Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
A TRIP TO CUBA.
BY
MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE.
BOSTON.
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
M DCCC LX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
the District of Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE DEPARTURE 1
II. NASSAU 10
III. FROM NASSAU TO CUBA 20
IV. THE HARBOR OF HAVANA 30
V. HAVANA--THE HOTELS 40
VI. HAVANA--YOUR BANKER--OUR CONSUL--THE FRIENDLY CUP OF TEA 48
VII. HAVANA--THE JESUIT COLLEGE 57
VIII. SAN ANTONIO DE LOS BAÑOS 66
IX. THE MORRO FORTRESS--THE UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA--THE BENEFICENZA 79
X. CAN GRANDE'S DEPARTURE--THE DOMINICA--LOTTERY-TICKETS 94
XI. COMPANY AT THE HOTEL--SERVANTS--OUR DRIVE--DON PEPE 111
XII. MATANZAS 132
XIII. THE PASEO--THE PLAZA--DINING OUT 145
XIV. GAME-CHICKENS--DON RODRIGUEZ--DAY ON THE PLANTATION--DEPARTURE 157
XV. RETURN TO HAVANA--SAN ANTONIO AGAIN 177
XVI. SAN ANTONIO--CHURCH ON SUNDAY--THE NORTHER--THE S. FAMILY 190
XVII. EDUCATION--LAST NIGHT IN SAN ANTONIO--FAREWELL 202
XVIII. SLAVERY--CUBAN SLAVE LAWS, INSTITUTIONS, ETC. 212
XIX. FAREWELL! 238
A TRIP TO CUBA.
CHAPTER I.
THE DEPARTURE.
Why one leaves home at all is a question that travellers are sure,
sooner or later, to ask themselves,--I mean, pleasure-travellers. Home,
where one has the "Transcript" every night, and the "Autocrat" every
month, opera, theatre, circus, and good society, in constant
rotation,--home, where everybody knows us, and the little good there is
to know about us,--finally, home, as seen regretfully for the last time,
with the gushing of long frozen friendships, the priceless kisses of
children, and the last sad look at dear baby's pale face through the
window-pane,--well, all this is left behind, and we review it as a
dream, while the railroad-train hurries us along to the spot where we
are to leave, not only this, but Winter, rude tyrant, with all our
precious hostages in his grasp. Soon the swift motion lulls our brains
into the accustomed muddle. We seem to be dragged along like a miserable
thread pulled through the eye of an everlasting needle,--through and
through, and never through,--while here and there, like painful knots,
the _dépôts_ stop us, the poor thread is arrested for a minute, and then
the pulling begins again. Or, in another dream, we are like fugitives
threading the gauntlet of the grim forests, while the ice-bound trees
essay a charge of bayonets on either side; but, under the guidance of
our fiery Mercury, we pass them as safely as ancient Priam passed the
outposts of the Greeks,--and New York, hospitable as Achilles, receives
us in its mighty tent. Here we await the "Karnak," the British Mail
Company's new screw-steamer, bound for Havana, _viâ_ Nassau. At length
comes the welcome order to "be on board." We betake ourselves
thither,--the anchor is weighed, the gun fired, and we take leave of our
native land with a patriotic pang, which soon gives place to severer
spasms.
I do not know why all celebrated people who write books of travels begin
by describing their days of sea-sickness. Dickens, George Combe, Fanny
Kemble, Mrs. Stowe, Miss Bremer, and many others, have opened in like
manner their valuable remarks on foreign countries. While intending to
avail myself of their privilege and example, I would nevertheless
suggest, for those who may come after me, that the subject of
sea-sickness should be embalmed in science, and enshrined in the crypt
of some modern encyclopædia, so that future writers should refer to it
only as the Pang Unspeakable, for which _vide_ Ripley and Dana, vol.,
page. But, as I have already said, I shall speak of sea-sickness in a
hurried and picturesque manner, as follows:--
Who are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin,
with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their eyes are
closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite bloodless,
and to every offer of good cheer, their "No, thank you," is as faintly
uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they be the same that,
an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of dangerous defiance
to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves the roast-beef offers
at the same time a slice of fat;--this is too much; a panic runs through
the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous and complete. The ghost of what
each man was disappears through the trap-door of his state-room, and the
hell which the theatre faintly pictures behind the scenes begins in good
earnest.
For to what but to Dante's "Inferno" can we liken this steamboat-cabin,
with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are these
sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the _alti guai_ rehearsed by
the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual
torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,--"Nice
mutton-chop, Sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?" Cries of "No, no!"
resound, and the wretched turn again, and groan. The Philanthropist has
lost the movement of the age,--keeled up in an upper berth, convulsively
embracing a blanket, what conservative more immovable than he? The Great
Man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the
circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end
nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant
forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours. But if you ask
him how he does, he shakes himself as if, like Farinata,--
"avesse l'inferno in gran dispetto,"--
"he had a very contemptible opinion of hell."
Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every
night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole
world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to
chaos, and fearing to launch away. The Captain comes and says,--"It is
true you have a nasty, short, chopping sea hereabouts; but you see, she
is spinning away down South jolly!" And this is the Gulf-Stream!
But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third
day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are
carried up-stairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and
to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge
features and voices,--the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the
thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange
pensive smiles of recognition,--the Steward comes, no fiend this time,
but a ministering angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak
woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends my description of our
sea-sickness.
For, as for betraying the confidences of those sad days, as for telling
how wofully untrue Professors of Temperance were to their principles,
how the Apostle of Total Abstinence developed a brandy-flask, not
altogether new, what unsuccessful tipplings were attempted in the
desperation of nausea, and for what lady that stunning brandy-smasher
was mixed,--as for such tales out of school, I would have you know that
I am not the man to tell them.
Yet a portrait or so lingers in my mental repository;--let me throw them
in, to close off the lot.
No. 1. A sober Bostonian in the next state-room, whose assiduity with
his sea-sick wife reminds one of Cock-Robin, in the days when he sent
Jenny Wren sops and wine. This person was last seen in a dressing-gown,
square-cut night-cap, and odd slippers, dancing up and down the
state-room floor with a cup of gruel, making wild passes with a spoon at
an individual in a berth, who never got any of the contents. Item, the
gruel, in a moment of excitement, finally ran in a stream upon the
floor, and was wiped up by the Steward. Result not known, but
disappointment is presumable.
No. 2. A stout lady, imprisoned by a board on a sofa nine inches wide,
called by a facetious friend "The Coffin." She complains that her sides
are tolerably battered in;--we hold our tongues, and think that the
board, too, has had a hard time of it. Yet she is a jolly soul, laughing
at her misfortunes, and chirruping to her baby. Her spirits keep up,
even when her dinner won't keep down. Her favorite expressions are "Good
George!" and "Oh, jolly!" She does not intend, she says, to lay in any
dry goods in Cuba, but means to eat up all the good victuals she comes
across. Though seen at present under unfavorable circumstances, she
inspires confidence as to her final accomplishment of this result.
No. 3. A woman, said to be of a literary turn of mind, in the
miserablest condition imaginable. Her clothes, flung at her by the
Stewardess seem to have hit in some places, and missed in others. Her
listless hands occasionally make an attempt to keep her draperies
together, and to pull her hat on her head; but though the intention is
evident, she accomplishes little by her motion. She is perpetually being
lugged about by a stout steward, who knocks her head against both sides
of the vessel, folds her up in the gangway, spreads her out on the deck,
and takes her up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, where,
report says, he feeds her with a spoon, and comforts her with such
philosophy as he is master of. N.B. This woman, upon the first change of
weather, rose like a cork, dressed like a Christian, and toddled about
the deck in the easiest manner, sipping her grog, and cutting sly jokes
upon her late companions in misery,--is supposed by some to have been
an impostor, and, when ill-treated, announced intentions of writing a
book.
No. 4, my last, is only a sketch;--circumstances allowed no more. Can
Grande, the great dog, has been got up out of the pit, where he worried
the Stewardess and snapped at the friend who tried to pat him on the
head. Everybody asks where he is. "Don't you see that heap of shawls
yonder, lying in the sun, and heated up to about 212° Fahrenheit? That
slouched hat on top marks the spot where his head should lie,--by
treading cautiously in the opposite direction you may discover his feet.
All between is perfectly passive and harmless. His chief food is
pickles,--his only desire is rest. After all these years of controversy,
after all these battles, bravely fought and nobly won, you might write
with truth upon this moveless mound of woollens the pathetic words from
Père la Chaise:--_Implora Pace_."
But no more at present, for land is in sight, and in my next you shall
hear how we found it, and what we saw at Nassau.