THE CAPTURED CITY
We lay at anchor all Sunday night off the foot of the street known as
Calle Baja de la Marina, and early on Monday morning steamed up to the
most spacious and convenient pier in the city, made fast our lines, and
began to discharge cargo. The dock and warehouse facilities of Santiago
are fairly good. They are not so extensive as those of an American
seaport of equal importance, but so far as they go they leave little to
be desired. The pier at which the _State of Texas_ lay was spacious and
well built; an iron tramway ran from it to the customs warehouse, and,
with the help of one hundred stevedores, Mr. Warner, of Miss Barton's
staff, found it possible to unload and store from three hundred and
twenty-five to three hundred and fifty tons of foodstuffs per day. As
soon as the steamer had made fast her lines a great crowd of
forlorn-looking men and children, clothed in the loose, dirty
white-cotton shirts and trousers and battered straw hats which make up
the costume of the lower classes, assembled on the pier to stare at the
newcomers and watch the unloading of the ship. They were of all ages and
complexions, from coal-black, grizzle-headed old negroes leaning on
canes to half-starved and half-naked Cuban children, whose tallowy faces
and distended abdomens were unmistakable evidences of fever and famine.
They were not, as a rule, emaciated, nor did they seem to be in the
last stages of starvation; but the eagerness with which they crowded
about the open ports of the steamer, and watched the bags of beans,
rice, and corn-meal as they were brought out by the stevedores and
placed on the little flat-cars of the tramway, showed that at least they
were desperately hungry. Now and then a few beans, or a few grains of
rice, would escape from one of the bags through a small rip or tear, and
in an instant half a dozen little children would be scrambling for them,
collecting them carefully one by one, and putting them into their hats
or tying them up in their shirt-tails and the hems of their tattered
frocks. In one instance half a bushel or more of corn-meal escaped from
a torn bag and lay in a heap on the dirty pier. One of the prowling
Cuban boys espied it, gathered up a hatful of it, and then looked around
for something in which he could put the remainder. Failing to see
anything that could be utilized as a receptacle, he seemed for a moment
to be in despair; but presently a bright thought flashed into his mind,
and was reflected in his thin, eager, street-Arab face. Taking out of
his pocket two bits of dirty string, he tied his loose cotton trousers
tightly around his ankles, and then, unbuttoning his waist-band, he
began scooping up the corn-meal from the filthy planks and shoveling it
into his baggy breeches. Five minutes later he waddled off the pier in
triumph, looking, so far as his legs were concerned, like a big, badly
stuffed sawdust doll, or a half-starved gamin suffering from
elephantiasis.
As the day advanced, the number of men and children who crowded about
the steamer watching for opportunities to pilfer or pick up food became
so great that it was necessary to clear the pier and put a guard of
soldiers there to exclude the public altogether. Then the hungry people
formed in a dense mass in the street opposite the steamer, and stood
there in the blazing sunshine for hours, watching the little flat-cars
loaded with provisions as they were rolled past to the warehouse. From
an English cable-operator, who came down to the pier, we learned that
for weeks there had been nothing in the city to eat except rice, and
that the supply even of that was limited. Hard-bread crackers had sold
as high as one dollar apiece and canned meat at four dollars a can, and
many well-to-do families had not tasted bread, meat, or milk in more
than a month.
Although there was said to be little or no yellow fever in Santiago, the
captain of the _State of Texas_ decided to quarantine the steamer
against the shore, and gave notice to all on board that if any person
left the ship he could not return to it. This made going ashore a
serious matter, because there was virtually nothing to eat in the city,
and no place for a stranger to stay, and if one cut loose from the
steamer he might find himself without shelter and without any means
whatever of subsistence. We had on board, fortunately, a young American
named Elwell, who had lived several years in Santiago, and was well
acquainted not only with its resources, but with a large number of its
citizens. He said that there was a club there known as the
Anglo-American Club, organized and supported by the foreign merchants of
the city and the English cable-operators. Of this club he was one of the
organizers and charter members, and although it had been closed during
the blockade and siege, it would probably be reopened at once, and with
an introduction from him I could get a room in it. He doubted whether
the steward could give me anything to eat, but I could take food enough
with me to last for a day or two, and as soon as possible arrangements
would be made to supply the club with provisions from the _State of
Texas_. Encouraged by this statement of the possibilities, I decided on
Tuesday morning to abandon the steamer and trust myself to the tender
mercies of the city and the Anglo-American Club. Hastily packing up a
couple of hand-bags, and hiring a ragged, dirty Cuban to carry them and
act in the capacity of guide, I left the ship, elbowed my way through
the crowd of people at the head of the pier, and entered one of the
narrow, ill-paved, and incredibly dirty streets which lead upward from
the water-front to the higher part of the city.
The first impression made by Santiago upon the newcomer in July, 1898,
was one of dirt, disorder, and neglect. It always had the reputation of
being the dirtiest city in Cuba, and at the time of the surrender it was
at its worst. I hardly know how to give an adequate idea of it to one
who is not familiar with Spanish-American cities and architecture, but I
will try. In the first place, the site of the city is the slope of a
hill which falls rather steeply to the water on the eastern side of the
bay. The most important streets, such as Enramadas and Calle Baja de la
Marina, extend up and down the slope at right angles to the water-front,
and are crossed at fairly regular intervals by narrower streets or
alleys running horizontally along the hillside, following its contour
and dipping down here and there into the gullies or ravines which
stretch from the crest of the hill to the shore of the bay. As a result
of the natural configuration of the ground there is hardly a street in
the city that is even approximately level except the wide boulevard
which forms the water-front. The east and west streets climb a rather
steep grade from this boulevard to the crest of the elevation, and the
north and south streets run up and down over the ridges and into the
gullies of the undulating slope, so that wherever one goes one finds
one's self either ascending or descending a hill. The widest streets in
the city--exclusive of the Cristina Boulevard--are hardly more than
thirty feet from curb to curb, and the narrowest do not exceed fifteen.
The pavements at the time of my visit were made of unbroken stones and
rocks from the size of one's fist to the size of a bushel-basket; the
sidewalks averaged from two to three and a half feet in width, and the
gutters were open drains, broken here and there by holes and pockets
filled with decaying garbage and dirty, foul-smelling water. Piles of
mango-skins, ashes, old bones, filthy rags, dung, and kitchen refuse of
all sorts lay here and there on the broken and neglected pavements,
poisoning the air with foul exhalations and affording sustenance to
hundreds of buzzards and myriads of flies; little rills of foul,
discolored water trickled into the open gutters at intervals from the
kitchens and cesspools of the adjoining houses; every hole and crevice
in the uneven pavement was filled with rotting organic matter washed
down from the higher levels by the frequent rains, and when the
sea-breeze died away at night the whole atmosphere of the city seemed to
be pervaded by a sickly, indescribable odor of corruption and decay. I
had expected, as a matter of course, to find Santiago in bad sanitary
condition, but I must confess that I felt a little sinking of the heart
when I first breathed that polluted air and realized that for me there
was no return to the ship and that I must henceforth eat, work, and
sleep in that fever-breeding environment. In a long and tolerably varied
experience in Russia, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and European Turkey, I
have never seen streets so filthy as in some parts of this Cuban city,
nor have I ever encountered such a variety of abominable stenches as I
met with in the course of my short walk from the steamer to the
Anglo-American Club.
The houses and shops which stood along these narrow, dirty streets were
generally one story in height, with red-tiled roofs, high, blank walls
of stuccoed or plastered brick covered with a calcimine wash of pale
blue or dirty yellow, large, heavy plank doors, and equally large,
unglazed windows protected by prison gratings of iron bars and closed
with tight inner shutters. There were no trees in the streets,--at
least, in the business part of the city,--no yards in front of the
houses, no shop-windows for the display of goods, and no windows of
glass even in the best private houses. I cannot remember to have seen a
pane of window-glass in this part of Cuba. The windows of both shops and
houses were mere rectangular openings in the wall, six feet by ten or
twelve feet in size, filled with heavy iron gratings or protected by
ornamental metal scrollwork embedded all around in the solid masonry.
These barred windows, with the heavy plank doors, thick stuccoed walls,
and complete absence of architectural ornament, made the narrow, muddy
streets look almost as gloomy and forbidding as if they were shut in by
long rows of Russian prisons. The natural gloominess of the city, due to
the narrowness of the streets and the character of the architecture, was
heightened at the time of the surrender by the absence of a large part
of the population and the consequent shutting up of more than half the
houses. Thousands of men, women, and children had fled to Caney and
other suburban villages to escape the bombardment, and the long rows of
closed and empty houses in some of the streets suggested a city stricken
by pestilence and abandoned. At the time when we landed there was not a
shop or a store open in any part of Santiago. Here and there one might
see a colored woman peering out through the grated window of a private
house, or two or three naked children with tallowy complexions and
swollen abdomens playing in the muddy gutter, but as a rule the houses
were shut and barred and the streets deserted.
The first pleasant impression that I received in Santiago was made by
the Anglo-American Club. It was situated on a narrow, dirty street
behind the Spanish theater, in a very low, disreputable part of the
city, and did not impress me, at first sight, as being likely to afford
even the ordinary necessaries and comforts of life, much less the
luxuries and conveniences suggested to the mind of a city man by the
word "club." But external appearance in a Spanish-American city is often
deceptive, and it was so in this case. Opposite the rear or stage
entrance of the theater, where half a dozen soldiers of the Ninth
Infantry were cooking breakfast in the street, my ragged Cuban guide
turned into a dark vaulted passage which looked as if it might be one of
the approaches to a jail. "It can't be possible," I said to myself,
"that this damp, gloomy tunnel is the entrance to a club; the guide must
have misunderstood the directions given him."
But the guide was right. At a distance of thirty-five or forty feet from
the street the vaulted passage opened into a paved patio, or court,--a
sort of large, square well,--in the center of which stood a green,
thrifty, broad-leaved banana-tree, fifteen or twenty feet in height.
From the corners of this court, on the side opposite the street
entrance, two broad flights of steps led up to what seemed to be a
hanging garden of greenery and flowers, shut in on all sides by piazzas
and galleries. Climbing one of these flights of steps, I found myself in
a second and higher patio, shaded by large mango-and mamonilla-trees,
brightened by borders of flowering shrubs and plants, and filled with
the fragrance of roses, geraniums, and pomegranate blossoms. The
transition from the heat, filth, and sickening odors of the narrow
street to the seclusion and shady coolness of this flower-scented patio
was as delightful as it was sudden and unexpected. I could hardly have
been more surprised if I had entered what I supposed to be a Siberian
forwarding prison, and found myself in a conservatory of tropical plants
and flowers. Around three sides of the patio were spacious piazzas in
two tiers, and upon these piazzas opened the living-rooms of the
club,--about twenty in number,--like the boxes or stalls in the
galleries of a European theater. On the southern side of the patio was
a large dining-room, and beyond this, occupying the whole width of the
building and overlooking the street from a projecting balcony, was the
reading-room. This was a high, cool, spacious apartment comfortably
furnished with easy-chairs, pictures, maps, hanging book-cases, a big
library table covered with periodicals, and an American piano. The
periodicals were not of very recent date, and the piano was somewhat out
of tune, but I was so delighted with the shady, flower-bordered
courtyard and the comfort and apparent cleanliness of the club as a
whole that I felt no disposition to be hypercritical. To find such a
haven of refuge at all in a city like Santiago was unexpected good
fortune.
To one who is unfamiliar with the distinctive peculiarities of
Spanish-American architecture, nothing, at first, is more surprising
than the contrast between the gloomy and unpromising exterior of a Cuban
residence and the luxury and architectural beauty which one often finds
hidden behind its grated windows and thick stuccoed walls. It is more
surprising and striking in Santiago, perhaps, than in most
Spanish-American cities, on account of the narrowness and filthiness of
the streets on which the houses even of the wealthiest citizens stand.
In the course of the first week that I spent in the city I had occasion
to enter a number of Spanish houses of the better class, and I never
failed to experience a little shock of surprise when I went from what
looked like a dirty and neglected back alley into what seemed to be a
jail, and found myself suddenly in a beautiful Moorish court, paved with
marble, shaded by graceful, feathery palms, cooled by a fountain set in
an oasis of greenery and flowers, and surrounded by rows of slender
stone columns, and piazzas twenty-five feet in width. The wealthy
Spaniard or Cuban wastes no money in beautifying the outside of his
house, because, standing as it does on a narrow, dirty street, it cannot
be made attractive or imposing by any possible method of architectural
treatment; but upon the ornamentation and embellishment of the patio, or
interior court, he lavishes all his taste and skill. The patio of the
Anglo-American Club was not nearly as large and attractive as the
courtyards of private residences on Heredia Street, to which I gained
access later, but as it was the first house of the kind that I had seen
in Cuba, it made a very pleasant impression upon me.
Upon presentation of my introduction from Mr. Elwell, the steward gave
me one of the best rooms in the club, but said that it would be
impossible to furnish me with food until he could get a cook and
servants. The club had been closed for weeks; all of its employees had
fled from the city, and he had been left entirely alone. I told him that
I would try to forage for myself,--at least, for the present,--and that,
if worst should come to worst, I could live two or three days on the
hard bread and baked beans that I had brought with me from the ship.
Refreshing myself with a bath, a cracker of hard bread, and a drink of
lukewarm tea from my canteen, I left my baggage in the steward's care
and set out to explore the city.
The only part of Santiago which then presented anything like a clean and
civilized appearance is that which adjoins the so-called "palace" of the
Spanish governor, on the crest of the hill at the head of Marina Street.
There, around a small, dusty, bush-planted plaza, or park, stand the
governor's residence, the old twin-belfried cathedral, the San Carlos or
Cuban Club, the "Venus" restaurant, the post-office, and a few other
public or semi-public buildings which make some pretensions to
architectural dignity. With the exception of the massive stone
cathedral, however, they are all low, one-story or two-story brick
houses covered with dirty white stucco, and would be regarded anywhere
except in Santiago as cheap, ugly, and insignificant.
In the course of my walk from the club to the plaza I met a few Cuban
negroes in dirty white-cotton shirts and trousers, and half a dozen or
more pale-faced Spanish soldiers, but the streets in that part of the
city seemed to be almost wholly deserted. Beyond the plaza, however, on
Enramadas Street, I began to meet the stream of destitute refugees
returning to the city from Caney, and a more dirty, hungry, sick, and
dejected-looking horde of people I had never seen. When General Shafter
gave notice to the Spanish military authorities that if Santiago were
not surrendered it would be bombarded, fifteen thousand men, women, and
children abandoned their homes and fled, most of them on foot, to
various suburban villages north of the city. Most of these fugitives
went to Caney, where, for nearly two weeks, they camped out in the
streets, suffering everything that human beings can suffer from hunger,
sickness, and exposure. Both General Shafter and the Red Cross made
every possible effort to relieve them by sending provisions to them from
Siboney; but the distance from that base of supplies was fifteen miles
or more over a terrible road, the number of horses and mules available
for transportation was hardly adequate to supply even our own army with
ammunition and food, and the most that could be done for the refugees at
Caney was to keep them from actually starving to death. Hundreds of them
perished, but they died from exposure, exhaustion, and sickness, rather
than from starvation. As soon as Santiago surrendered, these fugitives
began to stream back into the city, and it was the advance-guard of them
that I met on Enramadas Street on Tuesday morning. They represented both
sexes, all ages, all complexions, and all classes of the population,
from poor Cuban or negro women carrying huge bundles on their heads and
leading three or four half-naked children, to cultivated, delicately
nurtured, English-speaking ladies, wading through the mud in bedraggled
white gowns, carrying nothing, perhaps, except a kitten or a cage of pet
birds. Many of them were so ill and weak from dysentery or malarial
fever that they could hardly limp along, even with the support of a
cane, and all of them looked worn, exhausted, and emaciated to the last
degree. Hundreds of these refugees died, after their return to Santiago,
from diseases contracted in Caney, and if it had not been for the prompt
relief given them by the Red Cross as soon as they reached the city,
they would have perished by the thousand. With the aid and cooeperation
of Mr. Ramsden, son of the British consul, Mr. Michelson, a wealthy
resident merchant, and two or three other foreign residents of Santiago,
Miss Barton opened a soup-kitchen on shore, as soon as provisions enough
had been landed from the _State of Texas_ to make a beginning, and
before Tuesday night the representatives of the Red Cross had given
bread and hot soup to more than ten thousand sick and half-starved
people, most of them returned refugees from Caney, who could not get a
mouthful to eat elsewhere in the city, and who were literally perishing
from hunger and exhaustion.