SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
I.
[Illustration: LOOKING TO SEA FROM SAN JUAN
Puerto Rico
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
We were creeping in toward the entrance of the harbour of San Juan,
Puerto Rico, waiting for the pilot, who had sighted us afar off. It was
when almost at a standstill that our brown-skinned pilot in his open
lug-sail boat came alongside and sprang for our rope ladder with the
nimble agility of his prehistoric progenitors. He left two small boys,
one at the tiller aft and one in the bow of the boat hanging on to a
line dropped them from about midships of our steamer. The pilot
continued shouting at the boys as he disappeared over our heads to where
the captain stood waiting on the bridge; but things did not seem to go
well with the boys below, for instead of at once assuming command of our
ship the pilot again turned his attention to the boys. He now followed
up his first harangue by a supplement in very angry tones, evidently
out of patience with the poor little fellows, who, much excited, could
not seem to keep their boat from sheering at a dangerous angle, with her
bow against the side of our ship. A quick flash of resentment toward
that dusky pilot spread from one to the other of us as we saw how
panic-stricken the boys were, and how as our ship suddenly put on a
bigger head of steam the little boat alongside had become unmanageable
and was in imminent danger of being sucked under our side. To prove that
he was powerless to prevent disaster, after incessant yells from his
father, the lad in the stern-sheets of the boat jumped to his feet and
flung out with tragic despair his two hands, in each of which he held up
the fragments of a broken tiller. Then in all the languages of our ship
the boys are howled at to let go. Already their narrow boat is beginning
to careen dangerously against the side of our moving steamer. Not a
moment too soon they let go the rope, and their excited, high-pitched
voices sound strangely out of place as they rapidly drift astern of us
in the open sea. The pilot had evidently assured his boys that he would
look after them, for within a few rods of the harbour entrance a
loitering sail is hailed. To our tremendous relief we follow the rescuer
until we see that a tow is in progress, and then we feel better.
As we approach the harbour, and at the entrance dodge into a channel
between yellow reefs plainly visible through the clear water, it is no
small thing to see our dear Stars and Stripes peacefully waving over
that relic of mediæval Spain, the venerable Morro of San Juan on the
bold headlands to our left; its wide-spreading fortifications, gray with
centuries and fast going to decay, running in walls and terraces far
above the sea. We throw our whole soul into the soft folds of that flag
with a deep sense of joy. There are among our company some with whom as
loyal Americans we cannot but feel restraint, owing partly to the
whisperings afloat that the aliens are envoys from his Majesty the
Emperor of Germany, bent on a mission not altogether that of pleasure.
However that may be, we are all the more moved to enthusiasm over our
flag when we are conscious of the lack of that sentiment among the
Germans. So when we are near enough to the fort to hear the wild cheers
of welcome issuing from every parapet and tower of that old pile, we
know no hounds and answer the welcome as you would have done had you
been there. Spontaneously "The Star Spangled Banner," started by the
boys on the fort, finds a hearty echo from our ship, and my eyes are
blurred so that the restless, shouting, singing boys on shore look dim
and indistinct. Yes, we are coming home. Uncle Sam owns Puerto Rico, and
I am happy to feel that here in the West Indies he has asserted his rank
among the nations of the world, and intends to make this colonial home a
sweet clean place for all of his children who wander upon Southern seas.
Some day this fair harbour will be filled with ships flying the Stars
and Stripes, and again our merchant vessels will be doing their rightful
share of the West Indian commerce.
The way in which I found my love for those soldier boys expanding was
really wonderful. The sight of those old blue flannel shirts, those
faded Khaki breeches, those tossing felt hats aroused within me in this
strange tropical island unexpected waves of patriotism. There sprung at
once a dangerous leak in my affections, and had it not been for the
quiet pressure upon my shoulder of a strong hand I so well knew, who can
tell what might have happened? Even so, there was not a boy upon the
island but I could have mothered with my whole heart, and I could not,
however persistently that hand still lingered, quite stifle the upheaval
of that undying mother instinct.
Although aware that Uncle Sam was fully alive to the great dower that
this island alliance would bring him, I must still believe that his
choice was not a little influenced by the actual charms of Puerto Rico
herself: that, however much he, a man of some years, might appear
indifferent to the allurements of lovely women, he is still like the
rest of his sex chivalrously bent upon fresh conquests. In this case let
us rejoice that he has been so fortunate, and that so pretty a face has
brought so much of real worth.
Although, womanlike, acknowledging a deeper interest in our troops than
in anything else, I could not be indifferent to the city of San Juan as
we slipped past the reef at the entrance into the wide expanse of
harbour and dropped anchor opposite the beautiful landing quay. _El
Puerto Rico del San Juan Bautista_ (The Rich Port of St. John the
Baptist), as the Spaniards centuries before had christened her, opened
before us like a bespangled fan, and threw from her glittering white
walls the swaying efflorescence of stately palms. From the ancient fort
on the headland to the _Casa Blanca_ and the city beyond, it was a
progression of delicious sights and sounds.
II.
Has it ever impressed you how rarely nature appeals to one's sense of
humour? She brings us infinite delights, but seldom cultivates in us our
faculty of laughing. But down here off Puerto Rico, she for once leaves
her beaten track of sobriety and indulges in the most extravagant
caprices. How she ever thought out such a ridiculous line of hills none
but Father Time could tell you; here her centuries of bottled-up giggles
have burst forth, and she has made herself the most outlandish head-gear
she could contrive, and here she stands, caught in the act of being
silly. From this distance I should say the hills are barren, save for
now and then a palm, which, dotted irregularly over the epidemic of
peaks, gives the hills the forlorn look of a mole on an old woman's
cheek. There is every size of these jagged, saw-tooth peaklets jumping
up in the air like so many scarecrows, and when our ship swings to her
anchor and leaves us broadside to Puerto Rico's shore, the little girls
and I enter into the joke and laughingly wonder how it ever happened.
Then to match the distant landscape out came the Puerto Rican shore
boats with ridiculous little open hen-coop cabins aft, much like the
funny "summer cabins" affected by some New Jersey catboats--only more
so. There were no end of fine modern launches of all sorts darting about
us, some of them waiting for passengers, and others from our ships in
the harbour bringing officers and ladies aboard, but Daddy would have
none of them. He and the little girls are already under a hen-coop in
one of the miserable little boats and nothing will do but I must go too.
I protest, but to no avail. The stiff shore breeze makes prompt decision
necessary, and I creep down under the coop an unwilling passenger; I
would so much rather have been in one of the puffy boats. So off we go
heeling well to the breeze as our funny, high-slung lateen sail drives
us shoreward at a great rate.
We were not alone under the hen-coop, for we had some Puerto Rican
musicians with us, and my qualms at the flying boat are actually
forgotten in the strange but fascinating music of those natives. They
carried not only the universal guitar of the usual form, but also a
funny little guitar not a quarter as big as the ordinary sort, and a
curious round gourd with shot or pebbles inside, which, attached to a
handle, they used as a rattle, and other gourds some eighteen inches
long, corrugated with many deep scratches, upon which they accented the
strong beat of the measure by scraping with a bit of wire in a most
dexterous manner. I can well imagine the contempt of some of our
European musicians for such music, but as for myself, although trained
in the most conservative of foreign schools, I could but acknowledge the
deep influence of these untutored artists, and yielded myself in
fascination to the weird rhythm of their music. Music to these peoples
is not a dreary taskmaster, as it is to many of their Northern brothers;
it is as necessary to them as is the outpouring sunlight, and they use
it with a freedom and comradeship and love which is unknown to us. My
senses are suffused with strange emotions of pleasure as I listen
dreamily to the lullings of the water, percolated through and through by
the cadences of low voices and the rhythmic repetition of single notes.
I was unreal to myself even after Captain B---- and his wife, friends
whom we half-hoped to meet in San Juan, had grasped our hands and led us
to an army coach near by.
III.
Instead of being the dumping-ground for all the garbage of the city and
the location for unsightly warehouses, the quay at San Juan is a perfect
delight. I happened to-day to turn to a precious volume of Washington
Irving's "Life of Columbus." While reading along I came across a letter
in which the valiant discoverer endeavours to bring to his king some
conception of the beauty of his newly found lands; saying that he fears
his Majesty may have reason to doubt the veracity of his statements, for
each new island surpasses in beauty the one before; in fact that one
could live there for ever. Time cannot efface the noble bearing of
Puerto Rico, and although far, far removed from the picture which met
the eyes of her early discoverers, she is to-day not only from the
standpoint of the picturesque, but from the practical aspect of
cleanliness and order, a place to which every American may turn with
pride.
[Illustration: BOAT LANDING AND MARINE BARRACKS, SAN JUAN
Puerto Rico
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
To find upon landing a noble water-front finely paved, relieved by
grassy quadrangles in which choice varieties of palms are set with the
unfailing intuition of the true nature lover, places one at once _en
rapport_ with the best things of life. Why, why are we of the North so
blind to the soul's necessity for beauty? Why are we so dumbly
indifferent to that craving? If we but looked deeply enough into the
psychological influence of beauty, we would be forced to recognise man's
necessity for its expression in public places. There is no city among
the Spanish-speaking peoples but has its restfully attractive plaza,
varying in beauty as the wealth of the community permits--a playground
and a club-house and a concert-hall in one for all the people. And when
my mind reverts in unwilling retrospection to the innumerable hideous
and barren cities large and small of our United States, it seems to me
that we are hopelessly lost in the fog of the common-place. If we
Americans were a poor people, there might be palliating circumstances,
but we are not poor, we have more wealth than any people on earth, and
surely a republic should give its equal citizens all the beauty and
pleasure possible. We are merely blind, that is all. Pray God that our
eyes may be opened and that right soon!
In these islands the plaza, where the people live largely in the open
air, is the synonym for all that is congenial to the eye and soothing to
the ear, and this explains much of the enthusiasm which we starved
Northerners express when once within the satisfying influences of such
surroundings.
Captain B---- and his wife are graciously willing to wait our pleasure,
while we linger idly content, but we must not trespass too long upon
their indulgence; so we enter the coach and rumble up the steep narrow
streets after four lustrous army mules. Our driver, a native Puerto
Rican, speaks to the mules in English, and ready with the explanation
before I could form the question, Captain B---- says: "Yes, the boys use
English, because their mules were brought here from the States, and of
course they wouldn't understand if the boys spoke Spanish to them."
Stopping for the passage of an army freight wagon, it seemed very
comical to me to hear those Puerto Rican lads "gee-hawing" to the sleek
American mules.
If the politics of our American cities could be as well administered as
those of San Juan appear to be from the cleanliness and order of her
streets we would indeed have cause to rejoice. The streets of San Juan
were so clean that even the trailer of skirts might for once be forgiven
her lack of common decency. She could have walked the full length of San
Juan and not gathered up as much filth as she would in one block of one
of our Northern sidewalks. Such was the cleanliness of the place that
again and again we exclaim over the fine condition of the city; and
Captain B---- bore out our impression that Uncle Sam had done his
house-cleaning most effectively, and was now trying to maintain that
condition by educating a force of native police,--"_spigitys_," our
boys call them.
As we were going through the Plaza we saw a great crowd on the far side,
gathered about a regular American "trolley-car," and wondering at their
enthusiastic demonstrations, we were told that this was the first trip
of the first electric car in Puerto Rico--a great step toward becoming
Americanised.
IV.
We were in the Captain's hands, and although Sister and Daddy were
decorously unquestioning as to where we were going and what we were to
do when we got there, Little Blue Ribbons and I couldn't refrain from
asking, when we found ourselves clattering out of San Juan to the tattoo
of the hard little hoofs, if the Captain intended to drive us to Ponce?
"Oh, hardly, this evening," he laughingly replied. "I thought we would
merely take a spin out a way on the military road to give you a glimpse
of the country. The madam has planned a Puerto Rican dinner for you at
the Colonial, and afterward there is to be a concert on the Plaza."
"Simply fine," I said, "I do so enjoy trying the native bills of
fare" (but alas, for their after effects!).
[Illustration: THE FIRST TROLLEY CAR IN SAN JUAN
Puerto Rico]
The military road, a beautiful macadamised highway, swept through a
country whose surface was richly covered with broad pasture lands where
many cattle were grazing. The plains were fairly peppered with
palm-trees, which, owing to their long trunks and pluming tops,
interfered but little with the pasture beneath. The military road is
fringed by these noble trees, at least as far as we go, and although now
to us a necessary feature in the West Indian landscape, I never weary of
their aristocratic grace. We must have gone some miles when the madam
suggested our return. A crack of the whip, a vociferous shouting to the
mules, and the coach faces right about with military precision for San
Juan. With many a bewildering twist and turn through the upper town, we
reach the Morro headland, and are glad enough to leave the coach and
throw ourselves into the deep grass, where we sit a long time looking
out to sea.
Those of you who have been there know; those of you who have not, never
can know the loveliness of that far-spreading vision. No, not if all
the poets joined in one grand panegyric, you would never know what it
all meant. You would need to feel the dull booming of the sea against
the cliffs and hear the cool rattle of the palms crooning over the
children in the Casa Blanca; you must run your hands through the stiff
deep grass down to the earth which makes so sweet and so warm a bed; you
must throw back your face to the uplifting Northeast Trade; then you
will know what it means to sink down upon the green carpet of San Juan
and look out to sea.
A veil dropped over the still water; the sea and sky melted into one
substance; then we arouse sufficiently to realise that the madam is
waiting. By this time San Juan had made ready for the night; we could
see the fitful flicker of her electric lights down near the barracks,
and here and there the dull red stare of an olden time street-lamp
swinging midway between the dark lanes which intersect the upper town
like long tentacles.
[Illustration: THE MILITARY ROAD ACROSS PUERTO RICO
Near San Juan
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
We ran down along the sea-wall, under the lattice of the stately Casa
Blanca, and came into the city; turning abruptly to the left we were
about to follow the Captain up the steep street, when I was stopped
suddenly with my whole soul ablaze with wonder, for there on the top of
the hill, as if on the very stones themselves, there rolled a great
yellowish-green moon, and about it there fell a heaven splashed with
emerald and gold. There were green and yellow and strange hues of blue
all blending into a splendour which dazzled the senses and made one feel
dumb. I am so thankful that we saw the moon before dinner. I couldn't
have looked in the face of a green moon afterward, no, I could never
have done it.
I beg of you to be as considerate of me as possible in your judgment. I
do not mean to be ungrateful to our dear hosts, or unkind or
disagreeable; but after that dinner, planned for us with so much care
and pride, all I could say was, "O Lord, have mercy upon us--miserable
offenders!" We had things to eat I had never dreamed of, and may I be
spared a recurrence of them in my future dreams! There were:
Tomatoes and peppers.
Pork chops, and peppers.
Codfish, vegetables and peppers.
Chicken and peas and more peppers and some black coffee and cheese, and
the sweetest sweets I ever tasted, with a final dessert of beans with a
sugar sauce. After dinner madam had chairs arranged on the balcony over
the Plaza. She led the way, and said the concert would be delightful in
the moonlight. But as the pepper and the various concoctions of grease
and greens and sugar and beans began to make themselves felt, I turned
my chair around, saying that I never could look at the moon any length
of time, especially a green moon. Then Sister gave me a despairing look
and turned her chair around too; gave my hand a hard squeeze, and
leaning over, said: "Mother, it's the peppers and sweet things; do you
think Daddy could get me some Jamaica ginger?" A whispered consultation
is held, after which the Captain and Daddy disappear, and then something
warm and comforting is fixed up for Sister and me, and we decide that
after all we will turn our chairs around to face the moon, but alas, the
inconstant creature had slipped on her black hood and was scurrying off
like a little fat nun. She was no more to be seen that night.
But her displeasure does not affect the humour of San Juan, for by this
time the Plaza is filled with people making "_el gran paseo_" around and
around the square in true Spanish fashion.
Meantime the Plaza is being filled with chairs--rocking-chairs--which
seem to spring up out of nothing. I never saw or expect to see so many
rocking-chairs in any one place. Here the "Four Hundred" sit, having
paid a small fee for the use of the chairs, and here they rock back and
forth and back and forth in endless waves until the music begins. Some
rock with the elegant ease of the portly _señora_ and others with the
sprightly jerk of the laughing _niñita_, and as seen from the veranda of
the Colonial, the eyes ache as they involuntarily follow the moving
crowds circling countless times around the improvised barricade of
oscillating chairs. But the music begins, the people are suddenly still,
and out over the luminous night, still eloquent of the retreating moon,
there fall the first notes. I know that it is rank heresy in me to
acknowledge to any race but the Germans a preëminence in musical
intuition; but I shall do so in spite of all the traditions of my youth.
I believe that if the Spanish-American races could be given the skill
and the knowledge to formulate their musical ideas to such an extent as
has come to the painstaking Germans by generations of grinding, we would
have greater music--and certainly more human music--than the world has
ever heard. The Puerto Rican, as well as the Mexican, the Cuban, the
Dominican, is the natural musician; he feels to his finger-tips every
vibration of sound he utters, and he makes you feel what he does. His
music is akin to that of the wild sea-bird, it is brother to the moaning
of the winds, to the wan song of the dusky maidens in the dance--to
dream sounds in cocoanut and palm-tree groves; it is life, moving,
quickening, pulsating life their music speaks, and without life, what is
the stuff we call music?
"Thank you, thank you, you have given us an evening we shall never
forget. Shall we not see you in the morning? _Buenas noches._"
V.
It was high noon as Little Blue Ribbons and I left the empty Plaza and
started out with grim determination to do our duty. The streets were
silent as the sun crept over our heads and sent its burning,
perpendicular rays through the white umbrella. But that was of no
consequence. We two had made up our minds to accomplish a certain
purpose, and when we make up our minds neither man nor weather can
prevail against us. We had been idle long enough. Time and time again we
had drifted to the time-ripened Morro. Days had gone by and we lacked
the energy to begrudge their inconsequential passing, but now a time of
reckoning had come. We would have no more such idleness. Little Blue
Ribbons and I had awakened on this particular day to a realisation of
our unperformed duty, and although detained through one pretext and
another all the morning, by noon we forswore further procrastination and
hurriedly left the Plaza before our good intentions could again be
lulled by inaction.
[Illustration: INLAND COMMERCE
Puerto Rico
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
It was to the Square of Ponce de Leon we were going; and although not
sure of its exact location, we remembered a fine old church near by, and
that was our landmark.
It is strange indeed what a web of dreams the past weaves about its
heroes, however recent their careers; but when the hand of time leads
us back to the remote events of centuries gone by, we are hopelessly
bewildered by the discordant wrangling between the real and the
improbable.
Although the early companion of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of
Florida and the intrepid voyager on many seas, the conqueror and the
first governor of Puerto Rico, and later the powerful and hated rival of
Columbus's son, Ponce de Leon's one unrealised hope, his tireless search
for the fountain whose waters were to contain the elixir of life, has so
over-shadowed his actual achievements by the glamour of the legendary,
that his very name has become the synonym for the stuff of which dreams
are made. Standing thus as the embodiment of the unattainable, the
knight errant of roseate hopes and undying aspirations, he has ever
been, in spite of the irascible humour given him by history, a figure
from whom none could wrest the talisman of romance.
Where are his contemporaries, where are those greater discoverers, abler
rulers, better men who thronged these alluring waters during the two
generations of Ponce de Leon's eventful life? Dead, even in name, many
of them, or else safely embalmed in the musty pages of some old history
seldom read. But in him there was the spirit of the poet and the mystic,
which ever has and ever will appeal to the imagination of mankind and
through imagination attains immortality.
Thus it suggested much to us to find his statue in San Juan and to have
heard some one assert with an air of authority that his bones rested in
the old church hard by; all of which bore incontrovertible testimony to
the fact of his having once been an actual living personality. So we two
decide without saying a word to any one that we will make a pilgrimage
to that church of the uneasy shades and prove for ourselves Ponce de
Leon's identity with fact.
With a feeling of affinity for the doughty old cavalier, and with half a
sigh that I can never again lift my feet with the light-hearted grace of
the little maid at my side, we wander on through the deserted streets
until we come to the square of Ponce de Leon. It looked as it had
before, only much whiter, much brighter, and oh, so silent! The church
stood passively asleep; there were only the still hot rays reflected
into our faces from the sun-baked pavement. The same, and yet not the
same, was the empty square, for as we made nearer approach we found that
the pedestal upon which before the figure of Ponce de Leon had stood
with lofty bearing and haughty mien was now but a bare block of stone
glaringly white in the noonday silence with naught but the inscription
left.
The figure was gone! "Can it be that we have been dreaming, that it was
never there?" I ask, in consternation. "No, Mother, surely not, I
remember perfectly well a statue was standing there as we drove through
only last evening." With a startled tremor I wish the place were not so
deserted, I wish some one would come, I dislike being so alone, and I
wish that we had Daddy with us. But pulling ourselves together with a
frightened glance over our shoulders, we pass the abandoned pedestal and
go toward the church, unquestioningly sure of safe sanctuary within its
open door. To our amazement we find it barred and locked. We try a side
entrance; that too is mysteriously fast; but hearing a faint sound, as
of retreating feet within, we venture a timid knock on the door. But
our rappings bring no response save a hollow echo and a momentary
cessation of the footsteps.
Still hesitating as to our next move, we stand there in the white glare,
while a sensation of strange unreality creeps over us. Hesitating, but
still unwilling to relinquish the pilgrimage without further effort, we
spy an ancient iron-bound gate in the high stone wall adjoining the
cathedral. We try its rusty latch and find it unlocked. We cautiously
push it open. It turns heavily on great creaking hinges stiff from long
desuetude, and swings to after us as with an ominous sigh.
We find ourselves in the secluded corridors of an ancient cloister. The
sun still lingers on a patch of green courtyard dropped in the midst of
the shadows, and up from the luminous verdure a cool fountain plays its
restful measure. An ancient sun-dial speaks of the deathless tread of
time, and in the deeper shade of a dark recess, on tables of venerable
age, huge volumes lay, on whose yellow pages were strewn adown the
wide-spread lines of the quaint Gregorian staff, the great square notes
of an ancient Latin chant. Then,--
"On a sudden, through the glistening
Leaves around, a little stirred,
Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt than heard.
Softly, finely it inwound me;
From the world it shut me in,--
Like a fountain falling round me--"
My hand is held close and with wide eyes Little Blue Ribbons asks if she
may drink at the fountain. Half-refusing, half-assenting, we are about
to draw near, when from out an opening door, whence seemed to come the
music, there appeared a figure bent in contemplation and wrapped in the
shadows of the past. It was so like the statue on the square without
that the one at my side gasps, "It is he, Mother, what shall we do?" and
shrinking spellbound, I hold the dear little hand, glad to feel the
human warmth of its pressure. With dread and yet with fascination I
watch the lone, sad, weary figure, as it were the phantom of old age
eternally unreconciled to the flight of youth. I watch while it moves
eagerly toward the fountain to lean forward and drink deep, deep, with
an insatiable thirst; and then with a hopeless sigh it paces back and
forth among the shadows.
[Illustration: A RANCH NEAR SAN JUAN
Puerto Rico]
A bell clangs out the hour of one, and the great wooden gate swings open
of itself, while we two, much affrighted, slip unnoticed behind the
columns of the corridor into "the twilight gloom of a deep embrasured
window" which for long years had been sealed from the light by the gray
masonry of the ancient church.
Even as we look the silent figure has vanished, and we are left there
with only the sound of the plaintive, ever murmuring fountain.
Awed and silent, we creep from our hiding-place and drag open the
unwilling gate and once again we are out in the dazzling sunlight.
There--wonderful to relate--on its pedestal was the statue as it stood
the day before, with outstretched hand and far-away look, scanning the
distant horizon where to his ever disappointed eyes was just lifting the
palm-fringed shore of that mythical island of Bimini, where at last
flowed the long-sought fountain of youth.
Lest the unhappy shade again returning should seek sudden vengeance for
our bold espionage, we took our flight toward the Plaza, nor stopped to
breathe until again we found refuge in the crowded shops.