Departing Guests—The Varieties—On Board, but not Gone—No Chimneys—Dog-Pails—Horses’ Tails—Tall Negroes—Ecclesiastical Torch-light Procession—Watchmen—Leaving Havana—In the Country—Stopped—Seeking a Breakfast—A Cuban Village—A Primitive Well—A Peculiar Palm—Guiness—Our Quarters Therein.
Departing Guests—The Varieties—On Board, but not Gone—No Chimneys—Dog-Pails—Horses’ Tails—Tall Negroes—Ecclesiastical Torch-light Procession—Watchmen—Leaving Havana—In the Country—Stopped—Seeking a Breakfast—A Cuban Village—A Primitive Well—A Peculiar Palm—Guiness—Our Quarters Therein.
Monday, March 19th.
ONE by one, our guests have left the hotel. The swarthy Portuguese gentleman whose acquaintance we made on shipboard, and who told us so much of the interiors of Asia and Africa, where he has spent much time. I am meditating the purchase of a camel to take home with me, to ride for health and pleasure. Think of the panic of the unsophisticated people of E—— at seeing a genuine live dromedary, philosophically promenading their streets with the valley on his back populated by your rejoicing and philosophical humble servant. Soon after this departure went the handsome and villainous-looking Russian, whom we suspect to have been a serf, because he told B—— one evening a long story of his feats and difficulties on leaving Russia without a passport. He has travelled all over the world, but in intellect will perpetually live, and irremediably die, a serf. Theyoung, honest-eyed Scotchman, too, who played operas for me all one morning with so much skill and amiability, who has had his throat ventilated by three bullets in three battles, and is travelling—not consequently—for health, is gone to New Orleans. The diamond-labelled widow from Boston, worth an undoubted million, is gone to Matanzas, accompanied by her much-smiling daughter, and the daughter’s blue-nosed governess. The latter should always be seen with the ears, for she talked well. The gentleman with consumption is gone from the adjoining room, so that my nights are no longer made hideous by his sepulchral cough. He goes to the south of France—so expect his wife and daughter—I expect to an ocean grave. Also is departed the dandy from New York, having, like the beast in Daniel’s vision, a mouth speaking great things, but differing from that other biblical beast, the Israelites’ calf, in that the ancient calf wasmadeof ornaments, while this modern one onlywearsthem. The aldermanic Englishman, with ruddy wife, are gone like a comfort from the other end of the table, leaving us to their roast beef and ale. The pretty school-girl and incipient belle from Baltimore, has relieved the parlor atmosphere of the perfumery of her beaux, and the piano of gymnastic or belligerent manipulations extraordinary, but not, alas! unheard of. Indeed, we are left almost alone, for mine hostess declares she is losing money at four dollars per day in gold. Cannot afford it; disinclines any longer to endure the imposition of servants and shopmen—retires to the United States in disgust. Meanwhilethe chamber-maid, having taken a fancy to me, opens for my use the large parlor in front of my bedroom, where I receive friends and reign supreme in a room spacious and lofty enough for a church, and retaining all the odor of sanctity left in it by the Bishop.
This evening we are to pack our trunks, to put on travelling attire, to say good-by to our friends, to fee the servants who have served us, and to take a volante for the steamer to Matanzas; but to say we leave here to-night for Matanzas, would be a choice and especial piece of presumption. I will tell you why. Last Saturday evening, we rehearsed all the above-mentioned performance. Our Havanese friends came to say adieus. Mr. P—— so full of regrets and kind speeches. Mr. M—— sitting by the parlor table, so long writing letters of introduction, that we did not ask for, to his friends in Matanzas, and then hurrying down to see that the state-rooms we had secured in the morning were all right, and to introduce us to the captain. Mr. R—— accepted B——’s invitation to take a seat in my volante. These public volantes never hold more than two, and consequently, B—— paid for his amiability by walking. Nothing doubting, we arrived at the steaming steamer; luggage is unfastened in great haste; we quickly alight, when, forsooth, the steamer does not particularly go to-night, not indeed until Monday next. The wind, it is said, took it in its head this morning to blow a suggestion breath for an hour; a prophetic flash of lightning was supposed to have been seen about four o’clock. Every body takes it as a matterof course, and I am obliged to smother my vexation behind an appearance of amiability.
A few more novelties, before going, I must bequeathe to you and to my memory, putting them in the hands of paper and ink for my safe keeping—then we will have done for the present with Havana. Did you ever think of one curious result of being really a city of the sun, viz., it is a city without chimneys. All the box stoves, and air-tight stoves, and best parlor ditto, were cast, if at all, in the foundry of Jupiter; all the steam and hot-air furnaces, instead of being interred in the cellars, are placed in the topmost garret of all garrets; the great vanity of inventions and ornaments in the shape of fireplaces, grates with their artistic devices, their pretty screens and shades, and the glowing faces and toasting feet before them. All these are snugly built in an architectural niche not made with hands, while their fires are kindled and formed not by the lungs of bellowses, but by the early-rising wings of enterprising angels. Ever since making this discovery I feel quite philosophically inclined to regard the fact that every man, or at any rate every man and a half you meet, carries his household fire about with him, using a cigar for fuel, and his devoted nose for a chimney.
Last night, while passing some highly respectable shops, we saw a pail of water standing in the door of each. B—— said, “Can you guess what those are for?” Of course I could not. He replied, “The law commands them to be provided in every house at certain seasons, so that all dogs may drink whenthey wish, and thus diminish the danger of hydrophobia.”
It is not less curious that horses’ tails are braided by law, a fine following each omission. For aught I know, the law dictates the member of strands in the braid; that it must be done by a governmental barber, greased as if it were human, and always tied, as it is, to the left side of the saddle. This hen-hussy government also directs at what precise age children must cease to be models for statues and become the victims of tailors and dress-makers.
I wonder nobody seems to have observed how remarkably tall the larger number of these negroes are. The women particularly are not only tall and erect, but magnificent in outline, having an eye to which their dresses are exceedingly low in the neck and short in the sleeves. They are absolutely statuesque. The Spanish and Creole ladies look dumpish, I might say dwarfish, beside them.
But the drawback upon all goings forward, the voluminous reiteration of feminine folking, must be performed; and we must again test the frailty of tropical locomotive veracity and steamboat protestations.
Tuesday, 20th.—We simply didn’t go last night because the steamer didn’t; reason not yet transpired. I am becoming so used to these failures of plans and probabilities, that I think nothing would disappoint me now, but a want of disappointment. However, I was not sorry that this last detention gave me an opportunity to witness a very interesting spectacle. A torchlight procession of priests and friars andmourners and friends, to say mass over a dying person. We were first drawn to the balcony by the incessant singing of a peculiarly toned bell, and then we saw them slowly and solemnly marching far below us, down the dark and narrow street, heralded by the strange bell in the hands of one of the novices, and going with devout faith in its absolute efficacy to shrive a human soul—its last earthly help in its last earthly extremity. The effect was much like that of theMisericordiain the cities of Italy, except that you miss here the quaintness and impressiveness of the black or white dominos. I did not care for the superstition; I only felt a profound awe, a solemn sense of mystery and fitness; I only marvelled that people can ever scorn or ridicule any faith that is sincere in heart.
At half-past ten we retired, just as the watchman was commencing his round of duty. Few things are more novel to us than this. The curious whistle is a kind of prelude to the monotonous tone with which he, every half-hour, slowly pacing up and down, lantern and spear in hand, announces the hour of the night and the state of the weather. He keeps a sharp lookout on the weather as well as other vagrants, and clearly feels a responsibility in the matter. I have learned all the words he uses to tell us that the moon is shining, or clouds are obscuring it; if it is cold enough to encourage an extra blanket, or if a norther orséroccois getting the upper hand of things; which hour is giving up the ghost, or which is like a soul “rolling from out the vast.” But I can never comprehend what hesays, the words are so drawled and twisted to suit the tune, which my English ears understand to be musical and not unsuited to a lullaby, and at the same time so many other watchmen in neighboring streets are mingling their echoes and refrains.
Guiness, Wednesday, March 21st.—At last! With the earliest dawning of the dawn we found ourselves actually leaving Havana, and that not by the boat, which it had become our turn to disappoint. How tired the watchmen looked as we passed them! lantern lights burnt out, long ancient looking spears carried listlessly by their sides, the guardianship of the weather left in the hands of the coming Apollo. The busy markets are already open; shopmen unfastening shutters; life beginning to awake and throb through the great body of Havana. Its soul, whether great or small, is scarcely yet awakened into any circulation through the channels of art or literature. The bells are ringing, drums beating, and guns firing, for it is five o’clock. The day is up betimes. Themorningandeveninghere are the first day, and every day. Noon is but a shorter panting, gilded, interluding night, when all sleep who can, and all long for sleep who cannot. But the carriage stops in the midst of an articulating human mass. How it hurries and bustles! how many faces it has, and every one a different variety of brown or a new invention in the shades of black.
Presently the gentlemen come with tickets, separate ones for baggage and passage, and obtained with much difficulty and circumlocution, as the ruleis that baggage must be sent the night before—which ours was not. No sooner are we settled in the cool cane seats than—will you believe it?—a whistle, the modern screech of a steam-whistle, is heard, and we start precisely punctual to the minute. Therefore, I assert, and will maintain that it is conceivable, it is not contrary to all the laws of nature, it is possible for a promise to be kept this side the Tropic of Cancer. But how am I to become reconciled to all this comfort and speed, this steam-engine, this trail insinuating itself so complacently through these celestial plains, snorting and blowing and smoking through these orange-groves, past these waving royal palms, in the midst of sights and sounds such as lulled Eve into slumber upon the bridal night of her birth! O insatiate Yankeedom! with all the lurid sins you have to answer for, will not this alone secure you a life lease in Purgatory? But I have no time for unpatriotic indignation. Fields of belligerent looking pineapples; orchards of bananas twenty feet high, with immense leaves all torn into rags by the wind; groves of cocoa-nuts that look like sentimental palms in delicate health, with the green clustered fruit hanging round their necks like an affectionate necklace; cacti, the prickly pear growing fifteen feet high, and fences of the kinds I have cultivated in pots with so much care; vegetables, familiar and unfamiliar, for the Havana market; everywhere trees of gayest plumage, the blossoms so large and brilliant, that you grow incredulous and wonder if your eyes are not becometelescopic. As you approach the interior, immense corn-fields greet you with their sweetened breath, looking like corn-fields of the Southern States grown delicate and pale from close confinement, a thickened growth that excludes the air.
At nine o’clock the train stops at a village named Bejucal. But for some reason it does not start again. B—— inquires to find we are to remain three hours—some failure in the engine. So we do what nobody else does, walk half a mile under our umbrellas to examine the town and get a breakfast. See if you do not think this a droll sight for American eyes. A village containing over a thousand inhabitants, every house in it, except the church, of one high story, roofed with large red earthen tiles, built of stone covered with clay or plaster, and painted in all possible colors that are bright. Not a pane of glass visible, all the immense windows being only grated and then filled with idle, staring women and naked children. Every house opens directly upon the sidewalk; and in the whole extent of streets, gardens, and courtyards, here in this land of miraculous vegetation, not a tree to be seen. But I have no eyes or curiosity left. I am one huge unreconciled appetite.
We stop at a house with larger rooms, larger windows, and larger basements than the rest; where rows of breakfast-tables, each with a caster in the centre and a tall black wine-bottle on either side, promise a drop, possibly a mouthful, of comfort to the perishing inner woman. But the tablecloths!Even my great hunger hasn’t stomach for them all, overlaid and underlaid as they are
“With food-prints that perhaps another,Sitting o’er their various stain,A forlorn and famished sisterSeeing still might eat again.”
“With food-prints that perhaps another,Sitting o’er their various stain,A forlorn and famished sisterSeeing still might eat again.”
“With food-prints that perhaps another,Sitting o’er their various stain,A forlorn and famished sisterSeeing still might eat again.”
Not so I. Consequently a private room is ordered with a breakfast in it, and while preparing to fill up the vaccuum, not of the within, we sally out for a reconnoitre. Just at the back door, we stumble upon—you do not guess?—a veritable theatre,—boxes, galleries, pit, stage with decorations for scenes, painted curtains, trap-door opening upon the prompter’s den, and niches properly placed for footlights. But the boxes are only stalls with rough board partitions, the seats are wooden benches, the galleries are an upper loft still retaining remnants of former hay, the floor is of mother earth unmodified by pavement or broom, and in fact we have every evidence that this temple is devoted to horses and oxen by day, and to the muse of the histrionic art by night. But this aching void which nature has the good sense to abhor! “Will breakfast never be ready? It is eleven o’clock! I wish I hadn’t seen the tablecloths.” Ah, here comes an agile quadroon announcing it in Spanish, which does not get itself translated. We go to a little bedroom from which a cot has been hastily ejected, and sit down to a table loaded with fresh fruits of great variety and abundance, in addition to the usual bountiful breakfast of the country, and, best of all, clean linen under them. You are right: we revel,we luxuriate, and to this hour I sit and think of that breakfast with a gastronomic satisfaction none the less because we paid five dollars for it. We are now ready for any adventure at the disposal of the remaining hour, and set out for the ruins of an old castle said to have been built by the Marquis de San Phillippi and honored by the presence of King Ferdinand VII. at a ball, while he wasincognitoin this country. Now the walls are crumbling to dust; one or two window-shutters flap disconsolately in the wind, parasitic plants grow over the mouldering arches where a dead past sleeps its sleeps and dreams its dreams.
The church, Moorish in architecture, is just across the Plaza, and invites, but the sun threatens, and we decide for a tempting grove near the railway station.
As we walk over the very clean pavement, stared at by wondering groups of villagers, a woman rushes up to us breathlessly explaining that she knows where the English person who lives here is to be found, and will be very willing to show us the way.
Mr. S—— thanks her, with the assurance that we are only waiting for the train; and we soon find ourselves reclining beatifically under deliciously breathing trees, whose shadows are thick as night with darkness.
I must not forget to mention a primitive kind of well we saw when againen route. It was like an ordinary well: an old white horse walking away from it when the bucket was full and backing to itafter it was emptied into the cask on the cart, and must go down for more.
We came also for the first time upon a peculiar species of palm, distinguishable from the royal palm only by an enormous swelling half way up the trunk. I pronounced them dropsical. B—— was more brilliant, declaring they resembled a snake, that had fallen into the misfortune of swallowing a toad,—an idea which Mr. S—— developed in a drawing which I copied and am saving to show you. Very many of these singular trees grow crookedly—vegetable leaning towers suggesting the idea that a variation from the perpendicular may be peculiarly incident to trees as well as tropical towers and morality.
It is an interesting fact that instead of undressing with the indelicate precipitancy of our trees at home, the palm-tree drops only one leaf every lunar month,—a replenishing of its wardrobe which is dignified as well as rhythmical.
On the subject of palms I find authors in Cuba again inaccurate. It is asserted that they are of no use, when it is true that of all the several hundreds of varieties found on the island every one is useful. A gentleman who has lived here in the country many years says, “They are the most useful tree we have.” They give food to animals, thatches to roofs, brooms to housemaids, cords to tobacconists, hats to men, besides being used for numerous other purposes.
The young palm often reminds one of an overgrown aquatic weed; very many resemble a giganticpencil-case, the trunk quite straight and equal until you approach the top, where it suddenly diminishes, looking loose as if it would shove up and down like the pencil point.
Arrived at Guiness, the volante does not come as we expected from the plantation where we are invited to spend a week or more. We go—not to afonda, for they are usually only miserably dirty inns, but to a private boarding-house, with which Mr. S—— is already acquainted. Here we find what we have so much desired—a characteristic Cuban house with characteristic Creole customs, although our landlord is a fat, good-natured Frenchman, and his wife a tall, stately, imposing negress. Her history is a little interesting. A sister of hers had a daughter, whose father was a wealthy Spaniard, and who sent her to Paris to be educated. Soon after she died, leaving this aunt $10,000, with which she purchased her freedom, and, I conjecture, the French husband.
As we enter the door, large enough for a camel, she greeted us with a hospitable smile and graceful bow, at the same time motioning us to sit in the row of rocking-chairs standing accurately in front of the huge window. I am told that unlike ordinary parallel lines these have been known to absolutely meet. If I do not mistake, the occasion is apt to be when an appreciative señor finds a pretty Creole for avis-à-vis.
The house is a fac-simile of nearly all these houses. Massive stone, directly upon the street. It is of one high story; tiles keep out the heat; thepointed roof and bare rafters inside giving a bare-like effect, which the brick-paved floor tries to counteract, and the enormous doorways to maintain.
A curtain with curious embroidery at the bottom conceals this door which separates thissalafrom my chamber. There I find plenty of finest linen and the clean odor which should always sanctify bedrooms. Canvas stretchers across the cot-like bedsteads make a delightfully cool and clean mattress. Carefully embroidered pillow-cases endeavor to excite our admiration, and brightly colored pictures of saints and martyrs on the wall, our devotion.
At three comes a Spanish jumble of sounds which mean, “Dinner is ready.” We walk out on a back piazza, overlooking the pretty courtyard with its shrubs and flowers, while we are sheltered from the sun by thickly-growing and blossoming vines.
Our chairs are a curious kind of wooden frame covered with some sort of hairy skin stretched tightly across the back and bottom; our floor is of clean cement; our soup is colored a bright yellow with saffron; our fish is fresh and white from the Carribean Sea; our rice is pearls set in sweet oil; our green peas have lost their identity by the same process; our water—unlike the quality of mercy—is strained, and through a filter; while our beef, like all the beef we have found in Cuba, is suspiciously dark and tough. Yet we have faith, remembering that the colored bipeds are much higher in the market than the quadrupeds. In addition to all this,our table is loaded with nondescript dishes of Creole names and ingenuity, and all are ranged in one stiff row down the middle of the table. Opposite me sits a Creole gentleman who has not only belonged to the army (it has been asserted that Creoles are not permitted to enter the army in any capacity), but has been an officer in Spain. We strike up a conversation in French, and imagine my admiration for the flexibility of his politeness, when he inquires how long I lived in Paris. Between dessert and coffee he leaves the table to smoke, apologizing to Mr. S—— by saying he is so much of a Spaniard that he must smoke before taking coffee, and he does not like to do it at the table in the presence of an American lady.
I confess it made me feel a little peculiar to see our French landlord sitting complacently at the head of the table with his bona-fide negro wife standing as complacently behind his chair to serve us.
After dinner I am attracted to the water-filter standing in one corner. It is a large moss-covered porous stone, with a cavity in the top where the water and charcoal are placed; the water creeping through the stone drop by drop, into the vessel below. I wish I could remember the name of the island where it is found, and, indeed, of which it is the foundation.
A Palm-grove—A Planter’s Household—Coolies as compared with Negroes—Anecdotes of Coolies—Robbers—Heterogeneous Dinner—Creole Politeness.
A Palm-grove—A Planter’s Household—Coolies as compared with Negroes—Anecdotes of Coolies—Robbers—Heterogeneous Dinner—Creole Politeness.
Thursday, March 22d.
THIS morning comes intelligence that death has occurred in the family of the owner of the plantation and that his sister is become insane. Our visit there is necessarily abandoned. However, we are not uncomfortable in our present quarters, and its independence reconciles us to the disappointment; for you must know a Cuban planter would as soon think of taking pay for the air and sunshine you breathe in his house as for any amount of board, lodging, or attendance he might give you.
To-day, we discovered an inviting grove of palms just outside the town, and, unwisely careless of the threatenings of the sun, set out to find them. They looked very near, over the tops of the houses, and so tall that, like vegetable Mother Gooses, they seemed to be “sweeping the cobwebs from the sky,” but, as we walk on, seem to recede farther and farther. The sun waxes and waxes; our fatigue becomes exhaustion; but we find, as did Macbeth, that to return is as difficult as to go on; so on we go—melt—utterly dissolve—until, at last, we reach a lovelygarden, and with permission from the major domo, drop down upon the roots of a tree in the midst of many of the best fruit and ornamental trees of the country. Was there ever shade so profound, perfumes so delicious, orange-trees so dark-leaved and bright-fruited!
The ground around us is covered with a great variety of fallen fruits of which we do not even know the names. They are left quite at the mercy of various fat, black, lazy, meandering pigs that at first look to you like overgrown rats—for, like all the hogs of Cuba, they are entirely without bristles, as smooth-shaven as if just from the razor of the barber.
Presently, we discover a little house behind the trees, apparently unoccupied. The same idea occurs to us all at once—if we could get it to live in while we remain. We go for the major-domo, who conducts us inside. Rude enough, indeed, for the most rural or romantic tastes, and with eight great black—so black that you could not see them—negroes sitting in the middle of the middle room. They are all dressed in spots; that is, a few rags still cling, by chance, or by preternatural adhesion, to different parts of the body; and all are busily filling some sort of a demijohn with a kind of black bran much grown and used here. Not too inviting, certainly, neither, is the stifling, annihilating walk before us, in a sun whose furnace is heated seven times hotter than before. We survive, I could never tell how, to find that the dinner at home has scarcely survived an hour’s waiting for us, and I go to rest till soup and fish are over.
Immediately after dinner, a Chinaman rides up to the door, leading three horses. A friend of Mr. S——, a sugar planter, hearing of our arrival, sends the horses, with an invitation for us to visit his estate. So soon as habited, I select the horse that wears the side-saddle. He starts off at once in the delightful and peculiar gait of Creole horses,—not an ornamental one, as I somewhere said before, but well suited to the climate, perhaps a result of it,—an amble, giving exhilarating exercise, without fatigue.
The plantation is but a league distant, and very soon the tall white chimneys and low roofs reveal our saccharine destination. Flocks of decently dressed and moderately happy-faced negroes and coolies are at work in the corn-fields. As we pass on an odor as of nice sweet cake while in the progress of baking greets us from the boiling sugar, with a savory familiarity; then a glimpse through the trees of blue walls and red tiles suggests the family mansion.
What can be so fresh and peaceful as that pretty, low, rambling house, nestled in among the greenery, with the huge trees behind it giving that background so indispensible to beauty in houses, while on all sides stranger varieties of trees, flowers, and shrubs breathe upon us the sweetness of their welcome!
Our hostess, a charming lady from the United States, living here twenty years, meets us on the piazza with a graceful hospitality. The gentlemen go to the sugar-house oringenio, which yields anincome of from seventy-five to a hundred thousand per year, with two hundred and fifty negroes and coolies to perform the work. I am taken into the grounds and gardens by Mrs. D—— and her son; where among all that is new I find a great variety of cactuses, many twenty or thirty feet high; ripe oranges, perfectly green in color; mignionette and allspice trees; tall trees of blooming oleanders; also cape jasmines and the night-blooming cereus.
We talk much of the coolie system. Although less amiable than negroes, Mrs. D—— prefers them on account of their superior activity, ingenuity, and intelligence. Nearly all of them can read and write, and have some proficiency in arithmetic and geography. Beside being very passionate, they consider their persons sacred: many of them would die rather than endure any bodily chastisement. Several murders have occurred on this plantation among them, but we learned on the way home that Mr. D—— had the matter hushed up in some way to save their lives and his money. To illustrate the character of these antipodes of ours: A celestial in Havana, supposing himself detected in a theft, confessed his guilt to the unsuspecting owner of the property, also a Chinaman, who at once tied his hands behind his back and commenced leading him through the streets backward. The authorities stopped this, to the great indignation of the persecutor, because he could not do as people always did in his own country. But the companions of the thief all deserted him, refused to eat, sleep, or speak with him, not on account of his guilt, but of thebodily degradation he had suffered, and the next morning in despair he went and hanged himself. Mr. R—— told me of a cook of his (they make the best cooks in the world) who was attacked by a disease for which the doctor, fearing it to be infectious, sent him to the hospital. While there he was attended by the noble Sisters of Charity, of whose unselfish though sometimes mistaken devotion I hear so much. When he was cured one of the nuns said to Mr. R——, “Do take care of him, for he is a good Christian; and as he desired it, we have baptized him.” Afterwards his master, knowing so well the tenaciousness of the idolatry of the Chinese, said to him, “How come it that you were baptized?”—“Oh,” said the fellow, “my head was very hot, and I thought I would let them put a little water on to cool it.” Thiswasbeing Cooley!
A little event has just occurred on our plantation, from which I am wandering. One of the laborers, a Chinaman, it is suspected (because the negroes are such cowards), threw into one of the wheels of the machinery an iron bolt of some sort to prevent its operation, and so give them all a holiday. The master, not being able to discover the offender, forced them all to work harder than ever through the week, and all the following Sunday.
But night is coming on and we must go in spite of urgent invitations to remain, and many expressed regrets from our kind hostess that her house is already too full of visitors to admit us permanently, and so, promising to “Come soon and spend the day,” we encounter the darkness, and I many misgivingsof possible robbers. And why should I not? The country, from all accounts is full of them. Everybody goes armed. Not one man do you meet, from the elegant señor down to the stupidest negro, without pistols in his saddle and a long sword at his side, which I always see brushing against the hedges as they ride in the country, or rattling on the pavement as they walk in town.
My fears are somewhat quieted by the assurance that nobody accompanied by a lady has ever been attacked or in all probability will be, an assurance more interesting than convincing, it must be confessed. However, somewhat armed and strengthened by my weakness, we ride through the bristling hedges and star-lighted air until tremor is forgotten in the sweet enchantment of the scene, and we are sorry to see the lights of Guiness rising one by one out of the darkness.
Friday, March 23d.—These people have unquestionably the most heterogeneous tastes in the world. At dinner to-day I counted ten dishes entirely new to me,—all but two, intricate complications of flesh, fish, or fowl, but mostly of vegetables, compounds which no ingenuity of chemist could hope to resolve back to their elements. How think you, is unsophisticated American digestion to make terms with this marked array? How not to disappoint the attentive hostess who expects you to encounter them all unflinchingly, and end them, not yourself, victoriously?
During dinner we happened to mention our intention of procuring horses and riding twice a day insearch of adventures and an appetite, when what does a polite Creole opposite do but offer me the use of his own horse as long as I stay: it is in Matanzas and he will be only too happy to send for it.
I found my French useful to decline and to express thanks more ample than the Spanish “gracias.”
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"Nice pretty House in the Country”—Wrong Side of the Horse—Discovery in Mental Photography—Visit to the Country House—Not to be obtained—Contrast of Palms and Bamboos—The Youth of Tropical Nature—A Remarkable Phenomenon—House of the Marquise of V——“Le Armistad”—Burial of an Officer’s Child—A Shock—“Cafetal”—“La Providencia”—A Sugar Plantation—The “Royal Highway”—A Grand View.
"Nice pretty House in the Country”—Wrong Side of the Horse—Discovery in Mental Photography—Visit to the Country House—Not to be obtained—Contrast of Palms and Bamboos—The Youth of Tropical Nature—A Remarkable Phenomenon—House of the Marquise of V——“Le Armistad”—Burial of an Officer’s Child—A Shock—“Cafetal”—“La Providencia”—A Sugar Plantation—The “Royal Highway”—A Grand View.
THIS evening comes Mr. S—— from Father P——, full of a nice pretty house we are to get in the country. Immediately a horse resembling an overgrown rat is procured, warranted amiable with ladies, and we prepare for investigation.
Imagine my dismay when about to mount, to find the side-saddle turned to the right of the horse instead of the left. It is indeed the ordinary style of this extraordinary country. I remember seeing ladies in long, white habits, riding in this way in the suburbs of Havana, quite at ease, and unsuspicious of the droll figure they were making. I have, however, seen or been told that ladies in the south of Europe are taught both modes of riding, still, Iam not inclined to try a new horse in a new manner; so, after a change of saddles, we find ourselves sailing off in the stereotyped gait of the Cuban horse, than which nothing can be more safe, or less calculated for the display of horsewomanship. The scene is exquisite; we could ask no change in “the day, the place, the hour, the sunshine and the shade,” except that one might excuse the low, red afternoon sun from peering up so inquisitively as it does under one’s eyelids.
How dense and massive are these great cactus hedges on either side of the road! and how their fierceness is softened or masked by thick vines creeping and penetrating everywhere, with blossoms and perfumes in their hands!
My equestrian experiences continually reimpress upon me a discovery I am making in the philosophy of mental photography of scenery.
Riding towards the east is far more inspiriting than going towards the west. Travelling to the south is equally more cheering than to the north. I find that western views, however intrinsically beautiful, have in them an accent of sadness, of departure, of farewells. It is there that the sun, and moon, and stars go down to be buried, leaving behind them a consciousness that all bright and fair and tender things must also drop into a night of death.
Eastern views, on the contrary, however rude and desolate, are yet seen and beautified through an atmosphere of hope. A sweet sense of promise always comes up from under the orient; there is aninherent life and light in it that no stalking shades can terrify.
Northern views, though outwardly full of grace and beauty, have always about them a haunting desolation. You think only of those “thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,” with no heart beating under the ribs, no blood in the veins, no kindling in the fixed eye. You fall into shivering reveries about the unbending attitude of those hyperborean scenes, wondering if it is their backbone, the north pole that keeps them there forever, so stiff and stark. You see those ice fields inhabited mostly by the longing looks, the gasping yearnings of lost souls who are condemned to burn forever in flames that do not purify or consume.
But southern views, though they may be insipid or uncouth in material form and feature, are always sweet with the very soul of passion and poetry. They cry out for you in advance to all sorrow and hopelessness and death,—
“Avaunt thy miscreated front.”
“Avaunt thy miscreated front.”
“Avaunt thy miscreated front.”
But the low roofs and bright walls of the house we are seeking have discovered us through the trees.
We enter the long, straight avenue of palms interspersed with laden orange-trees, and are met at the door, not by simply themayoral, as we had expected, but by the son of the proprietor who, contrary to our information, lives here with his family.
We are shown to thesala, the living and dining-room combined. Here sits the pretty, pale mistress sewing on little dresses, while her child of two yearstotters up to meet us, three large fourths of her comfortable little brown delicious form visible.
Our errand is of course baffled, but we sit talking until the host invites us to visit the grounds. They are large, cultivated with great care and watered by a kind of inundation. Numbers of exotic fruits are shown us among others, well grown American apples, which it has been said, like peaches, will not grow in the tropics. Think of apples nearly ripe in the month of March!
After having made our adieus we turn our horses’ heads towards the wild, primitive-looking forest across the plantation. Directly we find a serpentine path through the dark, rich, reddish-brown soil, the only soil in which oranges and many other tropical fruits will grow; which stains the men’s feet who work in it, or shoes if they have them; browns the oxen, carts, everything that it touches; and which is grateful as “music after howling,” to sun-dazzled eyes.
I have not before been so much impressed by the exquisite contrast of palms and bamboo-trees growing together. The strange, sombre palm, with its erect, uncompromising trunk, its long, straight, dark leaves, looking so doric, so rich in individuality, and then, nestled quite under its very shadow, you often see a clump of the slender willowy, delicate bamboo, its pale green leaves, so soft and fine and feathery. It is the vegetable masculine and feminine attraction. Or it is not unlikely that a stern warrior, and an ethereal post would be drawn together by the same contrasts.
As the path narrows and the forest thickens, these dull things are obscured by densely woven vines, which everywhere hover over these trees, making the forests at times so dense, that it must be a very small bird or breeze to get through them: as for a man, he might as well attempt to wedge his way into the future before the present has cut a way for him.
But we do not care to have night shading these shadows with her black crayons, and so, at the first opening, turn our horses’ heads, and amble homeward, beneath the thrillings of those great ardent hearts up in the blue bosom of the sky; those stars so large and fair that we need no astronomer to suggest that it is only distance which keeps them from being suns.
Saturday, 24th.—When we had drunk the delicious coffee and milk, or, more accurately, milk and coffee, which our landlady brings so soon as we are awake, or should be, we hurried off for the early ride.
What can be more fresh and innocent, more externally young, than this tropical nature! She is a robust Titaness, it is true, but always out of her strong comes forth sweetness, and no riddle either. How readily she justifies the taste which decks her in these early mornings with all her jewels! And then she is so tender, so peaceful, so serene. Her tears, thank heaven, like those of infants, are not tears of sorrow. Her tempests, tornadoes, and straits of passion have been studiously kept from us. It is true one misses that “sense of promiseeverywhere” with which our Northern springs console their sweet virgin hearts, for nature is always here in her fruition of beauty; “her every future is already in her every present.” “The world,” says Plato (and he knows), “is God’s epistle to mankind.” Here the manuscript is written in a large, generous hand; the ink flowed freely; the thoughts are largely outlined.
Even the people, in spite of numerous reports of robberies, have almost universally an innocent and amiable expression of countenance and the most unoffending, respectful way in the world. Even the horses, I am constantly assured, are never vicious. A lady might ride at random any of the native species with safety. It may be that an habitual and contented indolence is largely among the causes, but it strikes me that harmlessness is the most apparent characteristic of these children of the sun.
I must have forgotten to tell you of a remarkable phenomenon which we met every morning coming in to market from the country, or already arrived when we leave. It moves like an animal; its physiognomy is that of a vegetable. The first thing you see advancing upon you is a huge heap of corn-stalks, called fodder, I think, at home, and mollacca here. It is very high above, and trails upon the ground below. By careful examination, you may discover at one end of it a muzzled appearance resembling a horse’s head; from the other extremity dangles a possible appendage you would declare to be his tail, while sometimes, by careful scanning and difficultinvestigation, you may count four feet under the thing, upon which it seems to move. Sometimes, eight or ten of these mysterious apparitions are fastened in a procession by a rope, pace slowly along with one negro to drive or conduct it, often sitting astride on the top of this superstructure. After many investigations, I venture to affirm that the framework of this architecture is actually a horse buried, yet alive and doing well. It would also have amused you to see the great sun-umbrellas nearly all these countrymen carry on horseback; not of the dark orthodox colors, but a bright light red alternated with blue or yellow, tipped with black, or purple bordered with green: an attempt to eclipse the sun in more ways than one.
After breakfast we with our umbrellas walked over to accept the invitation of Father M—— to see his garden, or rather the garden in the courtyard of the Marquis of V——, in whose vacant house the priest lives alone and free of expense. Finding that he had not yet returned from morning mass, we took the liberty of avoiding the scorching sun of the garden by rambling through the great deserted corridors, chambers, and antechambers, all built and furnished in Spanish style and only occupied, like most of the great houses out of the cities, one or two months of every year. Presently, after I had duly ensconced myself to rest in one corner of a sofa behind the door of the grand drawing-room, came in the priest, jolly as the priests of romance, saluting us with a stunning volley of Spanish and politeness; wereplying in smiles and nods which Mr. S—— did not translate, and in English, which he did. The reverend father is a short man even for a Creole, and when sitting suggests the form of a pyramid; but the little twinkling gray eyes situated near the apex of the structure suggested anything rather than the sepulchral. After we had seen and duly admired some of the frescoes in the rooms and all the distant views from different upper piazzas and windows, the priest, with the air of one who is doing you an uncommon favor, invited us to visit his sanctum. I put on a look of becoming gravity and awe, and, with a feeling of profound grief at my ignorance of the mysteries of science, and, alas! of art and theology, and with profound gratification that there are some works, even in Cuba, where science and wisdom find refuge, where learning and piety shake hands, I follow the father and the gentlemen follow me.
We enter a dark, long passage leading to this cell of midnight vigils and occult research; the door slowly opens, I reverently enter upon—heaps of tinsel leaves and flowers, with scissors and glue and all the paraphernalia for flower-making; piles of bouquets lie on the bed, all with silver leaves exactly alike, and each one with a brick-red rose in the centre. They are to decorate the church on Easter Sunday; they are the only proofs of piety and science and lore that the sanctum of our jolly priest possesses.
After dinner, Father M—— came in, bringing a gentleman who said we could have a house of his in the country. We go at once on our horses, to find a river of remarkably clear and pure water runningbehind the house among the trees, all most inviting; but the house is wretchedly dilapidated, kitchen to be built, and, withal, a Creole overseer is to occupy one half of it. Thus nonplussed, we resign all thought of a permanent location in the country, and decide to spend our time in travelling over the island so soon as the interest of Guiness is exhausted.
From this place we ride to Le Armistad, theingenioof Mr. D——, our first Guiness friend, with the hope of getting someguirappaor cane-juice to drink. It is said to have remarkable fattening as well as curative power. But the machinery is silent, the chimneys are smokeless, the odor of nice sweet cake only regales the nostrils of the memory; and so, redisappointed, we turn again toward home, and ride through the hedges by the light of a Venus that has a halo as distinct as you may have seen around the moon. Instead of fast horsemen with dangling sword and pistol-equipped saddle, we only meet sleepy-looking market-men returning home astride the collapsed panniers, which in the morning bulged at each side of their horses like huge saddle-bags, stuffed with all kinds of fruits or poultry, and these poor horses would think themselves fortunate if fruits and ducks and chickens were all that is packed upon their devoted backs. Not only all the fodder and charcoal go to town in this way, but I saw this morning four exhausted-looking creatures wilting along through the mid-day sun with chairs, tables, and bedsteads, piled high upon their backs, and sometimes a good-for-nothing-lookingnegro mounted on the top of all openly rejoicing in that “bad eminence.”
Sunday, March 25th.—Awoke too late and too weary for early mass this morning. Immediately after breakfast I was attracted to the window by martial music and a procession. The landlady came in, saying it was the burial of an officer’s child. First came the musicians, mulattoes with handsome serious faces; after them boys in the dress of novices, then the priests in robes. But no relatives or mourners were to be seen, for the immediate friends of the dead never go to the burial, do not leave their houses on these occasions. It is not considered decent or appropriate anywhere on the island. One is constantly impressed with the truth that geographical nearness has little to do with real nearness. All the customs of this country ally it much more nearly to Europe than to America.
I stood looking carelessly on at the long procession, with only curiosity excited, when I am attracted by the peculiarly sad and solemn and tender expression in the faces of the soldiers who follow. I see tearful eyes turned toward the centre of the group. I look—what an apparition! Never shall I forget the shock, the thrill, the agony of the sight. Upon an open litter carried in the hands of these soldiers it lay, the little angel face of rarest possible loveliness, wreathed with flowers that are pale and fair, but not so fair and pale as itself. The little dead hands full of white flowers are raised and clasped in a supplicating attitude, the little heavenly form, just the fatal and familiar size, is robed in a trailingwhite satin shroud, and over this unearthly vision shines the burning sun with mocking glare, and upon it stare the passers-by with indifferent faces through which no broken heart has ever looked. But with this wonderful image some mother’s soul at home is blackened, with this wonderful image the blackness of the grave will be brightened. Ah, that grave! It will hold another dead infant upon its heart,but it will give back none in return!
March 26th.—Again this morning from bed to horse for a little free air, a little hour to enjoy this wonderfully sweet and delicious nature before the sun begins his reign of tyranny, and, to all who have the temerity to encounter his personal presence, reign of terror.
Among untried points of the compass, we remember due south as one. Here we very soon find ourselves and the road entering upon a long avenue formed by hedges that have grown to trees, often meeting over our heads. These are filled with birds and flowers of all songs and perfumes; through them we catch glimpses of scattered cocoa-nut groves and wide cane-fields.
Presently we come upon a high, ornamented, close-locked gate, the first of the kind we have seen, and as unlike a sketch I made of it as a pretty gate must almost be to a bad drawing of it. On approaching more nearly we find written upon it “Cafetal.” We look over the side fence and discover a wide avenue of palms leading to the concealed house, and on both sides the pretty coffee-plant, with its small, dark-green leaves. All overthe wide fields it is growing under the shade of a great variety of trees,—the cocoa-nut, orange, palm etc.; for you must know the coffee-plant has the feminine peculiarity of always needing shelter and protection, as well as of causing palpitations, exhilarations, trepidations, and nervousness generally.
What a shame and sin it was to turn all these shady, poeticalcafetalsinto horridingenioswith their treeless, monotonous, endless fields of cane, their dreary smoking chimneys, their steaming engines, and broiling machinery of men and women!
In the perpetual battles between gold and beauty, it is likely, I fear, the latter will not win until it has the millennium for an ally.
As we were turning away from the closed gate, a huge piece of midnight, bungled into human shape, and dressed, or rather undressed, so as to display the herculean proportions of the entire morning and evening of his body, having the noon in eclipse, came up to us, holding out an immense charcoal paw, accompanied by a beseeching jumble of chopped Spanish.
B—— put in it a piece of silver, which the black-meat looked at so contemptuously as to quite spoil his attempt at a civil “gracias.”
Evening.—We ventured to penetrate the inviting avenue of this morning; found it leads to the beautifulCafetalof “La Providencia.” The grounds lovely, with overgrown ornamental trees and shrubs, and pretty brook of rural and domestic habits. Just beyond we met the administrator with his wife and sister, returning on horseback from the “south side.” where we had much wished to extend our own ride. Theproswhy we should go are:—this is just the season for the sea-cow; they are being caught in large numbers, and I am positively assured by those who should know, that they are the real original mermaid—the prosaic suggestion of all the romantic ballads and traditions. But theconsthat confront our enthusiasm are mostly the roads, which are so bad as to be dangerous; the horses we met had been almost buried in the mud, and it is a severe test of the strength of the most vigorous person. So we yield to the urgencies of that wretched bugbear, invalidism, and, finally, to the invitation of the party, to go back with them to the house. Here we are urged to remain to dinner, which is waiting in the large living-room where we sit, but the sun is already set, and we excuse ourselves, accepting at last some fruit and a glass ofguirappa.
By the time we have passed the grounds night is lapping over the edge of day without any perceptible clasp of twilight. And those hedges so high and thickly woven! The starlight scarcely contrives to get through them. How easily an army of robbers might conceal there and rush upon us, unarmed as we are, and the darkness robbing us of our only protection—my sex, and its weakness and appeal to gallantry. Our horses even instinctively press close to each other and quicken their pace. But the darkness, or the invisible hand and heart that fashion it, protects us safely home. Here we are just in time for the usual evening music on the plaza, a pretty square in the heart of the little town,made and ornamented by concha, with much taste and expense. It is like all the plazas I have seen, an imitation of the one at Havana; with exactly four palm-trees, with shrubs and flowers and statues; with small bilious-looking men, and belles with regular oriental features, soft and dark eyes, fat forms, pretty ball dresses, and an awkward mode of progression which they fancy is walking.
Tuesday, 27th.—To-day we explored our way to a new sugar plantation, the first I have seen where the cane is ground by oxen instead of the usual steam-engine. I have always pitied those poor oxen and horses pacing round and round in the mill, round and round with the rounding months and years; but these wretched beings who drive them, with long whips or rather poles in their hands, calling out to the long train of animals at every step, as they follow them, in hideous monotonous, guttural tones that never end; fifty in number, all young and mostly females; night and day, day and night; and several overseers with the invariable long whip in hand to watch at every step,—it made me heart-sick, and glad enough to turn from the entrance of the building, where we sat on our horses, and ride up to the house of themayoralfor a glass of water. His wife, with an interesting Creole face and Spanish tongue, insists that we dismount, which accordingly we do, and wait while the slip-shod negress (negresses here are always slip-shod) goes to the sugar-house forguirappa. We learn that the plantation belongs to Marquise Somebody, who only comes once in two or threeyears, occupying the family house across the green, which, though ample and well built, has not a tree, a shrub, a leaf to turn it into a home. As we wait, a small chain-gang passes by us, coolies and negroes linked together at their work; not an uncommon appendage to a plantation, and in fact essential with coolies, who are quite certain to commit suicide if whipped. The lady tells me by proxy that she much prefers negroes to coolies because they are so much more amiable.
This being the reverse of opinions frequently expressed to me, I infer that the preference indicates the character of the employer quite as much as that of the servants.
We return home with the eight o’clock morning sun applying itself with the vigor and precision of a hot flatiron to the back of our necks. Here we cool off and rest ourselves for the substantialest of breakfasts, only to be surpassed by the substantialest of appetites.
As a daily increasing strength allows a daily increase of circuit in our excursions, we this evening ventured toward the attractive range of mountains stretched across the northern horizon. Our course soon led us upon the “Royal Highway,” a broad, smooth military road leading to Havana; presently we turned upon a wandering equestrian path, with the appearance of once having been the rough bed of some mountain stream. And this is not improbable, for the entire luxuriously fertile plain of Guiness is watered by streams born and matured here; their course and the amount of water eachplantation shall receive being regulated by the government.
The water for the towns we see carried in little casks, upon the backs of the horses.
The soil on those barren heights being too sterile for the luxurious tastes of the sugar-cane, Indian corn, vegetables for the markets, and many unfamiliar plants are cultivated by the simple, contented-looking Creoles, whom we find living in these little scattered cottages, with their high-pointed thatched roofs, few or no windows, and multitudinous appendages of goats and children.
Arrived at the top of one mountain, we find another still towering above us, evidently commanding the northern view, so nothing remains but to pick our way across the valley and its hill, and inquire the best path of the wondering mountaineers. As we go on the squalidness increases; the soil becomes more stony and obdurate; the whole aspect of the country, with the exception of here and there a stray palm, Mr. S—— tells us, is precisely like that of the poorer parts of Ireland.
At one point we come across oxen toiling up a hill with an immense hogshead of water, upon a real Yankee sled; at another we meet a dashing horseman, who reins up to salute us. Mr. S—— praises his horse, when he replies, with a bow full of native grace, “It is always at the service of your worship.”
But here we are at last, upon the very pinnacle of this temple, beholding the kingdoms of Cuba and the glory thereof.
East and west of us mountains—those pyramids of nature, which will never, like those of man, forget their maker—are rising and falling to suit their own ideas of grace and majesty; north and south are stretched fair and smiling plains and valleys, with all their strong contrasts and harmonious blendings of colors: the horizon on the south is caressed by the soft, sunny, sky-blue waters of the Carribean Sea, looking like the beginning of a new firmament; the northern horizon is washed by the darker and wilder waves of the Atlantic; and over all is poured, in bewildering floods, the glory and passion of a tropical sunset.
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