstitious veneration by the inhabitants of these beautiful regions, as
an emblem of their faith, is seen in all its glory, shedding its soft, rich
light upon the rolling spheres, elevating the thoughts and affections of
the heart, and leading the soul far beyond those brilliant orbs of the
material heavens, to the contemplation of that "Hope, which we have as an
anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast."
It would be an easy task to enlarge upon the wonders of the sky, but how
shall man describe the works of HIM "who maketh Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades,
and _the Chambers of the South_?"