On the Mexican Highlands Part 13

The ferryboat was ancient in make and slow in movement. We were to cross the bay to the little suburb where we were to take the train which was to carry us through the rolling country and level plains of middle Cuba into the rich and fertile sugar-producing province of Matanzas.

Our track over the now clear waters of the bay led us close alongside the crushed and bended wreckage of the United States Steamship _Maine_, while not far beyond lay at easy anchor three modern warboats of the navy, the _Kearsarge_, the _Kentucky_ and the _Ma.s.sachusetts_, a proud trio for Spanish and Cuban eyes to look upon.

The wreck still lies there, its lonely foremast a mournful monument to the tragedy it marks.

The railroad runs almost due east, from the low-lying suburbs, and pa.s.ses close by the village of Guanabacoa, where were gathered so many of the _reconcentrados_, where Spanish cruelty developed its most wanton crimes, and where yellow fever played most deadly havoc with Spaniard and with Cuban alike. We sped between rolling gra.s.s-covered hills, pa.s.sing great groves of that most graceful and stately of tropic trees, the royal palm, large plantings of luxuriant bananas, and many cocoanut palms as well. The country was more flat than toward the west, and soon we were moving through wide reaches of the feathery sugar cane. There were miles of it, leagues of it, and all taller and more robust than the cane I saw while traversing the sugar lands of Louisiana.

In the black, deep and wonderfully fertile soil, the cane grows without care or heed. Here the cane once planted need not be reset for full twenty years, and the stock may be cut at six months' intervals through all that time. No wonder the sugar-growers of Louisiana cry aloud, for they must reset their roots every third year, and can only count on two sugar crops from that; while their cane does not yield nearly so much sugar to the ton as the crops from these Cuban lands.

Nor can the sugar grower of the Florida Everglades compete with the fertility of Cuba. Seven years, at most, to a single root is there the limit, five years is more often the rule, and the stalk is but little sweeter than that of Louisiana growth. The American sugar men are now scouting the land in Cuba. I met them from Louisiana and from Texas and from Florida. They are bound to come in numbers greater yet.

For many miles we traversed these waving cane fields, pa.s.sing many villages and smoking sugar mills at work, teams of fat oxen hauling in the cane, miniature railroads dragging in long train loads of cane to the factories, and thousands of men and many women working in the fields, these lifting their faces from toil to gaze momentarily at our train as it hurried by.

At one station a bridal company entered the train; the groom was clad in black broadcloth, the bride was gowned in soft white fabric, a graceful white _mantilla_ of priceless lace falling over her thick black braids. Their friends were all there to see them off, and cheered with many _vivas_, showering them with rice as they entered the car, followed by the burly bulk of the ca.s.sock-clad _padre_ who had made them one.

Matanzas, which claims to be the most healthful city of all Cuba, is situated some fifty miles almost due east of Havana facing a beautiful bay, and spans the mouths of two small rivers, whose verdant valleys stretch behind the town. The city is ancient, and is spread for the most part along a high, long, sloping hill, or several hills, stretching back and up from the arm of the sea on which it lies. Here has been wrought under the skillful supervision of General Wilson, the most successful of the sanitary regenerations of any Cuban town. The city has been sewered in modernwise and macadamized with care, and is supplied with abundance of purest water.

We alighted at the commodious railway station, a larger and better structure for its purpose than any I have yet seen in Cuba. We entrusted ourselves to the care of a tawney-hued _cochero_, who galloped us away toward the heart of the town. We followed a long, level, wide street, crossed a substantial iron bridge over the river San Juan, made a sharp turn, climbed a steep pitch of hill and stopped before the chief hotel. Here is a little courtyard, at the farther end of which hangs a life-size portrait of Jose Marte, the martyred patriot. We sat in the _patio_, where palms waved over us, and coffee and delicious fish were brought to us along with a basket of oranges such as even Florida cannot well surpa.s.s. Lighting our cigars, we now sauntered into the fine, old-fashioned, Spanish gardens of the Plaza, laid out with precise symmetry and guarded by low iron fences set on bases of carved stone, the flowering shrubs and many blooming plants being half hid by the iron and the rock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GLIMPSE OF MATANZAS]

We viewed the cathedral, a small square-towered edifice in ill repair, and then visited the elaborate and commodious building for the public school, now in vacation emptiness, and then we strolled to the market where fruits and fish were in especial abundance; and we noted everywhere the mult.i.tude of Cubans tan and black, for many negroes live in salubrious Matanzas.

Then we climbed the long hill, until, high behind the town, we came to a hedge of cactus, an open gate, an old and half-dismantled house.

Voices of children rang out as we approached the wide piazza. A blue-eyed man with firm and kindly face, a little pinched and pale, but alight with high purpose, greeted us at the door. He had made here a home for motherless waifs, the riffraff and refuse of the _reconcentrado_ camps, whom Spanish heartlessness and hunger had not utterly destroyed. The man came from Illinois, and with his own small means had gathered these few score children, all little boys here, a separate home for the little girls yonder across the hill; had drawn to him a company of kindly Cubans, and here set up and now successfully maintains, asking no outside aid or alms, these homes and schools for the saving of the little bodies and their souls. The youngsters are the picture of good health. Their fare is the simplest; their instruction kindly, their play hours long. They grow and thrive, and some day will be men and women who will help Cuba's destiny for weal and not for woe. I grouped the little lads together and took them with my kodak, and cherish the picture, in sad contrast with the party of little Mexican boys who left our ship at Progresso, all unconscious of the brutal slavery and death awaiting them.

We also visited the beautiful and simple shrine and chapel of Monserrat, erected by the descendants of those who came to Cuba from the Balearic Isles. This shrine crowns the summit of a hill overlooking the city. We here tarried long, viewing the wide reach of landscape stretching as far as the eye could see in undulating plains toward the south, with everywhere vistas of ripening cane, while northward wound the fertile valley of Ymurri toward the famous caves of Bellmar.

"_Veni aci_, Charley Blue-eyes," they called after us as we pa.s.sed along the narrow streets. Some of the voices possessed the cadent melody of the Spanish maiden, but we did not deign to turn, for who would be so bold as to call us "Charley Blue-eyes," we should like to know! Many children were playing along the curb, and few of them wore even a coral band around the neck. Quite as G.o.d made them they were, their tan and swart skins, showing soft as satin under the influence of sunlight and fresh air. We were loath to bid adieu to the delightful city, and I shall never forget the charm of its picturesque location, the perfection of its smooth macadam streets, the cleanliness of its white and blue and yellow houses. Yellow was the hue most used and loved by the Spaniards, blue is the color for the patriotic Cuban. Since Spanish oppression has left the sh.o.r.es of Cuba, the towns and cities have been going through a steady metamorphosis from the yellow to the blue.

We lingered upon the fine iron bridge spanning the river San Juan, watching the abundant traffic of the waters beneath us, composed chiefly of fishing and fruit boats, although some were laden with more bulky commerce. At a little shop just across the bridge, we tarried to fill our pockets with delicious cigars, cheaper than even our stogies at home; and we let the boy behind the counter take up a huge cocoanut in its green husk and with his big knife hack it open and pour out the liquor within. "Milk," they call it, but more like nectar it is, and he filled two deep gla.s.ses whose contents we quaffed with great content.

The stars were out when we returned to the city of Havana. The American squadron was ablaze with electric lights, and only the gloomy mast of the _Maine_, thrusting above the placid waters, hinted at the final provocation to war which so short a time ago brought to Cuba peace with liberty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRESSED FOR THE DAY]

XXIII

Cuba--The Tobacco Lands of Guanajay--The Town and Bay of Mariel

GUANAJAY, CUBA,

_December 28th_.

It was dark. Through the wide-open window of my chamber crept the soft morning air of the tropics. Some one was shaking my door and crying, "_Hay las seis, Hay las seis._" It was six o'clock. I was to leave on the seven o'clock train for Guanajay, and the fertile tobacco plantations of Pinar del Rio. In the s.p.a.cious, airy dining room, I was the first guest at _desayuno_.

The railways of Cuba and the railway coaches are yet of the antiquated sort. Our car must have been made fifty years ago, with its small seats of hard plank and windows without gla.s.s. The clerk who sold tickets spoke no English. I just kept putting down Spanish dollars until he said "_bastante_" (enough). Later, I found that, presuming on my ignorance and the throng pushing behind me, he had gathered in two dollars too much, to his personal profit. The railway is owned by Englishmen, although run by Cubans. We rolled slowly out of the city toward the west. We looked upon high stone walls, now and then catching a glimpse of a garden through an open gateway, and then ran between perfectly tilled market gardens with rich black soil, many Chinamen working in them.

Beyond the gardens, we pa.s.sed stately buildings and the beautiful park surrounding the Spanish Captain General's summer palace, where are ponds and fountains, palms and blooming shrubs. All these are now owned by the Republic of Cuba, and are some day to be converted into a pleasure ground for the people, just as are in France the ancient royal palaces and gardens of Versailles and Fontainebleau. As our train rolled west, it gradually approached a range of hills, where are now many pineapple farms, yielding pineapples which put the tiny Florida plant to the blush--big, luscious and juicy. A young man from Boston sat next me. He was looking for pineapple land. He meant to quit the snow and ice of New England. He would buy a plantation and settle and live in Cuba, where, thank G.o.d, the ice blight never comes, where man has only to plant and nature abundantly does the rest. We pa.s.sed many orange groves, and lemon and lime and mango trees which the Spaniards had failed to destroy. Their branches were heavy with yellow, golden, ripe fruit. Here, where is no terror of frosts, many a frozen-out Floridian is now arrived or is on the way. The orange of Cuba is sweet, juicy and luscious, and some day Americans will here raise them and sell them in New York, and in this way win back the money they have lost in Florida. As we pa.s.sed along, we traversed many sugar plantations, once cultivated, now abandoned. The black and ruined chimneys and dilapidated walls of their factories were eloquent witness of devastation and war. But the smaller farmsteads looked prosperous. Beside each dwelling was usually a grove of plantains and bananas. The latter, commonly thin skinned and fragrant, are as small as two of your fingers and most delicious. A young couple plant a banana grove when they set up housekeeping, and thereafter have bananas at hand all their lives.

At many of the houses we saw the Cuban flag floating from the staff top. "_Cuba Libre_" is in the hearts of all these rural people. I told a Cuban fellow-pa.s.senger, that I, too, had raised that flag, the first to do so in my State, and he thereafter treated me like a brother. I had touched his heart. We pa.s.sed a deep, wide stream, flowing with a clear full tide. It is the overflow from the wonderful spring which supplies to Havana its water. It bursts from the ground a full-grown river. Havana has dammed it, bridled it, and through huge pipes, carries its abundant and pellucid flood into her streets and houses, furnishing fresh, sweet, pure water for the mult.i.tude. A few miles further on, we saw another river plunge suddenly into the bowels of the earth. Full and br.i.m.m.i.n.g it flows along, and then all at once disappears forever into a mysterious hole. The Spaniards have here raised a chapel and set up a big cross, for must not this engulfing cavern be one of the gates to h.e.l.l? And what more certain than a house of G.o.d to frighten off the devil!

We are now in the midst of some of the finest tobacco lands of the world. This part of Cuba is founded on a coral reef. The lime of the coral has here permeated the ground. Red and chocolate and brown-black, the soil contains just those chemical ingredients which tobacco needs. No other land has anywhere yet been found just like it, and no other tobacco grows with quite the same fragrant quality of leaf. All the world wants this Cuban tobacco. Therefrom the French government makes and sells cigars and cigarettes and reaps great revenues. The Germans also want the Cuban tobacco lands, and the enterprising American intends sooner or later to have his share of them. How would you feel, my smoking brother, to be able to enjoy a delicious Havana cigar, to roll it between your lips and inhale the perfume of its smoke, all for the price of three cents or perhaps a nickel? The Americans are quietly acquiring as great an acreage as possible of the tobacco lands of Cuba. These lands are mainly held in small farms of four and five acres, each worked by a single family, who devote all their attention to the planting of the seed, the raising of the crop, the drying of the leaf, and even the final making of the finished cigar. They sell the cigars at their door, or take them to the town and sell them to the dealers, who buy and then put on their own labels and place them in the market. Nowhere in the United States will nature permit a tobacco leaf to stay on the plant until it is fully ripe; there is too much fear of frost. But in Cuba the leaf hangs to the stalk in the sunshine until it has reached that degree of ripeness which insures the most perfect tone and flavor. Thus it is, there can be no other tobacco just like Cuba's, for nowhere on earth 't is said, do soil and climate and human skill so aptly and completely combine to make the product perfect. There are three islands of the sea where the soil is rich and fertile beyond all other lands; the island of Java, owned by the Dutch; the island of Luzon, chief of the Philippines, and the island of Cuba. And in this one product, it is claimed that Cuba surpa.s.ses them all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALONG THE MILITARY ROAD, A CEIBA TREE]

We left the train at Guanajay--once a tobacco town of importance, then blasted and wasted by war, burned and ravaged, and now regaining its life and vigor. Here we took an open carriage and drove toward Mariel, upon a n.o.ble highway quite sixty feet wide, and all macadamized and ditched--a Spanish military road, once lined and shaded with gigantic and umbrageous trees; now bare of this magnificent bordery by reason of the war. The Spanish soldiery cut them down, lest here and there an insurgent might lie concealed. The road wound over a line of low hills, and then descended to the sea. Along the ridge, at intervals, were yet to be seen the "blockhouses" of the western Spanish Trocha.

My friend, Captain Reno, beside me, had been an officer of the insurgent army. An American volunteer, with blood full of red corpuscles, he served all through the revolutionary struggle, fighting the Spaniards just for the joy of war. He crossed this Trocha with Gomez in his famous raid. The Spanish soldiers hid within their houses and shot from their loopholes. But Gomez and Reno cut down the wire barriers, rode through and dared to enter the suburbs of Havana. The superb road gradually winds toward the bay of Mariel. On our way, we pa.s.sed a new railroad being built by Americans, back to an asphalt lake; Mariel will be their port, the bay their harbor.

Near to us on the left lay another American colony,--a group of Western folk who have come to Cuba to stay. The bay of Mariel, next to that of Havana, is the finest harbor on the western coast. At its entrance, high on a reef, lies the Spanish warship, _Alfonso XII_, driven on the rocks by American naval guns. Along the sh.o.r.es of this beautiful bay, it is said, will grow up the Newport of Cuba. Nowhere are there so well protected waters, nowhere is there so picturesque a panorama. Here you see palms, royal, cocoanut, and date, and fields of sugar cane and groves of bananas, oranges and pomegranates, and then the foaming, restless sea far out beyond. On the corner of a shaded street, close by the blue waters of the bay, we stopped at a modest, unpainted house. Within it we met a clear-eyed, sweet-faced woman--a lady from North Carolina, a Miss Edwards, who came to Cuba, after the devilments of Weyler had wrought their sad havoc, and gathered up a little company of starving girls, and here has given them a home--forty or more of them. She asks no outside aid. She is spending her own small means. The people of the town, with their Spanish pitilessness of heart, do not understand why she should be doing so strange a thing as to pick up and care for the dirty progeny of dying and dead vagabonds. Better let such a litter die, they say. She told us that she was much alone, that even yet the good people of Mariel treated her with suspicion. If she were a government official, they could comprehend, but they cannot understand how or why anybody should take so great a care of waifs and strays, all for the sake of the humanity of our Lord.

We spent the night at Guanajay in an old Spanish inn, very tumbled down, partly as the result of time, largely as the result of war. We ate our evening meal in a s.p.a.cious, lofty chamber, sitting at a long table. The company was chiefly made up of tobacco planters, and one or two Cuban drummers, while right in front of us sat a Spanish marquis and his wife with their English governess for the children. They were visiting Cuba to inspect the ancestral sugar estates, and arrived only the week previous from Spain. They treated the company with haughty indifference, and ignored the poor English girl as though she were socially altogether out of their sphere. They helped themselves and talked to the children, while the governess foraged for herself or went without. It reminded me of those mediaeval times one reads about, when the clergyman resident in the castle of the lord sat at a table in the servant's hall. We took pains to see that the English girl received every attention, the Marquis glowering savagely upon us when we pa.s.sed a dish to the governess rather than to his wife. When the meal was over the pair stalked loftily from the dining hall, leaving the governess to smile upon us in return for our p.r.o.nounced civilities, momentarily made happy, for the first time perhaps in many months.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BAY OF MARIEL]

In the evening we visited the large Reform School for boys, which has been established by the military authorities of our government for the care of waifs whom the cruel _reconcentrado_ policy of Weyler deprived of kith and kin. The children looked well-fed and content, and the courteous Governor, a major in the army, a.s.sured us that they throve and learned, gave little trouble, and bade fair to become good men and citizens. It is in this sort of thing, the Home for the little boys near Matanzas, the charity of Miss Edwards at Mariel in caring for the motherless little girls, the charity of our government in providing so generously for these boys, that is seen the difference in spirit of American civilization from the hard and callous pitilessness of Spain.

The Spaniard and the Cuban care for their own with tenderness, but they look with indifference upon the suffering of others, nor do they comprehend why they should lift a finger to help anyone beyond the narrow circle of their own family or social set.

We have also called upon a big, gaunt, sunnyfaced man who is devoting his life to these people as a missionary of the Congregational Church.

He is from Ma.s.sachusetts, a man of education who preaches fluently in Spanish, and whose labors have met extraordinary success among the Cuban population of Key West. He has now been transferred to Guanajay, and already is creating a profound impression in a community which has never before known aught but an indifferent Roman priest.

The religious conditions of Cuba are peculiar, I am told. The Bishops and Priesthood of the Roman Church have been supplied by old Spain from time immemorial. The black sheep of the Church have found asylum here. Drawing their salaries, fretting in exile, these ne'er-do-wells of the motherland have cared little, and done less, for the spiritual welfare of their flocks. Guanajay is reputed to be a community among the most spiritually darkened of all Cuba. Hence, it is with no little wonderment that the active, enlightening methods of Mr. Frazier are viewed by those among whom he now ministers. The women come to him for solace and advice, the children flock to his singing school, and the Sunday-school in the afternoon is filled with old folks and young, who come to him after the hours of Ma.s.s. Even the local _padre_ himself finds this strange heretic so pleasant a companion that he frequently drops in to share a cigar and gossip of the times. If Americans are to make impression spiritually upon this Latin-Catholic population of Cuba, they will do it only through such intelligent personal and sympathetic methods as are here employed. Mere perfunctory Protestant ecclesiasticism makes no impression upon these Latin-Catholic peoples.

Sunday morning we arose while the stars yet blazed, found a cup of coffee for our _desayuno_ at a little restaurant across the street, and at five o'clock were in the cars again traveling toward Havana.

The country we have been looking on is quite as beautiful as the more flat-lying, but not more fertile region about Matanzas, and I have felt that the many Americans we have met everywhere, all looking for land to buy and to abide upon, are in happy quest. They are entering into one of the veritable garden places of the earth and many more of my fellow-countrymen will surely follow them.

XXIV

Steamer Mascot

STEAMER _Olivette_, BETWEEN HAVANA AND KEY WEST, _December 31st_.

One learns to rise early in these tropical lands. The midday _siesta_ here affords the rest which we are wont to claim for the early morning hours. I have readily acquired the habit. To lie abed is become a burden. I stir abroad betimes as do all others. And I am sleepy also toward midday, and quite inclined to take a nap when the heat is most intense. I recall that two years ago when coming home from France, the only stateroom I could obtain upon the _Wilhelm der Grosse_, was already partly taken by a gentleman from Mexico. I doubted whether it would be pleasant to chum with a stranger, but I had no choice, so made the best of it. He had the upper berth, I slept below. But although we were a week upon the sea, I never saw him, and I do not to-day know who he was. I was asleep before he turned in. I was still asleep when, at break of dawn, he pa.s.sed out to pace the decks. He took his midday _siesta_ when I was enjoying the midday sun, or resting upon my sea-chair. I then wondered at the persistent habit which drove him from a comfortable bed almost before the night was spent. Now I comprehend his ways, and if I were to voyage seaward to-morrow, I should be rising with the dawn. Yesterday morning I had risen at four o'clock, and had taken my _desayuno_ at an hour when those at home are sunk in sleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WRECK OF THE ALFONSO XII]

Overnight a great storm has arisen. I tried to find out at the hotel about the weather, but in Havana weather reports are unknown. The Spanish clerk at the hotel smiled at me most condescendingly for asking so silly a question as, "Is a storm likely to be coming from the North or the South, or anywhere; and what sort of a day are we likely to have to-morrow?" Bowing politely, he spoke in sneering undertone to his Spanish companion, and then in broken English said to me, "I never hear even an American ask a question like that, _Senor_.

How we know what the weather is to be? G.o.d makes the weather _Senor_, not you or I." And they both smiled upon me with supercilious contempt. They took me for a fool. Only a fool would pretend to ask what Providence might have in store. So much for the Weather Bureau and the yet mediaeval Spaniard!

When we left the harbor a few hours later, a great sea was tossing gigantic breakers above the ramparts of El Moro. We plunged into the fury of a Norther, which turned out to be one of the wildest gales of the midwinter. I might have put off departure a day or two if I had known of it, but Spanish ignorance sent me out in a small and laboring boat to make the dangerous ninety miles across the straits in the face of such a storm.