It Rains—The Effect—No Miserere—Guirappa-seeking—A Skeleton Horse—B——’s Pantomimes—A Day More—The Bells of Guiness—Market Day—An Invitation—Another Plantation—A Remarkable Tree—Palm-Sunday—A Sundayless World—Dreamland—I Didn’t Smoke—Cushioned Heads.
It Rains—The Effect—No Miserere—Guirappa-seeking—A Skeleton Horse—B——’s Pantomimes—A Day More—The Bells of Guiness—Market Day—An Invitation—Another Plantation—A Remarkable Tree—Palm-Sunday—A Sundayless World—Dreamland—I Didn’t Smoke—Cushioned Heads.
Wednesday, 28th.
EVER since our arrival in Cuba, nature has kept in her after-dinner mood; but to-day, for the first time, clouds are come over the sky with another motive than that of simple ornament. If every cloud is an angel’s face, and no angel’s faces elsewhere, then are we not blessed with angelic physiognomies? For the first time these gauzy waves have ceased to vagabondize over our heads like mere apparitions of loveliness that cannot discover or remember their own errands in the world. In short, the rain has poured in torrents, in desperate cataracts, for two hours. Every thing, as well as the roses, is “dripping and drowned.” The streets are rushing rivers.
But I do not see that nature is especially glad, or even conscious of the change, unless it be in sympathy with our gladness; for it is here that she seems always to have within her, and in the atmosphereshe breathes, a fountain of perpetual freshness and youth.
So many weeks of heat and drouth at home would calcine everything to ashes; but now we see all vegetation bright as when it was born. Nature is here a goddess of immortal youth sipping invisible nectar and ambrosia, and forever ministering to her favorites from the secret of her reservoirs.
So the rain having made us domestic, I sit behind the grates of the swelling window, mending gloves, sewing on buttons (they foresaw the rain), listening to ludicrous passages from Handy Andy, taking lessons in cribbage, studying Spanish verbs, and watching the enraptured little boys sailing miniature boats in the street; or the stately negresses passing by with the rain dripping from umbrellas upon their bare shoulders; or the omnipresent soldiers hurrying along to get out of the rain and give me a glimpse of the irresistibly comical cut of their semi-skirted coats. I do not know how better to describe these coats than that they always remind me of the pathetic condition of those redoubtable three blind mice after
“They all ran after the farmer’s wife,And she cut off their tails with the carving knife.”
“They all ran after the farmer’s wife,And she cut off their tails with the carving knife.”
“They all ran after the farmer’s wife,And she cut off their tails with the carving knife.”
This evening we mustered courage, India-rubbers, and umbrellas, and went to the cathedral to hear theMiserere. This being Holy Week, it was to be chanted every night. But the rain, that could not keep away curiosity, had quenched the fire of devotion. No one else came, and we wanderedabout in the silent aisles listening to no music but the echoings of our own voices through the high arches, and our footsteps over the marble floor. We saw by the dim light of the wax tapers, only vague outlines of statues and pictures draped in black crape for the sadness of the Passion-week.
Presently, through the deepening darkness, we saw emerge the black-robed figures of two pale, melancholy-looking young priests, moving about like spectres in the chancel, arranging images and ornaments, and, though unconscious of our presence, always kneeling and making the sign of the cross when passing the image of the Virgin.
Thursday, March 29th.—Againguirappa-seeking at the plantation, for our morning cordial. Young Mr. D——, who brought it, poured out the great pitcher nearly full that was left upon the ground. I exclaimed at his wastefulness, when he replied that it is free as water. The negroes and dogs all drink what they choose, and invariably grow fat in sugar time. Seeing close by a great black heap resembling a coal-pit, I inquired its nature. He said it was the animal charcoal with which the sugar is discolorized; that it comes only from Europe and nothing else can take its place. Thus the greatest whiteness and purity is obtained only by means of the blackest substance, as the whitest souls have grown fair through the darkest suffering, and sometimes, it may be, sin.
Directly a Chinese servant came from the house with the incomparable coffee and milk always used to pacify Cuban hunger until the late breakfasthour arrives. We swallowed their coffee, and they our thanks, with an equal appearance of pleasure.
In bowing ourselves away from the shadow of the building, where our horses had been standing, we turned upon a curious spectacle,—one of those skeleton horses that one so often sees moving mechanically about here under their enormous burdens. The horses pass for living, but I have more than once inclined to the supposition that it is the galvanic life which may be given to animals after death. As I was saying, one of these posthumous nags was slowly coming up the road, with a comfortable-visaged tin-pedlar mounted astride the roof of the edifice of which the horse was the basement, and between the two, and branching out each side of them, a huge pannier, plethoric with all the paraphernalia appertaining to a tin-pedlar. Over the top were dangling strings of tin basins and baking pans; long-handled dippers were hitting the poor animal’s ears at every step he took; and as he turned up to the house of one of the under overseers, I saw the man pull out from unknown depths wooden spoons, sticks of tape, molasses candy, yards of calico, china dolls, and tin boxes of shoe-blacking.
Mr. S—— is gone to Havana, and we are left quite at the mercy of our French, and the little Spanish we manage to extract from the grammar and dictionary. Nobody but our host understands a word of French, and in his absence you can imagine our mute helplessness. If anybody were to come in at that open door and ask permission to cut my throat, I should hardly be able to declinethe civility or to express any opinion of my own on the subject. B——, however, as you know, is admirably ingenious in pantomime, so when we wish any thing I stand in the door, repeating by rote words I have just picked out of the dictionary, while he is stationed near talking with nose, eyes, hands, and feet, by way of explanation; as you remember, in the infancy of the drama among the Greeks, one performer stood out in the front of the stage repeating the words while the actors in the background gesticulated the play in pantomime. All this, as you may imagine, is infinitely amusing to the always-present retinue of staring servants (there are at least two and a baby to every guest). These darkeys take great pride in my success in making my wants known, by using the hissing whistling “ps-s-s-s-s-t,” with the tongue between the teeth, which always and everywhere answers in place of bells to call servants, and which I can do like a native.
I had nearly forgotten to mention a little incident that occurred the day of our arrival, and has since been frequently repeated. Dinner had just gone out, and we were sitting enjoying our exclusive knowledge of the English language, which makes us almost as much isolated as if we had the luxury of a separate table and house, and keeps the curiosity of the rest of the company in an absolutely abnormal condition of activity,—thus we were sitting and talking while waiting for the supplement, the amen to our dinner, viz., the cup ofcaffé noir(and, mind you, this wordnoiris by no means figurative: thisafter-dinner coffee is so black and opaque that if an elephant were in the bottom of the cup you could not see him). Well, as was I trying to say, we were sitting waiting and talking, when an unaccustomed noise was heard upon the brick pavement of the parlor; we looked, and lo! what should we see walking majestically through the parlor, through the doors, through our piazza, dining-room, through the walk of the courtyard, but the very fine, well-kept American horse of Monsieur, mine host. B—— and I were of course sufficiently amused, and the rest of the company sufficiently astonished at our amusement: the only novelty to them was that the horse came alone, without the volante.
Friday, March 30th.—This morning, as every morning, I was not awakened by the bells and clocks of Guiness; though, for the matter of a capacity to rupture sleep, they might have been invented by all the imps of discord. You can no more comprehend than you can describe them. It would be interesting to know where can have been found metal so base to produce sounds so execrable that “sweet bells jangled out of tune” would be heavenly harmony compared with them. You would suppose they been tuned by an earthquake. If I had to manage to endure them, I should see to it and have my hours longer, or farther apart. But yet, as I said, it was not the “braying, horrible discord” of the bells that sent Queen Mab off in a hysteric fit; it was, alas! the earlier five o’clock sounds of washings and scrubbings in the next rooms. Such scourings and pourings and dashings of wallsand floors, and of all supposable things, were surely never heard out of Holland, where, Leigh Hunt tells us, the women wash everything but the water.
Much as I doat on cleanliness, I find it a poor exchange to pay for it in the more precious commodity of sleep, and I record myself to you as a wretched victim to this diurnal deluge of neatness.
On our way to theingenioI mustered Spanish enough to beg a cane-stalk of the negresses who were cutting it down with great rapidity in the fields, using huge sharp knives that I could scarcely lift. They eagerly gave us more than we could carry, enough to keep ussuckingall the way home, and a six weeks to come. Willis says, “Nobody can starve here: the cane-fields are all open; and if hungry, one has only to cut a stick and suck.” We discovered this morning still another sugar plantation, but distrusting the availability of our Spanish, only rode past the sugar-house without asking forguirappa. As we passed a gate near which groups of women were at work, one of them came up with outstretched hand, begging countenance, and some sort of a jumble, and all the rest started to follow her example; but being purseless, and with no great mind to use a purse if I had had it, I shook my head and said, “No hablo Espagnol,” emphasizing the remark by a decided application of my horsewhip to the horse.
Saturday, 31st.—This evening we promised ourselves another visit to our mountain, but an unusual amount of heat and exhaustion forbade the ascent, and very soon found me reclining under the irresistibleshadow of trees that knew how to make shade, while B—— galloped off to reconnoitre. But I soon found myself comparing myself to Gulliver when he became populated with Liliputians, so many insects shared in my taste for shade and solitude; and I was glad enough when B—— made his perspiring appearance.
This being market-day, we found great amusement in watching the peasants astride their panniers which bestrode the horses. In addition to being stuffed monstrously with vegetables, over the edge of most of the panniers were dangling chickens, ducks, and Guinea-hens, tied together by their feet, feathers ruffled, wings flapping backwards, heads dangling downwards, and an expression on their faces of pious resignation adapted to the study of bigger bipeds. All the poor things were alive, but one was sure must die of vertigo or apoplexy, before they could by any possibility reach the town. Here we noticed particularly the tethering of the horses and cattle, a custom indispensable in a country where there are no fences and rarely hedges. One end of the rope being tied around the animal’s neck, the other is fastened to a tree or shrub or stake driven in the ground, or sometimes to the long, strong grass. Thus localized, they are allowed food and exercise to the full capacity of the rope, but no farther. Each one is made a hermit, ruminating round and round in his solitude and his circle, which, instead of increasing, is sure to diminish, for the rope gets tangled in knots, or twisted around sticks, or the animal’s own legs, so that prudencesoon forces a sedentary life upon him. Not unfrequently these ropes were lying in ambush across our path, often so hidden by the grass that neither ourselves nor our horses discovered them until we were nearly caught in the snare. Imagine the interesting frights and ingenious summersaults that we escaped!
I must not forget a remarkable tree we discovered across the fields, which attracted so much our fancy that we immediately turned off, overleaping hedges and ditches (small ones) to examine it. Its outward proportions were on the most magnificent scale, eclipsing in size all its neighbors and all the trees we have before seen, but the trunk proved to be nearly or quite hollow. B—— rode in through the gothic opening, turned his horse around inside, and came out again, and I might have done the same thing at the same time. It would make a dwelling absolutely larger than some of the inhabited huts I have seen here. That admirable disciplinarian, the old woman who lived in her shoe, etc., would here have found “ample room and verge enough” for all her surplus of light infantry, while those who had to go to bed without molasses or bread could have amused themselves with the echoes of their own squallings, for the cavity sounded hollow, like a great unfurnished room. But at the time I only thought how much the tree resembled those magnificent lives spreading out so fair and grandly, reaching so near their kindred blue that in the eyes of the world they are fulfilling all of a high and happy destiny. You must approach very near, perhaps penetratethe abysses of their being, to find that the great heart is gone; its place is only supplied by hollow echoes and aching void.
April 1st.—Palm Sunday—like all the other Cuban Sundays, except that two, or at most three, men have passed on horseback, with long palm branches in their hands.
A south wind again, more enervating than can well be imagined by those who have never felt it come hot and hissing from the equator. It is an incipient sirocco, and always sends the Italians to bed. Of course, too languid for the early, and only mass, coming as it does, before breakfast: the rest of the day we have only to endure with the aid of a fan, and to watch the altitudes of the thermometer.
I have not yet recovered from the uncomfortable sensation of living in a Sundayless world,—a world which being so elaborate in its upholstery, is supposed to have required the full seven days to complete it, leaving no rest or hallowing for anybody.
You can well understand that writing to you, or anybody, on these hot but heavenly days, is simply a contrivance for inking over my dulness. As you suspect, I am getting to live quietly here, dreaming away life, without much help of books, it is true, but, what is better still, without much hindrance from them either.
After all, why not take a little time to dream a few little dreams in this large dream of life? Death will come soon enough to tap us on theforehead, or it may be to shake us rudely, and then we shall be wide awake, and for a long time. Besides, if it takes a long time to dream one’s dreams, it takes as long time to undream them; and you know—who does not?—that they are a kind of atmosphere which penetrates where everythingisas much as where everythingis not.
I also assure you that pen and ink have no natural, or so far as I am concerned, acquired relations with these transcendent tropical nights we are having now; nights when you can feel this wonderful moonlight, creeping in its slippers of silence, over all the longing darkness, through all the sleeping lids of this softly breathing nature, sprinkling them all the time with its white juice-of-love-in-idleness. Sometimes, you lie its willing and helpless victim, until all your unpastured emotions come to be swayed by it, as by a shepherd’s voice. Again you can think of it only as growing, growing, more and more, wider and deeper, all over the world, like a blanched and intangible parasite, which no morning will ever dare with profane fingers to pull up by the roots.
Tuesday, April 3d.—Yesterday we remembered the invitation of the major domo of the sugar plantation, where oxen instead of steam get the saccharineness out of sugar-cane, as we do out of babies—by squeezing. The consequence was that the rough Creole saw the sun and us dawning upon him at the same distinguished moment; that we dismounted to be conducted over the establishment;that the trampling feet of oxen, the monotonous and endless cries of their female drivers, rang in my ears as repulsively as they did at first, and still keep doing, in spite of all my efforts to banish them; that we stood beside the boiling cauldron, where two withered old men were stationed to skim off the scum, and remind one of the witches in Macbeth bent over their cauldron to catch the scum, the “Bubble, bubble, Toil and trouble” of human destiny. While I stood looking at this strange scene, our conductor, with greatempressment, drew from his pocket two fine cigars, offering one to me, and the other to B——, and was sorely chagrined and puzzled that I declined it. I was obliged to resort to the plea of invalidism to pacify him. From this we went to the refining house, where little inverted tin pyramids, full of sugar, were setting all over the floors, with thick layers of black clay spread over their heads, and little tubs, to catch the molasses, set under the opening in their feet. This apartment opened into the one for drying in which these little vessels had been emptied; the whitened sugar lay evenly all over the floor, and a fat negress walked over it with a rake in her hand, and the shoes she was born in on her feet.
I noticed here, as often before, deep scars on the women’s necks, cheeks, and arms, frightfully disfiguring, and painfully suggestive, but I was relieved to find it is only the effects of their favorite custom of tattooing. I thought before, that nature and the most servile of drudgery had carried the ugliness of these poor wretches to the extremestverge of possibility, but I find that, in that “deep,” as well as in all others, there is still a “lower deep.”
We were also puzzled to divine the import of immense round cushions fastened securely upon nearly all the women’s heads, but soon discovered they were to make a comfortable seat for the immense burdens of sugar going from one house to another; for all the ordinary burdens we had before seen, carried on the head (negroes here have no idea that their heads were made for any other use) had been simply with the aid and comfort of the woolly padding of nature.
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Dear old Mr. R—— — Chess and Whist and Life—Good Friday—A Religious Procession—The silence of the Town—The Miserere—To Matanazas—Company in the Cave—Father M——’s approach to Matanzas—The Bay—Valley of the Yumuri—The Plaza—The Dominica—The Ensor House—Easter Sunday—The Paseo—Steamer to Havana—A Night on board—“Queen’s Hotel”—Tricks on a Travelling Author—Theft on the Almanac.
Dear old Mr. R—— — Chess and Whist and Life—Good Friday—A Religious Procession—The silence of the Town—The Miserere—To Matanazas—Company in the Cave—Father M——’s approach to Matanzas—The Bay—Valley of the Yumuri—The Plaza—The Dominica—The Ensor House—Easter Sunday—The Paseo—Steamer to Havana—A Night on board—“Queen’s Hotel”—Tricks on a Travelling Author—Theft on the Almanac.
Thursday, April 5th.
YESTERDAY the train brought dear old Mr. R—— to see us. In addition to our former chess and conversations on literature and art, he reads French, gives me lessons in Spanish, and occupies all the time that would otherwise have made this a bigger if not a wiser or a better letter.
I have often suggested to you the resemblance between the game of chess and the game of life. It occurs to me at this moment, that, if this be true, fatalism must also be true. These inhabitants of chessdom are forced about by an inevitable will; their success and ruin are equally beyond their ownlet or hindrance. They are created as we are, with certain powers and spheres for action and being; with certain possibilities which, whether they will or not, may become impossibilities, but with, alas! impossibilities which must remain such.
From an inevitable force of circumstances, the great and powerful in chess may become weak; the insignificant may have a greatness thrust upon them. The humble pawn can at times act with the dignity of a queen; the queen is often less powerful than the little plebeian beside her. The bishops, in their attempts to serve royalty, often sacrifice themselves; the knights sometimes ruin the queen they are sworn to protect. The queen has the position many other women would like,—she is the only female in her empire. But, alas! this dizzying distinction sometimes spoils her wits: in trying to rule her allies and conquer her enemies, she is too apt to destroy herself and her kingdom. Her king and lord lives mostly instatu quo-ism. He would be her admiring imbecile except that he has found out the secret of endless life: “The king never dies.” He may at times, it is true, be a wandering Jew, but he is an immortal one; he can well afford to be besotted with inertia, for he is too wise to die. But this wisdom is also his fatality. All that he and his queen or subjects do or refrain from doing is foreordained; their entire existence seems to me an admirable illustration of the doctrine of predestination.
If, however, you wish to find an example of life as it is, of man as he is in these strugglings betweenthe inevitable providence (which in this other game we call chance) and his own free will, between circumstances and character, ability and materials, we must go to the game of whist. Here you are always balancing themust bewith themay be; you are recalling the past, and from it foreseeing the future. You are calculating the chances, you are making desperate and uncertain ventures, which may result in disappointing success or brilliant failure. And here is life, this unfathomable life of ours; this wrestling with hidden and unprecedented elements, this combating an unguessed destiny; more than all, this yielding with an equal grace to its fondness or its hate. Here, as in life, honor is for the successful; but true greatness is for him who uses most wisely and most valiantly the much or the little that is given him.
Friday, 6th, has brought back Mr. S——, with intelligence that the steamer leaves for Nassau on the 14th inst. So we must be off at once to Matanzas, if at all; and Trinidad, and all other places must, alas! be given up, from the lateness of the season and the excess of heat.
This evening was celebrated by a grand religious procession, one of the ceremonies of Good Friday. At five o’clock, low, muffled sounds of music were heard approaching. Presently the band appeared, draped in mourning; following it, drawn by black horses, came a great hearse, with heavy pall and waving plumes, and on the top of this, under a white shroud, was plainly visible the sharp outline of a human figure; blood spots were on the edgeof the shroud, and above them, drooping on one side, with matted and stained hair, lay the agonized, ghastly face, in wax, of the crucified Saviour. It was horrible!
I felt myself grow sick and faint, but looked around in vain for a corresponding horror in the faces of the other spectators. They stared on with only a little less than their usual gayety and indifference, and turned with curiosity, as I did for relief, to the remainder of the procession. Next came a line of priests in sable robes, and officers of government with crape on their arms, all with uncovered heads, and carrying in their hands immense wax candles that flickered and paled before the light of the receding sun. The procession paused a few minutes before each of the principal houses, while the dead march kept beating on. But now they have passed, and here comes an august, standing figure, mounted upon a high carriage: we soon discover it to be the Virgin following her son to the grave.
Her dress is of long, trailing black velvet; upon her head is a faded crown; the face is horribly wan and white, with an expression in it of excruciating torture and despair, and, alas! what is this carried, high in the pale, uplifted hand! We shudder, we are faint, we look again; it is—a deeply flounced, elegantly embroidered white pocket-handkerchief!
Behind all this follows an indiscriminate mass of men, women, and children; but I have seen enough, and go back to the house, wondering over thestrange things in heaven and earth and our philosophies.
Mr. S—— tells us so much of the elaborate celebrations and ceremonies in Havana, during these Easter days, that we regret not having gone back to witness them. Yesterday, the streets in all parts of the city were filled by ladies walking to and from all the different churches; the great ambition and proof of piety being, to visit as many as possible during the day. All were dressed in deep black. This is the only day of the year when dainty Havanese female feet press the pavements. Not a sound was to be heard over the entire city. All shops closed, carriages and vehicles of all kinds forbidden to stir, as was the case in Guiness; profound silence reigns because Christ is dead, and no profane sound must disturb his slumbers. In most of the churches an image of the dead Christ lay in a tomb surrounded by burning tapers, and all the signs of burial. Even some of the private houses, opening as they do on the streets, discovered in the principal room, to passers by, the same ghostly image partly covered by a black pall, while the family and guests sit around it in deep mourning, which is, or should be, enlivened only by occasional sobs.
Friday evening, 10 o’clock.—We are just returned from the Cathedral. As we entered, theMisererewas being sung by two young priests and our friend Father M——; the organ accompaniment played by a young priest. The pathetic strains, here mournful as the sob of a broken heart, there subdued into the tones of resignation, then suddenly strugglingout in an energy like despair, seemed to thrill all the hearts of the kneeling worshippers. They were composed entirely of black-robed women; for you must know, devotion here is entirely a feminine accomplishment: the men only stand around against the wall to admire the performer, apparently quite forgetting the performance.
I perceived on one side a regularly arranged pyramid of wax candles. At certain periods of the ceremony one of the lights was extinguished, then another and another; when all were out the services were to close; but finding my strength waning faster than the lights, I came home to make a hurried note of sounds and scenes that I do not attempt to describe, of ceremonies that have all the grotesqueness and absurdity of those of Rome without their dignity and grandeur. The piety of Cuba seems to think that the next best thing to being in Rome and doing as the Romans do, is to be out of Rome and do more than Romans do.
Saturday, April 7th.—At nine o’clock this morning we found ourselves waiting at the pretty and fanciful American depot for the Havana train. As soon as fairly seated in the American car, in came our jolly friend the priest, accompanied by a large number of officers; we find that he is chaplain of the regiment. Officers have taken the little private sitting-room one always finds in these cars. They amuse themselves more than us by uproarious singing and laughter. As we start the priest crosses himself, laughing, and accompanying it by a muttered prayer; all we hear is “Father, Son, andHoly Ghost.” He says this is so that if any accident happens it shall not be his fault. One of the sharply moustached officers is the first to get out his cigars and offer one to me, with a look of some concern that I decline, but all the rest of the ladies accept, and soon every man in the car, but one woman, is smoking and happy. But presently Father M—— discovers a pretty Creole lady acquaintance quietly smoking her cigar, at the other end of the car; he leaves me with a phrase characteristic of Spanish politeness,—“I kiss your feet, señora.”
Saturday.—San Nicola and the other little towns on our way present uniform features. In all varieties of new palms in groves and avenues; hogsheads of molasses waiting to get their tickets on the cars; low huts with thatched roofs, or else the ordinary Cuban house with nearly all its rooms opening on the street, exposing the occupants to the curiosity of travellers. These people seem to be as ignorant of private life as unconscious that they are leading a public one. How much is the privacy and sanctity of domestic life a matter of climate?
This being within a few days of the season of cock-fighting, these redoubtable warriors, tied securely by unwilling feet, were being carried in large numbers to the numerous fighting rendezvous. Their spurswerevery long with which to “prick the sides” of their masters’ “intents,” otherwise I saw nothing to distinguish them from our humble, domestic, barnyard citizen at home,who crows and struts out his day, and dies “unwept, unhonored,” etc.
The approach to Matanzas, through a ravine between two mountains, is far famed, and certainly deserves no small credit for the hasty glimpse it gives you of an ordinarily interesting town and an extraordinarily interesting bay, and beyond this an even range of mountains which surely were not born great, nor have they achieved greatness, although many travellers and descriptions have thrust greatness upon them.
I will not blacken and mar the myriad-hued brightness of that bay with ink; nor will I attempt to chronicle the phosphorescent miracles which are all day long being performed by the gulf stream and the concealed rocks over which it washes and breaks in sunny foam and dripping rainbows. It is so marvellously uttered in colors that words would do it wrong.
Evening.—It being well established that the only sane thing to do upon our arrival was, soon as possible, to see the renowned valley of the Yumuri, we accordingly walked from the dinner-table into our waiting volante to go and see the renowned valley of the Yumuri.
We drove at once as far up the Cumbri mountain as is consistent with horse and carriage possibility, the rest of the way trusting to the unwillingness of feet that walk under the burden of an old fatigue and a new dinner.
Inversely, like Milton’s pandemonium, above the highest peak, a higher peak still beckoned us upwith false assurances, until at last this is really the very final topmost top, and we are distinctly rewarded for so much patience.
On one hand the heavy-walled, gaudily-painted city, with its tumultuous life, its busy human ascent of toil and gain and fashion; on another side the throbbing pulse of the bay, sometimes quickening to a fever like a poet’s eye in fine frenzy rolling, and again stilling to an echo silent as a dream of silence; on another side still, interwinding hills and mountains clad in ample verdure, and pretty country seats; and here, on this side, lies the peaceful little mountain-ringed Yumuri valley. It is a tiny, but deep and choicely-inlaid casket. There are groves of dark palms; pale, pea green cane-fields interspersed with dark patches of the brown soil for contrast; little glancing quicksilver brooks; thatched cottages buried among flowers and trees, whence come happy voices of children; here a herd of cattle quietly grazing, there a solitary market-boy wending sleepily home on his sleepy horse,—and all this full to the brim, to the very mountain-ring of the faint, fading glance of a sun that is just breathing his last upon his bed on the western horizon.
And now, the thickening twilight is just able to reveal to us the path leading to our volante; the famous cave is far off and out of the question; and soon we are leaving nature and her spells behind; faster and faster we descend, until soon city lights and city sounds direct us to the Plaza. Here the band is playing and promenading, bare-headed ladies are enjoying the cool air and thewarm admiration so grateful to us women in warm climates.
We leave our volante to join the gauzy, chattering stream, and suddenly stumble upon—none other than the gentlemanly Creole officer who was our tablevis-à-visat Guiness. Offering me his arm, the rest following, we walked round and round the flower-scented grounds, listening to all the music that could insert itself between the pauses of our conversation. Very soon fatigue and faintness drive us in to theDominica, a restaurant of which Matanzas is justly proud,—to my taste, with its cheerful frescoes, much more inviting than the one at Havana. Here we find ice-cream, frozen juice of pineapples and other fruits,orchata(almond juice), and a strip, a mere parallelogram of a breath of sponge-cake to eat with them. But I am too weary for any refreshment that can be found outside a pair of clean linen sheets. B—— hisses “ps-s-s-s-st” for a volante and directs the driver to go at once to the “Ensor House.”
Easter Sunday, April, 8th.—Just too late for the grand procession which celebrated this morning, glorious as all Easter mornings should be. We tried to reconcile ourselves by attending high mass at the Cathedral. Even here, at eight o’clock, the ceremonies were closing; we had only time to catch a glimpse of the gold-laced robes of the priest as he disappeared behind the chancel, and a hasty scrutiny of the perfect flower-bed of kneeling beauties covering the entire floor of the building. I was taken completely by storm. So much and sorare beauty concentrated in so little time and space! Every woman, old and young, was in full dress: white silk, with lace flounces, a long white lace veil thrown, like an exquisite fancy, over head and shoulders, instead of the usual black mantilla, was the most favorite andrecherchécostume.
Here in Matanzas is a decided sprinkling of the Anglo-Saxon blood, just enough to flush and brighten the skin and to remove two or three of the strata of fat, which are so universal with the white ladies of Havana. Many are even so delicate in coloring, that the winds of heaven must have considerately passed by them on the other side. Still the ladies of Matanzas almost invariably retain the classically regular features, the dark fascinating eyes, the grace of posture, the meaning movement, the language of the fan, the perfect busts and arms copied from a more luxurious Venus de Medici. I cannot indeed say how much of all this effect was owing to the contagious admiration of a circle of señors, who had also come to the sanctuary for worship, preferring however, in all good taste, truly to offer their devotions at the shrines of living virgins in flesh and blood and moire antique, to that of a dead one in tinsel and wax. Nor can I vouch for the effect of cascarilla artistically applied; for these ladies are all allowed amateurs in its use. I tried however, to forget all this—to enjoy by faith as well as by sight; and I did succeed in bringing away with me an impression of loveliness that would be an actual inheritance to an artist.
From the Cathedral we drove to the somewhatincipient Paseo. It is an unfinished sentence, yet prettily punctuated,—here by commas in the shape of vine-porched cottages, there by a long dash of green fields; now a parenthesis made by brackets of palm-trees including a little bright piece of the bay, uttering itself in a low tone of voice; presently an exclamation point, made of mounted cannon; and finally a full architectural period at the end—the country house of Count Somebody, or possibly of the Austrian Ambassador.
I am not sorry that we leave by steamer to-night for Havana. Most travellers, I believe, prefer Matanzas; but to me it lacks the chief charm of its elder sister,—the quaintness and novelty, while I find little to supply their place. Undoubtedly it is far more modern in its spirit, and for a resident might have more social congeniality: but when you consider that the sights are all seen; the heat so terrific that the presentation of our letters of introduction becomes formidable; that there is little left for us but a questionable amalgamation of American and Spanish cookery, and unutterable suffocation in a room carefully constructed to admit all of the sun and none of the air,—will you not allow that in this instance a moderate, though possibly somewhat habitual desire for change is fairly legitimate?
Havana, April 9th.—The hour of nine o’clock last night, if it had not been totally blind with the darkness, would have seen us tumbling down from the shore to one of the little row-boats that serve you up to the waiting steamer for Havana. Learning that the cabins below were mere dens, we allremained on deck till the clocks on shore struck eleven, then twelve; then till the steamer began to manifest signs of life; then until
“The ship was cleared,The harbor cleared,Merrily we did dropBelow the kirk, below the hill,Below the lighthouse top,”
“The ship was cleared,The harbor cleared,Merrily we did dropBelow the kirk, below the hill,Below the lighthouse top,”
“The ship was cleared,The harbor cleared,Merrily we did dropBelow the kirk, below the hill,Below the lighthouse top,”
and we began to plunge in darkness and the broad ocean; and then one little hour more for the moon to rise out of this black sepulchre like its guardian ghost; we wait for it to say its say of beauty, and to brighten the farewell we take of Mr. S——, who leaves in the morning before we are awake, and whose constant kindness has been beyond return.
Now at last we really go; and what think you is the way to the ladies’ cabin? None other than directly through the gentlemen’s saloon, where the occupants all lie in open berths, and in most ghostly states of attire. I catch one glimpse of horizontal whiteness, draw my veil, seize B——’s arm, eventuate at the farther end. Here numerous nasal ebullitions (why will nobody submit to calling the thing snoring, if he himself is the offender?
“All men think all men” snorers “but themselves”)
“All men think all men” snorers “but themselves”)
“All men think all men” snorers “but themselves”)
are exchanged for intimations of equally fabulous sea-sickness, and I find myself safely arrived in the ladies’ cabin, where babies are prevailing to a sleepless extent.
Here my mattress, sheets, counterpane, are utterly ignored or forsworn in a cane-bottomed berth. Without any unpinning or unhooking delay, I follow the example of the groups of shady-faced ladies around me, not of Christabel when
“Her gentle limbs she did undress,And lay down in her loveliness.”
“Her gentle limbs she did undress,And lay down in her loveliness.”
“Her gentle limbs she did undress,And lay down in her loveliness.”
This morning, after a delightful slumber all the sweeter because unexpected, I was awakened at daylight by a rattling of spoons, cups, and saucers. It is my companions taking their cup of coffee,—that inevitable potion without which you could never convince newly awakened Cuban men and women of their personal identity, or of the possibility of the world wagging one step farther.
We had already been lying an hour or more in the bay of Havana. Very soon all the passengers are gone but ourselves; we, the only foreigners, are left alone to wait the hour when a volante can be obtained. B—— goes as fast as possible to secure rooms at the hotel. One Chinese waiter offers me milkless coffee; another bushy-headed antipode stands in the door, with pail and mop in hand, waiting for me to go. At last, with patience in a precarious condition, I rush out on one side of the vessel to get out of the way, and I am driven thence by the observing disposition of a swarthy man lying in his berth in a little vessel moored next to our own: he leans on his coatless elbow with an air of cool curiosity that is unendurable. Then I go to the other side, where dirty drippings from the upper deck,suggest anew the superfluity of my presence and drive me, this time fluctuating on the precincts of ill-temper, out to the gentlemen’s cabin. Here I met B—— tired out with looking for a volante, and the disappointment of not finding rooms at Mrs. A——’s where we hoped to go for a change.
At last, after a deal of English and Spanish nobody understands, and of pantomimes that would have enlightened “blocks, and stones, and worse,” etc., we find ourselves re-established at Queen’s Hotel, in a room which, it is plain to see, if there were light enough in it to see anything, was made for some uncompleted individual,—one in whom had never been breathed the breath of life, or who had breathed it all out again, with little hope of a second respiratory experiment.
Tuesday, April 10th.—Last night arrived a young Bostonian, who, like ourselves, has been adventuring in the interior. He tells us he knows well the young man who gave a well-known author on Cuba all the facts in his book except the few the author learned personally. He says the person is a great practical joker, and plumes himself on the humbugging he achieved.
The day has passed in farewell sight-seeings and shoppings, the latter consisting mostly of the purchase of Spanish fans and linen dresses. And now I am ready to part from Cuba with scarcely a regret, yet carrying with me only fresh experiences and smiling memories. The sun in this social as well as material firmament has been cloudless, or with only rare veils to brighten its brightness.
I have, it may be, hung on the walls of my life some new pictures, which will help to keep it from the ravages of time, somewhat as the paintings of Protogones saved the city of Rhodes from the destruction of its enemies.
I do not yet recover from the impression that I have committed a kind of theft upon nature, or the almanacs, or the thermometers—or all of them; for I have stolen and luxuriated in an extra summer; so that this twice-flowered year is likely to be for me the impendingly pious
“Next year after never,When two Sundays come together”
“Next year after never,When two Sundays come together”
“Next year after never,When two Sundays come together”
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A Discovery for the Benefit of Smugglers—The Steamer Karnak—Adieu, Cuba!—An English Ship—Nassau—The Negro Custom-officer—English Hotel—An Ex-President—What the Island is and has—The Negro Element—The “Eastern Road”—The Air—The Beau Monde—Turtle Houses.
A Discovery for the Benefit of Smugglers—The Steamer Karnak—Adieu, Cuba!—An English Ship—Nassau—The Negro Custom-officer—English Hotel—An Ex-President—What the Island is and has—The Negro Element—The “Eastern Road”—The Air—The Beau Monde—Turtle Houses.
April11th.
LAST evening, after visits from nearly all our friends; after a long walk in search of Spanish books, to find them much dearer than in New York; after looking as a matter of curiosity at the diamonds which are so lavishly displayed in the shops, to find them all singularly yellow,—I retired to sleeplessness and suffocation in my air-tight room. I awoke this morning with only life enough left in me to rejoice in the prospect of the little sea-voyage before us.
At ten comes Mr. R—— to accompany us to the wharf, where we found other friends awaiting us, with row-boat and swarthy boatman ready to carry us out to the steamer.
And here, as a conscientious narrator of importantand dignified historical events, I have to record an item of experience, an unintentional experiment, that possibly may be of service to future female travellers.
So soon as our volante reached the landing, the custom-house officer appeared, received my keys, proceeded with official composure to examine the trunks. But the instant the top of the first was raised, up popped, most ferociously, in his face, a white skeleton—a hooped petticoat! At the last moment I discovered it lying on the top of the wardrobe in the hotel, and in great haste had stuffed it in the top of the trunk I was locking. As you may guess, a general shout of laughter followed from the watching bystanders and my friends, and I soon found my chagrin giving way before the irresistibly funny scene, and joined in the merriment. B—— took the thing, flourished it for my benefit, and crowded it back again. He then pointed to the other trunks, but the nonplussed officer solemnly shook his head, declaring himself quite satisfied. He expressed doubts about our being people likely to carry contraband articles. Hereafter, when you wish to smuggle cigars, linen, or guava jelly, you have only to cram an apparition of this sort—a jack-in-the-box—in the top of your trunk, and you are safe.
But here we are at the steamer. Our friends come on deck; we sit talking until the last moment arrives for setting sail; they descend the step-ladder to the little boat, and their waving handkerchiefs are soon lost among the shipping.
A pretty, fair-haired girl sits near me, whom, from her resemblence to the captain, I perceive to be his daughter. Presently she asks me to go to the other end of the ship to see the anchor drawn up—always a cheerful sight when fifteen or twenty ruddy Englishmen march regularly round and round at the work, while the pleasant roundelay all sing directs their movements.
And now “the last link is broken which binds me to” this happy clime; we float down through the winding bay; past ships of all nations; past our favorite Cortina; the Punto; the Morro, that was the first to welcome and is the last to leave us; and now the low shores are receding fast in the distance, and the bright walls and brown tiles and pleasant friends fade out again into the past and the forever.
Thursday, 12th.—We are glad of this opportunity to know a thoroughly English ship-captain, officers, crew, custom, and discipline. Nothing can be better fitted to inspire confidence than the fresh, honest, intelligent face of Captain B——, with his rough sailor dress, and manners whose bluffness cannot conceal the completely affable and well-bred gentleman under them.
The passengers are so few that we are beginning to know them all. Various miscellaneous gentlemen of as many different nations; three or four Spanish ladies and gentlemen, some with children and servants; captain’s daughter and ourselves, complete the list. One of the Spaniards, who is to leave wife and eldest son in New York while hegoes with the youngest son, a poor little sea-sick thing, to Germany, to school, speaks English and French with some fluency, while—a not unfrequent occurrence in Cuban families—the wife knows and cares only for Spanish. He has been pronouncing difficult Spanish words to me while his pretty wife laughs kindly at my attempts and helps him in his self-appointed task. So what with this novel sociality and a summer sea as beautiful and almost as calm as the sky, we get, instead of sea-sickness, delicious sleep and rare gusto for this English roast beef; instead of enervation, health that waxes with every hour.
Evening.—Nothing could be more enchanting than this air and sunshine, this bright crystal sea, this gently-moving ship, this entire voyage. A few low reefs and coral islands are becoming visible with our glasses; also many vessels lying quietly here and there,—wreckers I am told, which do a most flourishing business in these regions; indeed I learn that wrecking is the chief and all-absorbing occupation of Nassau, for which we are bound.
If genuine storms and honest ignorance of these dangerous passages do not supply a sufficient number of wrecks to satisfy the gambling tastes of the wreckers, and of the merchants who make fortunes by their spoils, it is found easy enough to make bargains with unprincipled captains, by which, for a certain sum, a wreck can be achieved at a given time with unfailing certainty. This is so managed that captain and wreckers shall make a comfortable little speculation of the affair and nobody lose anythingexcept the all unsuspicious insurance company or the innocent owners of the vessel.
Nassau, New Providence, Royal Victoria Hotel, April 13th.—After being rocked gently to sleep, and then sung into deep slumbers all night by these pure-voiced ocean nurses, I was awakened this morning by the firing of guns announcing our entrance in the bay of Nassau. This city is to be our destiny for the next month, at the end of which the next regular steamer goes north. It is thought prudent to graduate in this way the change from the heat of Havana to the probable cold of New York.
We hung on deck to reconnoitre this little item of our future, and to find ourselves anchored in the brightest, lightest possible pea-green water, through which the clean, beautiful bottom is so clearly revealed, that the numerous swarming boats seem to be floating in an atmosphere only a little more dense and colored than the delicious nectar we are breathing.
While waiting for the inevitable custom-house officer, we lean over the deck railing to watch this phantom loveliness, and the boatmen that are urging us in English that sounds as droll as did the Spanish at first in Havana, to buy their wares. These consist of the only exports of the island,—sponges, bananas, pineapples; some of the larger boats have the bottoms covered with living turtles, others are half full of huge conch shells, or varieties of smaller shells arranged regularly in partitional boxes.
Presently the captain comes and points out thejust arrived custom-house officer, a regal-looking negro, dressed in uniform. While B—— goes with him to examine the luggage, the captain shows us the white pilot-boat from which one of his men was knocked overboard on the last voyage, by the rough waves in this bay. The negroes who were rowing him fled in affright: before help could arrive he had gone down for the last time, and was never seen again. But a few days after, a shark was caught and killed, and safely in his stomach lay the man’s hand, immediately recognizable by the sleeve and cuff; beside it lay a goat’s head and horns, and various other trophies of a shark’s victories.
But now we must go: the boat waits for us here, and the hotel carriage on shore. A farewell with our Spanish friends, by whose cards I find, as I have before been informed, that the husband and wife in Cuba have distinctly different names; the name on the card of one gives you no clue to name or address of the other.
An English carriage brought us up the English road, past the English faces to the English-built hotel here on the hill, overlooking the English town, the bright bay, and outstretched ocean that owe allegiance to Her Majesty. Even the hotel belongs to the British government.
The high upper parlor opens upon a piazza commanding a noble and extensive view. While waiting here for my room,—its occupants go north in this steamer,—a quiet, elderly gentleman, with much blandness and benevolence in his not extraordinaryface, entered, and sitting down by the table addressed some kind and casual remarks, evidently intended to make a stranger feel at home, while I, tired of this long silent sitting and waiting, was glad enough of any change. On going down stairs I found I had been conversing with ex-President P——, who has been here since January for the health of his invalid wife, and also possibly to find a place where he can escape being lionized, and enjoy the retired literary leisure of which he is fond.
At half-past two came dinner. It is so late in the season, that not more than a dozen guests are left. Turtle soup of nicest and freshest quality commenced the ceremony, turtle pie helped to continue it, so did turtle steak, otherwise you might imagine yourself at an ordinary American hotel except that beef and mutton, and ducks and chickens, appear in an excellent state of mummification, as if they had all died of a lingering consumption, and would severally assist us to follow their example. The climate of the tropics is ill-adapted to our domestic animals. We are told that the best American cows die here after a few months, even if brought in the fall. Still it is a question, if want of care, and a general shiftlessness in all matters of the sort, have not more sins of animal murder to answer for than this delicious climate. The residents confess as much. By the way, can you guess the proper, legitimate name of the natives of New Providence? Not, as they are sometimescalled, “Bahamaites,” or “Nassauers,” or “West Indians,” butConchs.
This evening our first drive; pleasant, but exhausting, I much fear; all that the island has of novelty or interest, measuring, as it does, only fourteen miles in length and eight in width. In the first place, it is not only founded upon a rock, but itisa rock; thedebrisof coral reefs up to within a few inches of the surface. This surface is clothed with a light soil, which in the country is clothed with a light verdure, mostly of shrubs, briers, and weeds, interspersed here and there with stray dwarfed palms and cocoas. Occasionally the curious cotton-tree is found, with wide patriarchal branches covered with delicate green leaves, or else with a long, large pod full of perfect cotton to all appearances, perhaps intents, but not purposes, for it is proved to be useless. The roots of this tree, doubtless for want of soil, grow very much out of the ground, living in the air almost as much as the branches. In the town and its suburbs, oranges, bananas, sabadillas, mangoes, etc., are cultivated extensively, giving the whole place from a distance the air of an inhabited garden.
The streets and roads are a phenomenon. Every one is of solid rock covered with some kind of cement most dazzling to the eyes in its whiteness; so much so, that strangers are advised to never go out without veils. I see many of the inhabitants wearing blue and green glasses. But no rain or drought can affect them; never mud, never dust;always as smooth and white and clean as the cement floors in the parlors of Havana.
I am more than anything else impressed with the quantity and quality of the negro element. There are, according to statistics, eight black to one white person, but in passing the streets you would suppose the pepper to be more than the rule, and the salt less than the exception. Bless me! how they bubble and swarm in every street, every corner, every alley, every hut; to each man two women, to each woman at least a dozen babies; and men, women, and children always idle, and intensely contented with their idleness; fat, and lusty, and happy, and good-for-nothing. I think no one can come from a slave country to this without acknowledging the obtrusive difference, the increased appearance of happiness; if jolly contentedness can be called so. And rapidly as they increase in the States, no colored fertility can match this, where babies are undoubtedly indigenous to the soil, cuticle though it is. Every way I turn I expect to see a head just budding from the ground, hands sprouting, wool germinating, or possibly a foot grown uppermost, with the rest of the dawning body just bursting from the ground, and like Milton’s hind, or calf, or some other quadruped in Eden, “pawing to get free.”
If I were to ask one of these bouncing negresses, as Willis did, what curiosity or product peculiar to the island I could find to carry home, I should unquestionably get the same answer,—except that his, being on the island of Martinique, was in French,—“Bien que les enfants. En voulez-vous?”
Saturday, April.—This evening a drive on the “Eastern Road,” the Paseo of Nassau.
I thought the air in Cuba unparalleled, but this is freer, purer; an always fresh and warm-enough seabreeze. It has a richness, roundness, completeness; it is not a thin, sharp, cutting melody, but a perfectly elaborated harmony. In what a gentle, healing affectionate way it possesses one, interpenetrating all the sensitive fevered fibres of the lungs like a blessing, or like a spirit full of blessings, bringing with it vitality, repose, and life!
In our drive we met all thebeau mondeof Nassau, the government officers and families, with their always English faces and figures, which are in strikingly redundant contrast with the consumptive Americans seated up and down our hotel table. One thing assures me that I am not in Spanish Cuba, with her tenacity for national customs and habits; a tenacity for which I, coming from the shifting fancies of Yankeedom, sincerely honor her. It is this: We are once more in a land of gloves and bonnets. How stiff are these London exported bonnets compared with those exquisitely graceful Spanish veils, or prettier hair-ornamented Spanish heads; and as for the gloves, I can now understand without surprise that when Cubans first saw foreigners wearing gloves they supposed them used to hide some frightful blemish or deformity.
Our drive lay along the shore of this extraordinary bay, with its long parallel lines of brightest, lightest blue and pea-green, contrasting with the dark ultramarine purples and browns of all hues and densities,sometimes shading into each other, again preserving themselves, in spite of all republican efforts of the wind, clearly distinct. The cause of this phenomenon, I am told, is still a disputed question among the scientific. On the other side of the bay are built the cottages of wreckers and fishermen, the latter including those who dive for sponges, many of which we saw lying about in immense heaps; also those who dive for conch shells, which are exported in large quantities to France to be used in various artistic manufactures. The shores are covered with superannuated and dilapidated conchs, bleaching in the sun and calcining in the waves.
Another novelty is the turtle houses, built of poles out in shallow water, in such a way that the water can get freely in and out, while the self-roofed crawlers do neither the one nor the other.
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