CUBA.
When day dawned we had rounded Caybo San Antonio, and were running
along the northern shore of Cuba.
I was up early, by eight bells--or a little after four A.M.--for I
had the morning watch; and with deep interest I surveyed the coast of
that beautiful island, which lay about ten miles distant,--the first
and now the _last_ portion of that vast empire beyond the seas which
Columbus bequeathed to Castile and Leon.
"Dat is mi country, senor," said Antonio, who was at the wheel; and
this remark, with the repulsive aspect of the Spaniard and his
mysterious character, served to dissipate my momentary enthusiasm.
"That is Caybo Bueno Vista,--and the breakers on the weather-bow," he
continued, "mark the Collorados, a long reef of rocks. The blue
sharks are as thick there as the stars in the sky."
We were now in the Gulf of Florida.
The sky was cloudless and blue; and now it seemed as if the welkin
above and the almost waveless sea below were endeavoring to outvie
each other in calmness, in beauty, and in the glory of their azure
depths. The wind was off the land and rather a-head; but the sails
were trimmed to perfection, and we ran through the Gulf on a taut
bowline.
I have so much more to narrate than my limited space permits me to
give in full detail, that I must compress into one chapter all that
relates to my visit to Matanzas.
Our run through the Gulf was delightful; and on the 29th of January,
just as a rosy tint was stealing over all the sea and the rocky shore
of Cuba, after the sun had set beyond the waters of the Gulf of
Mexico, we saw Havana light, bearing south by west, and distant about
fourteen miles. So we passed in the night the wealthy capital of
Cuba, so famed in the annals of our victories--_La Habana_, or the
harbor--of which, from our being so far to seaward, we could see
nothing but the great revolving light, which burns so brightly on the
high rock of the Morro, or Castello de los Santos Reyes; and before
dawn we descried the light of Santa Cruz on our weather-bow.
Weston drew my attention to it, adding "that is the beacon which so
scared me when it shone through the stern windows of the empty
polacca brig."
Next day, the 29th, after encountering a head wind, against which we
tacked frequently between the Pan de Matanzas and the wooded point of
Sumberella, at ten in the morning, a Spanish mulatto pilot came on
board and took the brig in charge.
We ran safely into the harbor, and by eleven o'clock came to anchor
at a place recommended by Antonio, half a cable's length from the
castle of St. Severino. In half an hour after, the sails were all
unbent and stowed below, and preparations were made for "breaking
bulk,"--to unload the vessel, whose cargo, I have stated, consisted
of steam machinery and coals for the sugar and coffee mills.
Gangs of Spanish mulattoes, negro porters, and lumpers, in red shirts
and white drawers, with broad straw hats, and nearly all with rings
in their ears, came on board in quest of employment; and then all was
confusion, garlic, dirt, jabbering in Spanish and Congo, singing,
swearing, and smoking cigaritos.
I was now at liberty to go ashore, and after the first bustle was
over, Weston left Hislop in charge of the brig and accompanied me.
Matanzas presented nothing new to him, but I surveyed with interest,
not unmixed with wonder, the New World in which I found myself.
The city of Don Carlos de Matanzas occupies a gentle eminence between
the rivers San Juan and Yumuri, which roll into the bay from the
mountainous ridge that traverses all Cuba. Its name, Matanzas,
signifies the place of murder, because in that bay some of the
Spaniards of Columbus were slain by the native Indians.
Most of the houses are built of good stone, but have all their
windows iron-barred without and barricaded within, for the population
(of which our shipmate Antonio was a striking specimen) consists of
about thirty thousand olive-skinned Spaniards, and double that number
of slaves and free mulattoes, all loose, reckless, fiery, and apt to
use their knives on trivial occasions.
There was not a ship lying there for England, or any other craft by
which Weston could have sent me home. A Spanish steam-packet was on
the eve of departing for Cadiz; but being wearied by the monotony of
my long voyage, I was scarcely in a mood for the sea again, and
wished to spend a little time on shore instead of leaving with her.
However, I wrote to my family by the Spanish mail, acquainting them
of my safety--with the strange accident which had so suddenly torn me
from them, and adding that I would return by the first ship bound for
any part of England; if possible, with the _Eugenie_, which would
probably be freighted for London.
After the packet sailed with my letter in her capacious bags, I
experienced an emotion of greater happiness and contentment than I
had ever done since leaving home; for the sorrow which I knew all
there must have suffered, and would still be suffering, hung heavily
on my heart.
As we were returning to the brig, which had now been warped alongside
the mole, when passing through the street which contains the great
hospital, we heard the sound of trumpets, and saw the glittering of
lances with long streamers above the heads of a dense crowd of people
of all shades of color, black, yellow, and brown; and we had to doff
our hats with due respect as they passed, for in the midst,
surrounded by a staff of officers, epauletted and aiguletted, their
breasts sparkling with medals and crosses, and each of them riding
with a cocked hat under his right arm, came the present
Captain-General of Cuba, a marshal of the Spanish army, Don Francisco
Serrano de Dominguez, attended by an escort of mulatto lancers, all
mounted on Spanish horses.
He was a fine-looking man, and though aged, had all the bearing of
what he was, or I should say _is_--a grandee of Old Castile.
On returning to the _Eugenie_ we found Antonio, the Cuban, working
among the crew as lustily and actively as any man on board. Weston
now offered him remuneration for the time he had been with us, with a
hint that he might find a berth elsewhere; but our castaway evinced
the greatest reluctance to leave the brig, and begged that he might
be permitted to remain on board, as three of our best hands had been
sent ashore sick to the hospital.
So short-sighted is man, that Captain Weston, despite the dislike of
the crew, and the advice of Marc Hislop, ordered that the name of
Antonio be entered on the ship's books as a foremast-man.
Three weeks after our arrival, the brig was careened to starboard,
when clear of all the cargo, and had her copper scraped and cleaned,
an operation which the constant rains of the season greatly retarded.
There was much in Cuba to feed an imaginative mind, and mine was full
of the voyages, the daring adventures, and the vast discoveries of
Columbus, with the exploits of the buccaneers, whose haunts were amid
these wild, and, in those days, savage shores.
I thought of the gaily plumed and barbarously armed caciques whom
Columbus had met in their fleet _piroguas_, or had encountered in the
dense forests which clothe the Cuban mountains--forests, old,
perhaps, as the days of the deluge--of the yellow-skinned women with
their long, flowing black hair, and with plates of polished gold
hanging at their ears and noses, of the fierce warriors streaked with
sable war-paint, and armed with cane arrows shod with teeth or
poisoned fish-bones, that fell harmless from the Spanish coats of
mail; of the wild Caribs who devoured their prisoners--with whom a
battle was but a precursor of a feast; and of the famous fighting
women--the terrible Amazons of Guadaloupe.
I thought of the story of Columbus writing the narrative of his
wonderful discoveries, his perils and adventures, on a roll of
parchment, which he wrapped in oil-cloth covered over with wax,
inclosed in a little cask, and then cast into the sea, with a prayer,
and the hope that if _he_ and his crew perished, this record of their
achievements might be cast by the ocean on the shore of some
Christian land.
As I sat by the sounding sea that rolled into the bay of Matanzas,
what would I not have given to have seen the waves cast that old
cask, covered with weeds and barnacles, at my feet!
But now the plodding steam-tug and the rusty merchant trader ploughed
the waters of the bay, instead of the gilded Spanish caravels, or the
long war-piroguas of the Indian warriors; and where they fought their
bloodiest battles on the wooded shore, or in the green savanna, where
the painted cacique and the mailed Castilian met hand to hand in
mortal strife, the smoke of the steam-mill, grinding coffee, or
boiling sugar, darkened the sky, and the songs of the negroes were
heard as they hoed in the plantations, or in gangs of forty trucked
mahogany logs, each drawn by eight sturdy oxen, to the sea.
And so, in a creek of the bay--the same place where the Dutch Admiral
Heyn sunk the Spanish plate fleet--I was wont to sit dreamily for
hours, with the murmur of the waves in my ears, with the buzz of
insects, and the voice of the mocking-birds among the palmettoes,
while watching the sails that glided past the headlands of the bay,
on their way to the Bahama Channel, or the great Gulf of Florida.
This was my favorite resort. A wood of cocoa-nut and other trees
shaded the place, and made it so dark that I have seen the fire-flies
glance about at noon. The cocoas are about the height of Dutch
poplars, and are covered with oblong leaves, which, when young, are
of a pale red. As spring drew on, the branches became covered with
scarlet and yellow flowers.
Over these, the vast coral-tree spread its protecting foliage, whence
the Spaniards, in their beautiful language, name it La Madre del
Cocoa, the smallest of which has at times a thousand lovely scarlet
blossoms.