SAN ANTONIO DE LOS BAÑOS.
"Far from my thoughts, vain world, begone!"
However enchanting Havana may prove when seen through the moonlight of
memory, it seems as good a place to go away from as any other, after a
stifling night in a net, the wooden shutters left open in the remote
hope of air, and admitting the music of a whole opera-troupe of dogs,
including Bass, Tenor, Soprano, and Chorus. Instead of bouquets, you
throw stones, if you are so fortunate as to have them,--if not,
boot-jacks, oranges, your only umbrella. You are last seen thrusting
frantic hands and feet through the iron bars, your wife holding you back
by the flannel night-gown which you will persist in wearing in this
doubtful climate. At last it is over,--the fifth act ends with a howl
which makes you hope that some one of the performers has come to grief.
But, alas! it is only a stage _dénouement_, whose hero will die again
every night while the season lasts. You fall asleep, but the welcome
cordial has scarcely been tasted when you are aroused by a knock at the
door. It is the night-porter, who wakes you at five by appointment, that
you may enjoy your early coffee, tumble into a hired _volante_, and
reach, half dead with sleep, the station in time for the train that goes
to San Antonio.
Now, whether you are a partisan of early rising or not, you must allow
that sunrise and the hour after is the golden time of the day in Cuba.
So this hour of starting,--six o'clock,--so distasteful in our
latitudes, is a matter of course in tropical climates. Arriving at the
station, you encounter new tribulations in the registering and payment
of luggage, the transportation of which is not included in the charge
for your ticket. Your trunks are recorded in a book, and, having paid a
_real_ apiece for them, you receive a paper which entitles you to demand
them again at your journey's end. The Cuban railways are good, but
dear,--the charge being ten cents a mile; whereas in our more favored
land one goes for three cents, and has the chance of a collision and
surgeon's services without any extra payment. The cars have windows
which are always open, and blinds which are always closed, or nearly so.
The seats and backs of seats are of cane, for coolness,--hardness being
secured at the same time. One reaches San Antonio in an hour and a half,
and finds a pleasant village, with a river running through it, several
streets of good houses, several more of bad ones, a cathedral, a
cockpit, a _volante_, four soldiers on horseback, two on foot, a market,
dogs, a bad smell, and lastly, the American Hotel,--a house built in a
hollow square, as usual,--kept by a strong-minded woman from the States,
whose Yankee thrift is unmistakable, though she has been long absent
from the great centres of domestic economy.
Mrs. L----, always on the watch for arrivals, comes out to receive us.
We are very welcome, she hints, as far as we go; but why are there not
more of us? The smallest favors should be thankfully received, but she
hears that Havana is full of strangers, and she wonders, for her part,
why people will stay in that hot place, and roast, and stew, and have
the yellow fever, when she could make them so comfortable in San
Antonio. This want of custom she continues, during our whole visit, to
complain of. Would it be uncharitable for us to aver that we found other
wants in her establishment which caused us more astonishment, and which
went some way towards accounting for the deficiency complained of? wants
of breakfast, wants of dinner, wants of something good for tea, wants of
towels, wants of candles, wants of ice, or at least of the cooling jars
used in the country. Charges exorbitant,--the same as in Havana, where
rents are an ounce a week, and upwards; _volantes_ difficult,--Mrs. L.
having made an agreement with the one livery-stable that they shall
always be furnished at most unreasonable prices, of which she,
supposably, pockets half. On the other hand, the village is really cool,
healthy, and pretty; there are pleasant drives over dreadful roads, if
one makes up one's mind to the _volante_, and delightful river-baths,
shaded by roofs of palm-tree thatch. One of the best of these is at the
foot of Mrs. L.'s inclosure, and its use is included in the privileges
of the house. The water is nearly tepid, clear, and green, and the
little fish float hither and thither in it,--though men of active minds
are sometimes reduced to angle for them, with crooked pins, for
amusement. At the hour of one, daily, the ladies of the house betake
themselves to this refreshment; and there is laughing, and splashing,
and holding of hands, and simulation of all the Venuses that ever were,
from the crouching one of the bath, to the triumphant Cytherea,
springing for the first time from the wave.
Such are the resources of the house. Those of the neighborhood are
various. Foremost among them is the _cafetal_, or coffee-plantation, of
Don Juan Torres, distant a league from the village, over which league of
stone, sand, and rut you rumble in a _volante_ dragged by three horses.
You know that the _volante_ cannot upset; nevertheless you experience
some anxious moments when it leans at an obtuse angle, one wheel in
air, one sticking in a hole, the horses balking and kicking, and the
postilion swearing his best. But it is written, the _volante_ shall not
upset,--and so it does not. Long before you see the entrance to the
plantation, you watch the tall palms, planted in a line, that shield its
borders. An avenue of like growth leads you to the house, where barking
dogs announce you, and Don Juan, an elderly gentleman in slippers and a
Panama hat, his hair, face, and eyes all faded to one hue of grayness,
comes out to accost us. Here, again, Hulia Protestante becomes the
subject of a series of attacks, in a new kind. Don Juan first exhausts
his flower-garden upon her, and explains all that is new to her. Then
she must see his blind Chino, a sightless Samson of a Cooly, who is
working resolutely in a mill. "_Canta!_" says the master, and the poor
slave gives tongue like a hound on the scent. "_Baila!_" and, a stick
being handed him, he performs the gymnastics of his country, a sort of
war-dance without accompaniment. "_El can!_" and, giving him a broom,
they loose the dog upon him. A curious tussle then ensues,--the dog
attacking furiously, and the blind man, guided by his barking, defending
himself lustily. The Chino laughs, the master laughs, but the visitor
feels more inclined to cry, having been bred in those Northern habits
which respect infirmity. A _real_ dismisses the poor soul with a smile,
and then begins the journey round the _cafetal_. The coffee-blossom is
just in its perfection, and whole acres in sight are white with its
flower, which nearly resembles that of the small white jasmine. Its
fragrance is said to be delicious after a rain; but, the season being
dry, it is scarcely discernible. As shade is a great object in growing
coffee, the grounds are laid out in lines of fruit-trees, and these are
the ministers of Hulia's tribulation; for Don Juan, whether in kindness
or in mischief, insists that she shall taste every unknown fruit,--and
as he cuts them and hands them to her, she is forced to obey. First, a
little negro shins up a cocoa-nut tree, and flings down the nut, whose
water she must drink. One cocoa-nut she endures,--two,--but three? no,
she must rebel, and cry out, "_No mi gusta!_" Then she must try a
bitter orange, then a sour bitter one, then a sweet lemon, then a huge
fruit of triple verjuice flavor. "What is it good for?" she asks, after
a shuddering plunge into its acrid depths. "Oh," says the Don, "they eat
it in the castors instead of vinegar." Then come _sapotas_, _mamey_,
Otaheite gooseberries. "Does she like bananas?" he cuts a tree down with
his own hand, and sends the bunch of fruit to her _volante_;--"Sugar-cane?"
he bestows a huge bundle of sticks for her leisurely rodentation;--he
fills her pocket with coral beans for her children. Having, at last,
exhausted every polite attention, and vainly offered gin, rum, and
coffee, as a parting demonstration, Hulia and her partner escape,
bearing with them many strange flavors, and an agonizing headache, the
combined result of sun and acids. Really, if there exist anywhere on
earth a Society for the promotion and encouragement of good manners, it
should send a diploma to Don Juan, admonishing him only to omit the
vinegar-fruit in his further walks of hospitality.
We take the Sunday to visit the nearest Sugar-plantation, belonging to
Don Jacinto Gonzales. Sun, not shade, being the desideratum in
sugar-planting, there are few trees or shrubs bordering the
sugar-fields, which resemble at a distance our own fields of Indian
corn, the green of the leaves being lighter, and a pale blue blossom
appearing here and there. The points of interest here are the machinery,
the negroes, and the work. Entering the sugar-house, we find the
_Maquinista_ (engineer) superintending some repairs in the machinery,
aided by another white man, a Cooly, and an imp of a black boy, who
begged of all the party, and revenged himself with clever impertinence
on those who refused him. The _Maquinista_ was a fine-looking man, from
the Pyrenees, very kind and obliging. He told us that Don Jacinto was
very old, and came rarely to the plantation. We asked him how the
extreme heat of his occupation suited him, and for an answer he opened
the bosom of his shirt, and showed us the marks of innumerable leeches.
The machinery is not very complicated. It consists of a wheel and band,
to throw the canes under the powerful rollers which crush them, and
these rollers, three in number, all moved by the steam-engine. The juice
flows into large copper caldrons, where it is boiled and skimmed. As
they were not at work, we did not see the actual process. Leaving the
sugar-house, we went in pursuit of the _Mayoral_, or Overseer, who
seemed to inhabit comfortable quarters, in a long, low house, shielded
from the sun by a thick screen of matting. We found him a powerful,
thick-set man, of surly and uncivil manners, girded with a sword, and
further armed with a pistol, a dagger, and a stout whip. He was much too
important a person to waste his words upon us, but signified that the
major-domo would wait on us, which he presently did. We now entered the
Negro quarter, a solid range of low buildings, formed around a hollow
square, whose strong entrance is closed at nightfall, and its inmates
kept in strict confinement till the morning hour of work comes round.
Just within the doorway we encountered the trader, who visits the
plantations every Sunday, to tempt the stray cash of the negroes by
various commodities, of which the chief seemed to be white bread,
calicoes, muslins, and bright cotton handkerchiefs. He told us that
their usual weekly expenditure amounted to about twenty-five dollars.
Bargaining with him stood the Negro-Driver, a tattooed African, armed
with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the
hive,--the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women
decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over
them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are
no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds
are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw
no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a blanket or coverlet.
From this we turned to the Nursery, where all the children incapable of
work are kept. The babies are quite naked, and sometimes very handsome
in their way, black and shining, with bright eyes and well-formed limbs.
No great provision is made for their amusement, but the little girls
nurse them tenderly enough, and now and then the elders fling them a
bit of orange or _chaimito_, for which they scramble like so many
monkeys. Appeals are constantly made to the pockets of visitors, by open
hands stretched out in all directions. To these "_Nada_"--"Nothing"--is
the safe reply; for, if you give to one, the others close about you with
frantic gesticulation, and you have to break your way through them with
some violence, which hurts your own feelings more than it does theirs.
On _strict_ plantations this is not allowed; but Don Jacinto, like Lord
Ashburton at the time of the Maine treaty, is an old man,--a very old
man; and where discipline cannot be maintained, peace must be secured on
any terms. We visit next the Sugar-house, where we find the desired
condiment in various stages of color and refinement. It is whitened with
clay in large funnel-shaped vessels, open at the bottom, to allow the
molasses to run off. Above are hogsheads of coarse, dark sugar; below is
a huge pit of fermenting molasses, in which rats and small negroes
occasionally commit involuntary suicide, and from which rum is
made.--N. B. Rum is not a wicked word in Cuba; in Boston everybody is
shocked when it is named, and in Cuba nobody is shocked when it is
drunk.
And here endeth the description of our visit to the sugar-plantation of
Don Jacinto, and in good time, too,--for by this it had grown so hot,
that we made a feeble rush for the _volante_, and lay back in it,
panting for breath. Encountering a negress with a load of oranges on her
head, we bought and ate the fruit with eagerness, though the oranges
were bitter. The jolting over three miles of stone and rut did not
improve the condition of our aching heads. Arriving at San Antonio, we
thankfully went to bed for the rest of the morning, and dreamed, only
dreamed, that the saucy black boy in the boiling-house had run after us,
had lifted the curtain of the _volante_, screeched a last impertinence
after us, and kissed his hand for a good-bye, which, luckily for him, is
likely to prove eternal.