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GAN-EDEN: 
 
 PICTURES OF CUBA. 
 
 " Tho place was called Gan-Eden, the Garden of Delight ; and it be- 
 longed to the Caliph Haroun-Al-Raschid, who, when his heart was con- 
 tracted, used to come to that garden and sit there ; so his heart became 
 dilated, and his anxiety ceased." — Noureddin and the Fair Persian. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY. 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO: 
 
 JEWETT, PROCTOR AND WORTHINGTON. 
 
 NEW YORK : SHELDON, LAMPORT AND BLAKEMAN. 
 
 1854. 
 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1854, by 
 JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 ^-%2S AUm 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 ALLEN AND FARNHAM, STEREOTTPERS AND PRINTERS 
 
TO MY FRIEND 
 
 MRS. F. W. S., 
 
 EN THE NAME OF ONE WHOSE MEMORY IS LINKED WITH THE 
 
 SWEETEST AND THE SADDEST RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF MY CUBAN JOURNEY, 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In calling Cuba a " Garden of Delight," I 
 only express the sum of those bright memories, 
 of a genial nature, and of more genial human 
 friends, which I brought away from the tropics. 
 
 The title "Pictures of Cuba," indicates my 
 intention in composing this volume. I have not 
 attempted to write a history, or a gazetteer of 
 Cuba. I have only sought to reproduce the 
 sights and thoughts which passed before the eyes, 
 and through the mind of one whose interest in 
 Cuba is by no means recent, and who tried to 
 see and to think for himself. Many mistakes 
 of detail, I must have made. I have done my 
 best to avoid them, but my chief wish has been, 
 to preserve the aroma of those general impres- 
 sions, which are the best things that an unscien- 
 
Vlll PEEFACE. 
 
 tific traveller has to offer to an exacting public. 
 The considerate reader, to whom I shall be for- 
 tunate enough to convey any distincter notions 
 of the sweet, sad South, I am sure, will pardon 
 the prominence which the plan of the book 
 necessarily gives to the first personal pronoun. 
 
 It is proper to say here, that something of the 
 substance of these pages has already appeared 
 in the form of letters addressed to the National 
 Era, and that Chapter XIV. has been altered and 
 condensed from an article published in the North 
 American Review, for January, 1849. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I . . . l 
 
 II • 15 
 
 III 23 
 
 "IV 34 
 
 V 45 
 
 "VI. 58 
 
 " VII 73 
 
 " VIII 86 
 
 "IX 100 
 
 X. 124 
 
 "XI 139 
 
 " XII 153 
 
 " XIII ]81 
 
 " XIV. , 202 
 
 "XV 225 
 
GAN-EDEN 
 
 PICTURES OF CUBA 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 "New-born delights." 
 
 Keats. 
 
 There are names which affect us like a 
 delicious poem or a glowing picture. When 
 young Hassan heard his father talking with 
 the merchants from Cairo about Egypt and 
 her Nile, his heart dilated with pleasurable 
 pain, and he found no rest till he sallied 
 forth from the western gate of Mosul across 
 the Syrian sands. Only with reading over 
 the names on a map of Italy or of England, 
 we can warm a winter's hour, and cover 
 the barest walls with such landscapes as 
 never Claude or Constable, Tintoret or 
 Turner put upon the canvas. The name 
 of Cuba leaves a ring of doubloons on the 
 ear, a flavor of guava on the lips. 
 
 Cuba has no history. One sublime figure 
 alone does that magic word summon up 
 1 
 
A GAN-EDEN. 
 
 before us, a figure how sublime ! a shape of 
 rewarded greatness, — of triumphant pa- 
 tience, — a grand heroic figure, motionless 
 upon the rude prow of a low caravel, with 
 sad eyes brightening in an awful joy, as that 
 new world, borne about so long within his 
 throbbing brain, slowly rises, a visible 
 reality, from the bosom of the calm blue 
 sea! 
 
 Before Columbus all human history in 
 Cuba is a blank, after him it is all blood 
 and business. Yet is that fair island a land 
 of sirens to those who know it not ; to those 
 who have wandered there, a land of the 
 lotus. I have heard young men talk re- 
 gretfully of the Havana while lounging 
 along the brilliant Boulevards of Paris, and 
 a venerable merchant, as chary of his 
 emotions as of his indorsements, once said 
 to me, with a light of youth in his old gray 
 eyes, that his arrival in Cuba gave him the 
 most vivid idea he ever had of the passage 
 from this world to the next. What won- 
 der that this should be so ? The Northern 
 Anglo-American sails from his "stern and 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 3 
 
 rock bound coast," racked in body upon the 
 swiftly revolving wheels of a climatic tor- 
 ture, the pains of which are the more in- 
 tense, that he cannot anticipate where or 
 when they will recur, — racked in spirit by 
 the vexatious excitements of the most dis- 
 tracting and unjoyous life men have ever 
 led. He finds in tropical Spanish America 
 a Kingdom of Cockaigne 
 
 " a place 
 
 Blest by Heaven's especial grace, 
 
 A pleasant shore, 
 
 Where a sweet clime is breathed from a land 
 Of fragrance, quietness, and trees and flowers, 
 Pull of calm joy it is, as we of grief, 
 Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth." 
 
 Within three days' sail of our southern 
 ports, lie scenes than which India itself 
 offers nothing more thoroughly strange to 
 our eyes. The world of nature is strange. 
 The eye seeks in vain the many-branching 
 small-leaved forests of the Continent. They 
 are replaced by taller, more leafy, more 
 graceful tribes of the vegetable kingdom, — 
 the grains and the grasses of our cornfields 
 and our ponds, shooting up, mighty arbo- 
 
4t GAN-EDEN. 
 
 rescent giants overhead. The rich and 
 dainty flowers, whose acquaintance we 
 made as the delicately nurtured belles of 
 the aristocratic New England hothouse, 
 flaunt upon us, rude and healthy hoydens, 
 from every hedge and roadside. New 
 lights are in the firmament, strange con- 
 stellations shining with a planetary splen- 
 dor in these new, more magnificent heavens. 
 There, most beautiful of all the signs God 
 hath set in the skies, flames the Southern 
 Cross, the Christian constellation, the sym- 
 bol of the new hopes and the new life re- 
 vealed to Christendom in that later age 
 when first it greeted European eyes. 
 Strangely, among the new tenants of the 
 upper world, shows the familiar brightness 
 of Orion and of the Pleiades, and the great 
 Northern Bear seems a wanderer like our- 
 selves, gazing on the splendid southern stars 
 as the rude Gothic heroes and fierce Vik- 
 inger gazed of old upon the gorgeous 
 pageantries of Eome and of Byzantium. 
 The very crescent moon has changed, the 
 huntress Diana has bartered her bow for a 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 5 
 
 golden boat, in which she floats Cleopatra- 
 like, and careless of the chase, through the 
 luxurious purple skies. Not less strange in 
 appearance than the moon, are the waters 
 which she sways. The ocean rolls around 
 the volcanic and coralline rocks, a tide more 
 a deeply darkly beautifully blue " than is 
 ever seen upon our northern coasts, more 
 blue even than the glorious blue waters of 
 the Mediterranean. These waters which 
 are very deep close in shore, for the shores 
 of northern Cuba are generally steep and 
 sudden, are transparent and pellucid as the 
 crystal of Lake George, and leaning over 
 the bows of the ship you may see far down 
 below you a whole submarine landscape of 
 queer and enormous plants, populous with 
 all manner of lazy conservatives, — huge 
 turtles not less grave and aldermanic in 
 appearance than their transatlantic human 
 foes, — star-fishes content throughout their 
 lives to be the admiration of their own 
 Little Pedlingtons ; lazzaroni conchs to 
 whom Heaven has granted what alone the 
 lazzarone of Naples considers wanting to his 
 1* 
 
b GAN-EDEN. 
 
 bliss, " that food should have legs and crawl 
 to him ; " for lying on his back, the happy 
 conch, with feelers indolently stretched 
 along the tide, takes toll of all slight living 
 things that pass that way. How cool and 
 inviting seem to the sun-burned, soul-weary 
 voyager those silent watery realms, unvex- 
 ed by merman or by mermaid, " a dream 
 of idleness in groves Elysian ! " 
 
 Not alone are the eyes refreshed with 
 new sights on land and sea ; the air is full 
 of winged jewels, the groves and canefields 
 glancing by clay with the prismatic colors 
 of thousands of coleoptera, and brilliant 
 broad-winged butterflies, and glittering by 
 night with the electrical splendors of the 
 famous cucullos, those torch-bearing aerial 
 watchmen, those living emeralds, whose 
 effulgence no gem of the mineral world 
 can rival. Nay, the very air itself is a 
 novelty to northern lungs in which the 
 senses take not less delight than in aught 
 of sight or sound that rejoices them. 
 Breathing, which is perhaps the greatest 
 inconvenience of life in our intemperate 
 
PICTUBES OF CUBA. 
 
 zone, becomes its chief and cheapest luxury 
 in Cuba. One finds it more easy to surren- 
 der his barbarian faith in the forms of mat- 
 ter, and accepts more submissively the gos- 
 pel of gas, when he finds how effectively 
 and sweetly the mere atmosphere of the 
 tropics can attune the dissonant chords of 
 his substantial mortal body. Those bland 
 airs steal over the system, curdled by our 
 uneasy atmosphere, with a soothing influ- 
 ence such as the companionship of the 
 serene and the noble exerts upon hearts 
 snatched from the society of the vexatious, 
 the passionate, and the querulous. It is so 
 strange and so pleasant to trust in the skies 
 as one trusts in one's friends! Our north- 
 ern Aurora is a mere Armida, — nay, she 
 is a very Jael, and when, lulled by her 
 seducing smiles, we lay our trusting heads 
 upon her lap, she rewards our confidence 
 with a nail smartly driven through the 
 temples ! The Cuban morning, faithful as 
 Fiordelisa, crowns us 
 
 " Con gioia e con diletto 
 Senza aver tenia o di gnerfa sospetto." 
 
8 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Here it is almost as unsafe to count upon 
 a pleasant to-morrow in the country as to 
 speculate upon the chances of a Cape Horn 
 voyage, or a presidential nomination. In 
 Cuba, a man may arrange periodical pic- 
 nics for his grandchildren yet unborn. Of 
 course in such a land nobody talks of the 
 weather, excepting raw foreigners, and 
 the comparative dullness of large social 
 gatherings in Havana may perhaps be 
 due in part to the impossibility of intro- 
 ducing this agreeable and fruitful topic, to 
 which we owe so much of the easy and 
 brilliant conversation that abounds in our 
 own saloons. 
 
 If God's world in Cuba, the world of 
 nature, as Columbus and Ojeda found it 
 there three centuries ago, is thus strange to 
 the children of the temperate zones, man's 
 world, the world of arts and manners, as 
 the successors of Columbus and Ojeda have 
 reared it, is not less striking and strange. 
 The northern voyager, as his steamer glides 
 into the huge tub-shaped harbor of Havana, 
 gazes with astonishment on a scene which 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 9 
 
 revives his visions or his memories of the 
 far Levant. Our Anglo-Saxondom has so 
 appropriated to itself the American name ; 
 the " young giant of the West/' so yearns to 
 crown his head with the Arctic Circle and 
 to bathe his feet in the southern sea, that 
 most of us think little of those bygone 
 days, when the Indies were but the pantry 
 and the strong-box of the Catholic kings, 
 when the Caribbean was a Spanish lake, 
 when the man who sailed from London a 
 trader was hung in Panama a pirate, and 
 the old Gothic monarchy talked as confi- 
 dently of its manifest rights as does young 
 America now of its manifest destiny. So 
 it seems to us, that to have reached this 
 stately panorama of Havana, we must have 
 traversed many miles of longitude instead 
 of a few degrees of latitude. On the left 
 hand rise fortifications massive as those of 
 Malta or Gibraltar, wrought into the dark 
 grey rocks of the Morro, sweeping along 
 the many-hued hill-sides of the Cabanas, 4 
 glittering throughout their lengthening 
 lines with the white uniforms and shin- 
 
10 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ing bayonets of the sentinels who guard 
 the proud flag of Spain, that gorgeous 
 banner of blood and of gold ? which sym- 
 bolizes so well the career and the charac- 
 ter of the pedlar knights, or knightly ped- 
 lars, who conquered the Indies for Castile 
 and Leon. 
 
 On the right, stretch irregular masses 
 of parti-colored buildings, blue, pink, white, 
 green, yellow, overtopped at intervals by 
 some massive church tower or graceful 
 tufted palm-tree. Queer-looking boats, 
 emancipated gondolas, shameless sisters of 
 the veiled Venetian nuns, and brilliant as 
 butterflies, dart in and out along the 
 crowded quays. Half-naked negroes are 
 riding fractious horses into the sluggish 
 water, and a confused incessant buzz, like 
 that which rises from vociferous Naples to 
 the ear of the lonely traveller dreaming 
 among the orange groves of lofty San 
 Elmo, comes -faintly from the shore. You 
 land, penetrate the mysteries of the city, 
 and still the wonder grows. You call a 
 coach, and find only an odd looking gig 
 
PICTURES OP CUBA. 11 
 
 with shafts sixteen feet long, and wheels 
 six yards in circumference, driven by a 
 negro postilion, three parts jack-boots and 
 one part silver-laced jacket. Into this 
 singular vehicle you fling yourself, and find 
 that to the gig of your dear native land, 
 this tropical gig is as the pine-apple is to 
 the pearmain, so luxurious, so cradling, 
 to provocative of bland indifference to all 
 worldly cares ! You reach your inn, and 
 find it in appearance a Moorish palace, — 
 in general discomfort a German boarding- 
 house, in expense a Bond street hotel. 
 You find that you are to live on two meals 
 a day ; a breakfast that begins with eggs 
 and rice, is sustained by fried pork and 
 Catalan wine, and ends with coffee and 
 cigars ; a dinner, every dish of which is a 
 voyage of discovery. You are to sleep on 
 what most resembles a square drum-head 
 of Jullien dimensions, without mattress or 
 coverlets, in a room with a red-tiled floor, 
 and with windows in which the utter want 
 of glass is compensated for by the presence 
 of innumerable iron bars. Boots is a na- 
 
12 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 tive African, an ex-cannibal for aught yon 
 know, wonderfully tattooed, and the laun- 
 dress an athletic young negress who 
 smokes authentic long nines. 
 
 You walk out through streets narrow as 
 those of Pompeii, past shops open to the 
 ground like those of Naples, and shaded 
 with heavy awnings that often sweep 
 across the street. Every thing is patent 
 to your gaze and nobody seems to be aware 
 of the fact. Only now and then you pass 
 some vast pile of yellow stone, stately as 
 the palaces of Genoa, and catch through 
 the great archway a glimpse of court-yards, 
 fountain-cooled and palm-shaded, that sug- 
 gest dreams of Eastern seclusion and invisi- 
 ble beauty. You dream on this fine dream, 
 for in all your walk you meet no female 
 form save of the Pariah class, unless, per- 
 chance, you stumble on some fair for- 
 eigner, at sight of whose bonnet the incu- 
 rious native deigns to look up from his 
 business in doors, or his lounge in the 
 shade, with a sudden stare and a half-pity- 
 ing smile, which provoke you to wonder 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 13 
 
 that you had ever ceased to feel how fear- 
 ful a thing the bonnet of civilization is. 
 Water carriers, balancing their jars, mules 
 half hidden from the eye by fresh bundles 
 of green fodder, borne on either side, large 
 cream-colored oxen, superb as the mild- 
 eyed monsters of Lombardy, pulling pri- 
 meval carts by means of yokes fastened in 
 front of the horns, crowd up the narrow 
 streets. And through them all the fre- 
 quent calesero, swinging in his heavy sad- 
 dle, steers the clumsy length of his quitrin 
 with careless certain skill. 
 
 The signs of the shops startle you, for 
 if you are to take them an pied de la lettre, 
 all the retail business of Havana is in the 
 hands of saints, goddesses, and heroes, of 
 birds, beasts, and beauties. St. Dominic 
 deals in healing drugs, St. Anthony boldly 
 handles laces, muslins, and ribbons, Diana 
 dispenses sweets to all the dandies of the 
 town, the Empress Eugenia meekly mea- 
 sures tapes, and the blessed Sun himself 
 has really "proved a micher," and cheats 
 in cosmetics. The greater merchants, like 
 2 
 
14 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 the burghers of the middle ages, often 
 occupy with their families the elegant 
 upper floors of the building which in its 
 first stories serves them for a warehouse. 
 
 Not less mediaeval is the confusion of 
 quarters. Next door to the begrimed 
 hovel of a dealer in coal, rises the palatial 
 home of the opulent marquis ; St. Giles and 
 St. James elbow each other. 
 
 Have we not passed the pillars of Her- 
 cules, and shall we not "look the blue 
 straits over," for the heights of Morocco ? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 " In the afternoon they came nnto a land 
 Wherein it seemed always afternoon." 
 
 •^ Tennyson. 
 
 What shocks may not our personal iden- 
 tity survive ? A month ago I sate, a listless 
 convalescent, gowned and slippered, beside 
 a roaring coal fire, feebly dreaming of Cuba 
 and the Azores, of Madeira and of Georgia. 
 Then, the cautious journey from the phials 
 and pill-boxes of the sick room to the busts 
 and the books of the genial library, was 
 an affair of doubts, and hopes, and fears. 
 Then, to watch the panting pedestrians in 
 the street as they toiled through the drift- 
 ing snow, and to follow the tintinnabular 
 sleigh horse with the ear long after he had 
 vanished from the eye in the eddying 
 snow-mists, was to see the world and to 
 share in its concerns. A fortnight later I 
 lay sickening and shivering in the narrow 
 
16 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 berth of an unquiet steamer, tossed to and 
 fro by the riotous waves about Cape Hat- 
 teras. And now I sit at mine ease, in the 
 gigantic frescoed saloon of an old Spanish 
 house, in a cool undress, oblivious of physic 
 and of pain, lapped in a sweet frenzy of 
 fragrance and of sunlight, eating, drinking, 
 breathing the very life of summer ! — We 
 left Charleston on a bleak wintry morning, 
 and for two days I lay in my berth just 
 over the boiler, and just under the heels 
 of sixteen horses, en route for Havana, eat- 
 ing oranges and wishing myself in New 
 England. On the third day, the heat from 
 below, and the noise from above, fairly 
 drove me on deck. The weather had al- 
 ready become demi-tropical, and a warm 
 shimmer over the sea wooed us seduc- 
 ingly onwards. When I awoke under the 
 rich golden light that streamed through the 
 cabin window on the fourth morning, we 
 were just backing up to the pier at Key 
 West. 
 
 This purgatory of underwriters was a 
 charming surprise to me. A low sandy 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 17 
 
 shore, covered with a luxuriant growth of 
 aloes and feathery palmettoes, and dot- 
 ted all along with shining white cottages, 
 among which towered a cage-like light- 
 house ; rows of pelicans, dipping into the 
 surf after fishes ; half a dozen vessels moor- 
 ed along-side a long wooden pier, and as 
 many more lying motionless further out on 
 the glassy green water; such was Key 
 West on that fine sunny morning. New 
 life began to kindle in my veins. Delight- 
 fully the day wore on. Flying-fishes dart- 
 ed here and there above the surface of the 
 still and glittering sea. Sometimes the 
 white sails of a wrecking schooner, flap- 
 ping in the calm ; sometimes the bare spars 
 of a stranded ship ; sometimes the slender 
 network of an iron light-house, drew the 
 attention of the little knots of passengers 
 from the general consultation of watches 
 and the study of maps. We were seven 
 hours behind time, and great was our fear 
 lest we should not pass the Morro Castle 
 before sundown. Since the times of Lopez, 
 the government of the Island have enforc- 
 2* 
 
18 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ed the order which forbids ships entering 
 the harbor after the evening gun is fired, 
 and it was not pleasant to anticipate a 
 night on the rolling billows that ceaselessly 
 surge outside the narrow gateway of the 
 port. 
 
 About noon the breeze sprang up, the 
 good ship spread her wings, and with the 
 double help of Daedalus and Watt we hur- 
 ried onwards. Islet after islet appeared 
 and vanished like shadows on the far hori- 
 zon, low isles 
 
 " remote, that ride 
 On the ocean's bosom unespied." 
 
 At four o'clock there was a rush to the 
 upper deck, and lo ! bold and brown 
 against the silver-blue cloud-bank before us, 
 rose the irregular outline of Cuba. The 
 hue of the waves brightened as we went 
 onward, till we sailed through such glowing 
 deeps of blue as beat about the cliffs of 
 Capri. 
 
 Plainer and plainer grew the brown hill- 
 sides, the glancing Italian villas, the lofty 
 palm-trees, — plainer and plainer the dark 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 19 
 
 gray rocks and white tower of the Morro 
 Castle, the terraced roofs and glittering 
 houses of the city. Not a sail was in sight. 
 It seemed as if we, fortunate discoverers, 
 now saw before us that populous Cathay 
 for which Columbus longed. Soon a lateen- 
 sail swooped out on the sea from behind 
 the threatening rocks, and the massive 
 masonry of the fortin cations became dis- 
 tinguishable. The lateen-sail drooped be- 
 side our still advancing ship, a pilot came 
 on board, and while the sun was still kind- 
 ling the cloud-bank on our right, and flash- 
 ing yellow light over all the gay and gor- 
 geous scene, we shot through the narrow en- 
 trance of the port, and the whole panorama 
 of the vast landlocked bay, with its ships 
 and its shores, suddenly swept into view, 
 Not more strange, not more rich, not more 
 beautiful is the bay of Naples or the road- 
 stead of Genoa ! 
 
 An endless line of masts from which 
 floated a profusion of gay flags. Negroes 
 in bright jackets and briefest trowsers 
 thronging the quays of yellowish stone, or 
 
20 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 darting over the water in boats, the lateen- 
 sails and painted hulls of which, now bright 
 scarlet, now blue, now striped in green and 
 white, give infinite and picturesque variety 
 to the scene. Great square stone ware- 
 houses fronted with low colonnades; elegant 
 dwellings in the Italian style, stuccoed and 
 painted, and continually relieved by bright 
 green jalousies and plumes of graceful foli- 
 age ; the renowned volantes, brilliant with 
 silver, rolling in and rolling out of enor- 
 mous gateways. Ever and anon from be- 
 hind the fanciful lines of the diversified 
 houses, rises the sombre gray tower of a 
 Komanesque church, or the high-peaked 
 roof of a huge convent. 
 
 The entrance to the harbor was hidden 
 by the battlemented heights behind us, and 
 what with solid forts, squaring the hill-tops 
 here and there, and white hamlets, and red 
 hamlets, and hamlets of every hue, and 
 rich green tufts of tropical trees chequering 
 the brown slopes, the whole circle of the 
 harbor was as brightly beautiful as need 
 be. Half a dozen Spanish men of war lay 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 21 
 
 here and there about the bay; a French 
 steam-frigate off the Alameda de Paula, 
 and hard by ourselves a magnificent Eng- 
 lish seventy-four displayed the white ensign 
 of the West Indian Admiral. We had 
 surely seen all this before, when in boyish 
 days Tom Cringle treated us to the crimes 
 and candies of his Caribbean Log ! Funny 
 little canopied boats manned by clean, neat 
 Spaniards in white jackets, swarmed about 
 us, and eager negroes balanced on the 
 swinging bows of fragile barquichuelas, 
 waved golden bunches of the pendulous 
 banana before our wondering eyes. The 
 escaping steam shrieked with joy to be re- 
 lieved from duty, the hurrying passengers 
 besieged the grave polite customs' officers 
 who had boarded us, beseeching them to 
 grant landing permits for that night, and 
 the valets-de-place of the different hotels 
 kept shoving cards into everybody's hands. 
 Decidedly we had arrived ! 
 
 Soon but two passengers remained on 
 board, of the sixty-two who had traversed 
 the placid seas in company. The night air 
 
22 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 in the harbor was so mild, that I could not 
 deny myself the delight of dallying a little 
 longer with the sober certainty of arrival. 
 Weary with the excitement of the day, but 
 not otherwise conscious of that great illness 
 from which I had so lately escaped, I lay 
 on the deck with my pleasant English 
 friend. We watched the great moon and 
 stars come out into the purple sky. The 
 lights glittered one by one at the mast- 
 heads of the war ships all over the bay. 
 The sounds from the shore grew fainter 
 and fainter, and the familiar strains of 
 " God save the Queen " coming mellowed 
 over the water from the stately English 
 ship, were our evening hymn. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Eambling from one inn to another. 
 
 John Locke. 
 
 I had no trouble at the Aduana. " Smith's 
 Leading Cases," two delicate octavos in calf- 
 skin, attracted the attention of the cour- 
 teous official, who removed his cigar to ask 
 an explanation ; " Las leyes de Ingla terra 1 " 
 I solemnly answered; "Ah si!" and evi- 
 dently convinced that a man who could 
 not travel without a "Corpus Juris" in his 
 portmanteau, must be a miracle of good 
 behavior, the Aduanero replaced his cigar, 
 waved his hand politely, and passed our 
 luggage. I found him afterwards charged 
 in the bill, by the polite and excellent An- 
 tonio, our Spanish landlord, who had come 
 to find us on board of the ship, and to 
 pilot us to his house. And what a house ! 
 neither English, nor American, nor French; 
 a genuine Spanish Posada, colonial indeed, 
 
24 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 but redolent of the Asturias ! The house 
 was once a bishop's palace, and dates from 
 the days of Velasquez and Cortez. When 
 this house was built, Puritanism was a capi- 
 tal joke, and the king of the Spains was 
 the Bugaboo of all Anglo- Saxondom. How 
 grave and quiet was the company at the 
 breakfast table ! the waiters, how good- 
 humored without familiarity, how respect- 
 ful without servility! An amiable New 
 Zealander, my friend and fellow passenger, 
 brought me to this place, whither uninitia- 
 ted Americans rarely wander. My vigorous 
 gratitude ought to reach him at the Antip- 
 odes. But for yonder negress, who, with 
 a cigar in her mouth, is ironing at a large 
 table in the red-tiled back court of this 
 second story, I might imagine myself to be 
 in that very a venta, que por su mal Don 
 Quixote penso que era Castillo ! " that mem- 
 orable inn where the four wool-combers 
 of Segovia, the three Cordovan leather- 
 dressers, and the strollers of Seville, that 
 jocose and lively folk tossed Sancho in a 
 blanket to pay his master's bill. 
 
PICTUEES OF CUBA. 25 
 
 The squat stone pillars and low arches of 
 the gallery which runs around the hollow 
 square of the house, and the green blinds 
 which shade that gallery, give a Moorish 
 air to the interior. Every pillar is vocal 
 with Canary birds. The rooms around the 
 gallery have no doors, only large curtains, 
 lazily stirred now by the light breeze. The 
 red tiles of the inner roofs, the brown stone 
 floors, the serious, dignified Spanish faces 
 of the two or three guests lounging in the 
 huge antiquated saloon, the heavy mahog- 
 any chairs, ranged in two opposing ranks 
 between the enormous doorway and the 
 equally enormous window, and decorated 
 each with a coronet of faded gilt, the 
 stuffed tropical birds in cases, on the mass- 
 ively carved buffet, the queer monkish chan- 
 delier dangling from the dark green rafters 
 of the high-pitched ceiling, all conspire 
 to perfect this scene of warm and in- 
 dolent delight. From my balcony of dark 
 green wood, I look up the short vista 
 of a street about twenty feet wide to a 
 government building, an Italian palazzo 
 3 
 
26 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 painted light green, and picked out with 
 white, in the Plaza cle Armas, and to the 
 sunny garden of the Plaza, gay with 
 aloes in full bloom, and fuchsias, and a 
 hundred other tropical flowers. Above 
 them all rises a marble statue, shaded by 
 three noble cocoa-nut palms, whose rich 
 plumes of brownish green wave gracefully 
 in the light breeze, while their smooth-look- 
 ing grayish white trunks gleam brightly in 
 the sunshine. 
 
 From the little shops over the way, in 
 whose terraced roofs I recognize "the Abode 
 of Peace, Bagdad," sally forth novel figures ; 
 sometimes a trig little Spaniard in white 
 jacket and jaunty sombrero, sometimes a 
 stalwart African in no jacket and no hat, 
 his rich brown -black skin swelling with the 
 tension of such a muscular system as would 
 not discredit a lion. Ever and anon, a 
 punchy black mule with stiff, erect, close- 
 shaven mane, and braided tail tied with gay 
 ribbons to the saddle, comes prancing by 
 in the shafts of a gorgeous volante, or a 
 grey donkey shambles along, and on his 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 27 
 
 back a Creole boy, with smiling kindly 
 face, and great black eyes, and warm 
 bright complexion, half sitting, half lying 
 between two great straw panniers fall of 
 oranges or zapotes, or pine-apples, or plan- 
 tains. The whole spirit of the place is that 
 of a drowsier Spanish Italy. For the laz- 
 zaroni, we have the negroes, many of them 
 magnificent Africans, the finest specimens 
 of the race I ever saw. Their ways are 
 infinitely queer. For instance, they use 
 their ears for pockets. You see a huge, 
 tattooed, bronze Hercules take out a lucifer 
 match from behind one ear, and a long 
 cigar from behind the other, while small 
 silver change gleams in the orifices of 
 both. 
 
 I have since gone through a course of 
 hotels in Havana. There are khans far 
 finer than this Castilian hostelry, far finer, 
 and far costlier. There is Le Grand's, out- 
 side the walls, that stately Hotel-Restau- 
 rant, where bad Bordeaux wine, and worse 
 Bordeaux French, make such a mimicry of 
 Paris, as suffices to bewilder, and to charm 
 
28 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 the aspiring youth of Havana. So the 
 young cockney, through a small window 
 of his own Colosseum gazing, on square 
 yards of Alps, and cubic inches of cascade, 
 dreams of the Traveller's Club, and fasci- 
 nates the listening ear of Clapham, or of 
 Pentonville, with tales of bold adventure ! 
 Le Grand's,- however, is a truly delightful 
 house. Passing by, one night, the aspect 
 of the Cafe restaurant, with its marble 
 floors, and lofty ceilings, and the Parisian 
 elegance of its decorations, and the quiet 
 satisfaction visible on the faces of the port- 
 ly guests, quite attracted me. I installed 
 myself there, and passed a pleasant fort- 
 night beneath and upon its hospitable roof. 
 That lofty azotea, that great terraced 
 housetop, like a watchtower of Asmo- 
 deus, commands the roofs of half the city, 
 and when the sea-breeze cools the even- 
 ing air, a lively little upper world, another 
 "realm of the birds," an airy kingdom of 
 sauntering youths, and gaily dressed dam- 
 sels, comes finely into sight ! In the early 
 morning, how lovely is the view from that 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 29 
 
 commanding post ! how delicious the fresh 
 breath of the ocean which rolls its broad 
 shining flood half-way around the horizon ! 
 Algiers seems beneath you to the north, 
 the broad promenade and European city 
 walls to the south carry the imagination 
 away to the Peninsula ; while to the east, 
 the vast yellowish masses of the Cabanas, 
 and the light-tower of the Morro, mark the 
 most individual feature of the scene. A 
 fine ship going out under full sail, two or 
 three vessels running in from afar, a few 
 large birds swaying lazily to and fro, or 
 circling overhead, and the clumsy gallop 
 of the volante horses below, are rarely 
 wanting to give life and animation to a 
 scene, which would otherwise be almost 
 oppressively still, in the broad tropical 
 light. The balconies below, in the early 
 evening, look out upon the Paseo Isabel II., 
 thronged with all its promenading world. 
 
 One thing only was lacking to my enjoy- 
 ment of this admirable house. My cham- 
 ber would have been a disgrace to an apart- 
 ment au cinquieme in the Eue de la Ver- 
 3* 
 
30 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 rerie. The saloon was a large, long, hand- 
 some room, marble floored, and furnished 
 in the cool sparing fashion of the country. 
 Of the restaurant, I have already spoken. 
 But the sleeping rooms of the hotel were 
 small, ill-contrived, and vilely furnished. 
 An attenuated bed, a dilapidated wash- 
 stand, and space for a trunk, limited my 
 host's idea of necessary lodging-rooms. To 
 be sure this notion was not particular to 
 him, but general to the native. Some 
 private families, of high respectability, are 
 in the habit of turning loose a number of 
 cots into their vast saloons at night, for the 
 accommodation of some of the multitudi- 
 nous members that go to make up a house- 
 hold in this prolific region. And at the 
 best American hotel in the city, to which 
 also I roved, the accommodations were 
 such, that I have known more than one 
 very worshipful party landed in the morn- 
 ing from New York take flight in the 
 afternoon for New Orleans, at the mere 
 aspect of their sleeping apartment ! In 
 truth, one is forced to smile at the ridicu- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 31 
 
 lous contrast between his expenditure and 
 his entertainment. In London or Paris, 
 one may spend vast sums of money in the 
 purchase of ephemeral satisfactions, and 
 magnificent trifles, but the satisfactions, 
 however expensive, will be satisfactory, 
 and the trifles, however trivial, will be 
 magnificent. In Havana, one pays the 
 price of luxuries for necessities, and those 
 poor of their kind. If a man could live on 
 guava jelly and cigars, I suppose he might 
 find Havana an economical place ; but if he 
 requires any thing else, if he wants bread 
 and meat, and water, and a good bed to 
 sleep in, let him go to Antioch or Ancona, 
 to Brindisi or to Basso rah, rather than to 
 Havana. At his hotel he will have to pay 
 more than at the best New York houses, 
 and if he ever humbly expostulated with 
 that feudal baron, his landlord, at the St. 
 Nicholas, or the New York, for putting him 
 up stairs beyond the reach of waiters, and 
 in a room so small that he must go out of 
 the window to get into bed, he will repent 
 his disloyal murmuring against the fiat of 
 
32 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 American autocracy, when lie learns that 
 the second" bed in his Havana chamber is 
 likely at any moment to be tenanted by a 
 stranger, and that when two adventitious 
 cots have cut off his approach to the wash- 
 stand and the looking-glass, a fourth weary 
 wanderer just landed from the Chagres 
 steamer, may be laid to die of the Isthmus 
 fever in his own double bed. This is no 
 fancy sketch. "Such things have been." 
 Whenever I was lucky enough to have a 
 room to myself, I felt the constant anxiety 
 of a respited criminal. Now, surely, a car- 
 avanserai is much better than this. Far 
 better bring one's bed with one, sure of a 
 place apart where to lay it down privately 
 and peacefully, than sleep on furnished 
 down after this fashion. It is quite too 
 romantic, and too vividly reminds you of 
 Maritornes and the mishaps of the Posada. 
 It likes me not, and, in conjunction with 
 railroads, is intolerable. Let us have one 
 thing or another. If we must sleep four in 
 a room, let us travel exclusively afranc-etrier, 
 and dine every day under the trees, with 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 33 
 
 strolling actors. But it is sadly inharmoni- 
 ous, this juxtaposition of the middle ages 
 at our inn with the nineteenth century on 
 the road. These sudden changes of mental 
 temperature, are trying as those of a New- 
 England spring. 
 
CHAPTER IV, 
 
 Les plaisirs ont leur torn*, 
 C'est leur plus doux usage 
 Que de finir les soins du jour. 
 
 MOLIEKE. 
 
 It was a high festival day on which I 
 first drove out to the Paseos, the Champs 
 Elysees of Havana. 
 
 On our way we passed a church, out of 
 which was moving the most absurd imagin- 
 able religious procession. Let Naples hide 
 her diminished head, and Einsiedeln be 
 rebuked ! First came four negroes, playing 
 the violin, bass-viol, flute, and flageolet, rol- 
 ling their eyes, and grinning in an ecstasy 
 of jocose importance. Then, boys and men 
 carrying candles, and shoving everybody 
 aside, like newly appointed policemen. 
 Then, a hangdog looking friar in a greasy 
 white gown, with cowl thrown back, care- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 35 
 
 lessly swinging, or rather jerking, a hnge 
 censer, and glancing upward, from side to 
 side, at the balconies, full of fair Habaneras, 
 as he slouched along. Then four men, car- 
 rying a gilded canopy, in front of which 
 paraded a boy in white, and a priest in 
 white silk and gold, bearing the shining 
 Host, and followed by another priest, in 
 yellow silk and gold. Then "the army 
 incog.," blacky white, and yellow. An om- 
 nibus, (are there not omnibus-gondolas 
 in Venice !) an omnibus got in their way, 
 as it was natural such a heretical, modern 
 French monstrosity should do. Livid with 
 rage, the censer-man, more incensed than 
 ever I saw monk before, rushed up, swore 
 at the driver, stopped the horses, and turn- 
 ed out the passengers. The driver, a good 
 looking young Spaniard, bowed, crossed 
 himself, shrugged his shoulders, and winked 
 at the spectators. The passengers humbly 
 gave up, except one grey-haired American 
 in spectacles, who fought the priest through 
 the window with an umbrella, and was only 
 dislodged by the joint and furious swearing 
 
36 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 of the holy man, and five or six soldiers 
 who came to his assistance. I never saw a 
 more disgusting scene. 
 
 The Paseos make the most charming of 
 promenades. Beyond the walls stretch for 
 several miles, broad, well-made roads, bor- 
 dered with stately buildings near the city, 
 and lined throughout their whole extent 
 with fine rows of poplars and of palms. 
 Some of these Paseos are adorned with roy- 
 al statues, more or less hideous, with foun- 
 tains, or with gardens. With the Plaza de 
 Armas, the Paseos, and the Alameda, or 
 Poplar Walk, de Paula, a delightful well- 
 paved walk along a sea-wall, somewhat 
 resembling the approach to the Villa Eeale 
 at Naples, Havana has received no younger 
 sister's portion. The Paseos are the after- 
 noon resort of the fine world. There, just 
 before sundown, the footways are throng- 
 ed with hundreds of young Creole exqui- 
 sites, in their eternal uniform of black and 
 white, vindicating the universal incongrui- 
 ties of fashion, by the substitution of an 
 ugly heavy beaver hat for the easy and 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 37 
 
 pretty sombrero of the morning. The eyes 
 of all these youths are directed with a per- 
 tinacity of impertinence, which at first 
 awakens tingling sensations in the toe of a 
 Northern boot, upon the countenances and 
 persons of the hundreds of young ladies 
 who are trotted slowly up and down the 
 carriage roads, in the wide and open vo- 
 lantes. Soon, however, the conviction forces 
 itself upon the stranger, that the young 
 ladies cloat upon this impertinence, and will 
 be looked at. Certainly the exhibition is a 
 wonderfully brilliant one ! Mr. Angus Mc- 
 Kaskill, the Nova Scotia giant, and a genu- 
 ine Polar Walrus, whose seducing likenesses 
 just now adorn the useless city walls, must 
 surely solicit the public attention in vain, 
 when such a pageant as this is nightly 
 open to the world ! The rich sunlight falls 
 upon hundreds of beautiful heads, tastefully 
 dressed as if for the opera or the ballroom, 
 and adorned generally with fine natural 
 flowers. The features of the Creole ladies 
 are generally good, and the complexions of 
 the younger among them, though perfectly 
 4 
 
38 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 pale, are of that rich paleness, that sunny 
 hue of antique marble, which distinguished 
 the face of Napoleon in his youth. The 
 elderly ladies, generally riding sandwiched 
 between two younger ones, are not often 
 more attractive than Napoleon in his fat 
 and flabby age. Barely among the Cuban 
 ladies of maturer years, does one see those 
 healthy, sweet, and venerable faces which 
 so often make old age lovely in the north. 
 These dames and damsels are arrayed in the 
 most intense colors, fiery red, ultramarine 
 blue, gamboge yellow, colors as vivid as 
 the hues of the flamingo and the parrot, 
 the cactus-flower and the jaquey. But 
 these glowing colors belong naturally 
 enough to a landscape where all things 
 glow, in the heavens and on the earth. 
 The line of vol antes is broken at intervals, 
 by some ambitious Don fretting his help- 
 less, heavily bitted, long-tailed steed into a 
 continual caracole, or by the close English 
 carriage of some exclusive noble, or enter- 
 prising hotel keeper. Gradually the car- 
 riages roll off the ground. Sallow inane 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 39 
 
 young men go swinging their canes 
 through the gates. The long procession 
 of the watchmen, walking two and two 
 with lighted lanterns appears, and lo ! it 
 is night. Night, which falls not sweetly 
 and slowly down around the weary world, 
 as in the northern climes, but comes down 
 suddenly, almost with a jerk, as if the string 
 of a curtain had broken ! At night, the 
 tropic world is all awake, all tremulous 
 with life and light. The streets within 
 the walls are thronged and gay. Then the 
 ladies of condition go shopping, and their 
 volantes crowd the narrow streets. The 
 fair inmates, disdaining to descend, are 
 waited on by familiar, yet courteous shop- 
 men, Spaniards of old Spain, and masters 
 of that courteous familiarity, in which, as in 
 so many other graceful traits, the Moor still 
 triumphs in the heart of Spain. One feels 
 the Orient too, in the equanimity with 
 which the dignified dealer in genuine Ee- 
 galias, or wonderful fans, condescends to 
 waive a trifle of forty or fifty per cent., on 
 the original price he had asked for his 
 
40 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 admirable wares. And do you not seem to 
 see that incomparable lady of Bassorah, to 
 whom the young silk merchant gave such 
 long credit, and loaned such large sums, on 
 the mere security of her magnificent eyes, 
 when you hear the stately and sounding 
 adulation with which these Peninsular 
 tradesmen ply their customers, adroitly 
 puffing not their goods, but the fair buyers 
 thereof? The ecstatic ejaculations which 
 burst from the lips of the Persian princes, 
 when they first beheld themselves sur- 
 rounded by the unveiled Houris of a Lon- 
 don drawing-room, are the daily license of 
 the young Habanero, nor clo the native 
 ladies take any offence at the compliment- 
 ary nonsense which salutes their passage 
 through the streets. But I shall not soon 
 forget the mixture of alarm and indigna- 
 tion with which a northern lady of my ac- 
 quaintance, sallying from the hotel door for 
 her first volante expedition, heard herself 
 addressed by two youths, who took off their 
 hats in passing, and exclaimed, " Go with 
 God ! lovely and beautiful American ! Long 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 41 
 
 live your loveliness, and long live Amer- 
 ica!" Yet as she chanced to be very 
 pretty, and as America is by no means 
 unpopular with the Creoles, she grew quite 
 accustomed to such salutations, before the 
 ride was over, and even submitted with a 
 tolerably good grace to receive the informa- 
 tion from a waiter at the Cafe, where she 
 stopped to take an ice, "that the ices of 
 the beautiful ladies had been paid for, by a 
 Caballero who had gone out ! " 
 
 At night, too, the daughters of the mid- 
 dling classes, arrayed in their best, stand 
 behind the gratings of the huge ground 
 floor windows, guiltless of glass, and gaze 
 out upon the busy street, while their 
 dowdy mammas, in the easiest undress, 
 rock slowly in the huge butacas, or arm- 
 chairs, which are always arranged in two 
 parallel lines from the front windows. The 
 promenaders without, so narrow are the 
 side-walks, almost brush the dresses of the 
 young ladies within, yet the wax-women 
 who so obligingly lead the fashions, in 
 the shop-windows of Broadway and Wash- 
 4* 
 
42 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ington street, are not more impassive under 
 the stare of rural wonder or delight, than 
 are these Creole damsels under the bold 
 gaze of native criticism or foreign admi- 
 ration, to which they are nightly sub- 
 jected. How favorable this arrangement 
 is to the commerce in billets doux, I need 
 not say, and as the windows are gene- 
 rally somewhat bowed, I have even wit- 
 nessed exchanges of a more tender nature, 
 made through the gratings. At night the 
 Plaza cle Armas is in its glory. The Plaza 
 de Armas is not so large as Hyde Park, 
 neither does it at all resemble the Battery ; 
 and those wise people who disdain Drachen- 
 fels, for its little likeness to Anthony's 
 Nose, and despise Windermere, because it 
 is but a teacup beside the great wash-tub 
 of Lake Erie, find the Plaza de Armas 
 neither fair nor pleasing. Yet it seems to 
 me a charming place, with its picturesque 
 frontiers of Southern buildings, and its cita- 
 del of marble quiet, when the hot noon 
 broods above its silent palms, and still, 
 dreaming, odorous flowers. A charming 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 43 
 
 place, suggesting recollections more charm- 
 ing still of lovelier places, of the gardens of 
 King Agib, and of the courts wherein 
 " Ganem, the Distracted Slave of Love/' 
 recited extemporaneous verses to the dark- 
 eyed Alcolomb. And at night the Plaza de 
 Armas has new charms of its own. Then 
 the regimental bands gathered around the 
 conspicuous marble statue of Ferdinand. 
 VII., discourse most passionate music ; then, 
 moving groups of ladies in mantillas, and 
 caballeros, (alas that I must write it !) in 
 black dress coats and white pantaloons, 
 chequer the rich moonlight on the mar- 
 ble pavements, and swarthy slaves glancing 
 with ornaments of silver and of gold, lean 
 over the low walls, bandying their chuck- 
 ling wit in their strange negro Spanish; 
 and half hidden in the broad shadows of the 
 buildings round about the Plaza, dark-eyed 
 Alcolombs receive the homage of meeker 
 and less ecstatic Ganems, assiduous beside 
 those wondrous vehicles, which, to the lady 
 of Havana, are gondola and throne, fauteuil 
 and palanquin at once. 
 
 At nine o'clock the bands march off the 
 
44 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ground. The volant es follow, and the aim- 
 less masculine world repairs to the Cafes. 
 The Cafes are stately squares of marble 
 columns, open in the centre to the airs of 
 heaven, and refreshed with the plashing of 
 fountains. There the representatives of 
 half the nations of the world are to be 
 found, the heavy moustachio of the Span- 
 ish dragoon, and the ruddy, clean shaven 
 visage of the English middy, equally active 
 in the discussion of all manner of new and 
 fragrant compounds, cool with Northern 
 ice, and aromatic with the life of tropic 
 fruits. There, oysters are a costly luxury, 
 and pineapples are a drug, and nobody 
 reads the newspaper. An uproarious con- 
 fusion of tongues, the continual ringing 
 from the little silver braziers, which the 
 unwearied waiters clatter down upon the 
 marble tables in answer to the perpetual 
 cries of « Candela ! Candela !" (Fire ! Fire !) 
 which echo through the building, and a 
 ceaseless movement to and fro in the bright 
 gas-light distinguish the world of men with- 
 in. Without, the ladies in their volantes 
 take ices, and a little more gallantry. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Spectacles, bals, festins, concerts, conversations." 
 
 Gil Blas at Lirias. 
 
 People in the tropics rarely perpetrate 
 those wild excesses with which the north- 
 ern races warm their frozen blood. The 
 tropics are the home of temperance and 
 regularity. The very winds are always 
 methodical in their madness, and give man- 
 kind timely notice of their intended orgies, 
 like that considerate nobleman, who used 
 to announce to his friends, " Next Thursday, 
 by the blessing of Heaven, I propose to be 
 drunk." The life of a Habanero dandy is 
 as systematic as that of a New England 
 deacon. The morning, whether passed in a 
 bataea, or behind a desk in one of those 
 enormous marble-floored counting-houses, 
 which give such a princely air to the mer- 
 cantile life of Havana, is passed quietly and 
 
46 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 calmly. The afternoon melts impercep- 
 tibly away at one of those Creole dinner- 
 tables, where luxury of equipage and 
 entertainment so harmoniously combines 
 with perfect simplicity of manners to fur- 
 nish a meal, which, like the suppers of 
 Plato, is " a pleasure not for the moment 
 only, but for many succeeding days." Then 
 comes the serene lounge in the balcony, 
 with some domestic charmer, or the saunter 
 along the crowded Paseo. The evening 
 belongs to the Plaza de Armas, or to the 
 corridor of the Opera House. Should a 
 ball or a party break the uniformity of this 
 routine, the preparation for such a festival 
 involves no such expenditure of thought 
 and labor, as the assiduous Northerner under- 
 goes in a like case. The prevailing expres- 
 sion of equanimity which distinguishes the 
 Creole face, testifies to the facility with 
 which the Creole lives. Plainly the Creole 
 wastes upon the economic and moral ends 
 of human life, no more thought than is 
 bestowed upon the great corn-grinding 
 and board-sawing mission of all running 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 47 
 
 waters, by the lazy streams and streamlets 
 that go dancing and dawdling on for miles 
 through the savage woodland. The Creole 
 dandy, (compassionate him, oh thou his 
 serious Northern brother!) drifts slowly 
 down his sluggish canal of life without a 
 dream of struggle or endeavor. Some- 
 times he riots in a melodious operatic rage ; 
 but the wave rises highest in his heart, 
 whenever the Dulcinea of the moment 
 makes his encircling arm her stay in the 
 slow, graceful whirl of that delicious contra- 
 danza, which is the rhythmic utterance of 
 his warm languid life. Oh ! how wooingly, 
 how trancingly floats now through my 
 memory, the soft enthralling music of that 
 luxurious dance ! a mystery as strange and 
 sweet as is all that, life so alien from our 
 own ? which flavors the tropic world ! It is 
 the dance of Cuba, and the children of 
 Cuba alone have its secret. You can al- 
 ways detect the foreigner through all the 
 grace and all the precision of his step. The 
 dance is the earliest and most national of 
 national lyrics. The Tarantella, maddening 
 
48 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 on the moonlit sands of Sorrento; the 
 Cachucha, inspiring every limb of the ar- 
 dent daughter of Andalusia; the contra- 
 dansa, pouring the plaintive passion of its 
 wailing cadences through every nerve and 
 vein of the pale, dark-eyed Creoles, till the 
 very music seems to come from them, 
 
 " And all the notes appear to be 
 The echoes of their feet : " 
 
 these may all be felt, but cannot be fathom- 
 ed by the stranger. The measure of the 
 coniradanza always brought before me vis- 
 ions of" the mild-eyed melancholy" Indians, 
 of that soft, unwarlike people to whom 
 life was one sweet song and breathing 
 dance in this fair island, before the greedy 
 Spaniard came with traffic and with toil, 
 to sweep them from the earth. The 
 music of the Indian names and words 
 which the conquerors have preserved, is 
 kindred in character with the measure of 
 the contradanza. Guanabacoa., Camarioca, 
 Baracoa, Guanajay, guahavana, guayava; 
 the soft delaying flow of such words as 
 these revives for us the whole spirit of the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 49 
 
 vanished people, to whom to die was easier 
 than to work. Long may it be before the 
 camp dances of the big-booted Sclavoni- 
 ans, or the mincing absurdities of the diplo- 
 matic quadrille, shall banish from the 
 saloons of Cuba, their own most graceful 
 and expressive measure ! 
 
 The present customs of the land in 
 regard to the intercourse of the young 
 people, are a great shield to the contradanza. 
 The youths and maidens could not spare 
 it. Every Cuban young lady is carefully 
 secluded from the approaches of "young 
 Cuba," by a system of modified duenna- 
 dom. On the Paseo, and particularly on 
 the Plaza de Armas, the shepherd may in- 
 deed converse with his nymph, but always 
 under the eye of her dragon, and the third 
 visit of Lycidas to Chloris, subjects him to a 
 tete-a-tete with Chloris mere, and to a spe- 
 cific investigation into his intentions. The 
 mazes of the contradanza alone are free, and 
 in that brief season of sunshine, flirtations 
 spring up like flowers in the fleeting Scan- 
 dinavian summer. 
 
 5 
 
50 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Social entertainments at Havana borrow 
 a great charm, too, from the spaciousness 
 and airiness of the houses. The lofty ceil- 
 ings, the long capacious rooms, the huge 
 windows opening upon moonlit balconies, 
 lend to the balls and parties of Havana an 
 air of ease and amplitude, which makes 
 them seem more social, and more enter- 
 taining too, than the "jams" of the North. 
 The ladies, when not dancing, to be sure, 
 are apt to run to the walls, and the gentle- 
 men to eddy around the door-posts, after a 
 fashion usually regarded as Anglo-Saxon, 
 yet which is quite as much in vogue among 
 the Southern nations, as in London or Bos- 
 ton. But conversation, however trivial, 
 is here more freely carried on, and one is 
 not oppressed with the sensual horrors of 
 supper as in the States. The climate, too, 
 compels the men, in particular, to dress 
 more rationally, and you never see a sweet 
 temper soured by tight boots, or a noble 
 nature humbled under the tyranny of a 
 shirt-collar. A party at Havana is some- 
 thing more than a congress of polking 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 51 
 
 children, and oyster-eating adults. What- 
 ever refreshments are offered, are always 
 better calculated to revive, than to stun 
 the system ; and I should think that a fort- 
 night of " the season " at New York would 
 be more detrimental to body and mind, 
 than months of gaiety in the Southern 
 capital. The u tertulia," which is the more 
 common form of entertainment in Havana, 
 is very simple, and much less trying than 
 a tea-party. It is, in fact, nothing but a 
 kind of " reception." The capital required 
 for a Northern " reception," being mainly a 
 pair of black pantaloons, and a perpetual 
 smile, for a Cuban tertulia, a perpetual 
 smile, and a pair of white pantaloons will 
 suffice. 
 
 The easiest and pleasantest form of social 
 life at Havana, however, is the great, gene- 
 ral " tertulia " of the entr' actes at the Opera 
 House. Everybody knows that the Tacon 
 Theatre is the largest in America, and one 
 of the largest in the world. Madame Cal- 
 deron familiarized us with the splendors of 
 its appearance, to which, indeed, that lively 
 
52 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 lady did no more than justice. The well- 
 dressed pit relieves, with masses of black 
 and white, the variegated glitter of the 
 boxes. Inclosed only by a slender gilded 
 railing, these boxes display very finely the 
 flashing eyes, and flashing diamonds, the 
 dark tresses, and flowing- dresses of fair 
 Havana. Each box contains a family party 
 with a seat or two to spare, and throughout 
 the evening each family receives visitors, 
 who wander around the great cool passage- 
 ways, peep through the latticed partitions, 
 and spend their evenings as that ancient 
 bachelor his mornings, " in making dodging 
 calls, and wriggling round among the 
 ladies." When the spectacle within grows 
 tedious, you wander into those great corri- 
 dors, refreshed with breezes that blow 
 through enormous windows, and throng- 
 ed with animated groups. Impertinent 
 looking soldiers in their white uniforms 
 stalk majestically about, shoving the Cre- 
 oles, and making way for foreigners, while 
 at the open door of every box " obsequious 
 darkness waits " in gold-laced livery. It is 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 53 
 
 more sad than amusing, however, to witness 
 one feature of this brilliant spectacle. The 
 Creole children, in too many cases, shock 
 the eye by their costume, and their man- 
 ners, more than they win it by their 
 beauty of person and of feature. One 
 rarely sees a positively ugly child in Ha- 
 vana. But quite as rarely does one see a 
 childly child. It is one of the sad conse- 
 quences of the system of social life in the 
 Island, that children associated with their 
 mothers in the ballroom, the dining-room, 
 and the theatre, from the tenderest years, 
 that they may escape the contamination of 
 slave influence, are forced into a precocity, 
 compared with which the sophistication of 
 Punch's immortal juveniles resembles the 
 innocence of the babes in the wood. And 
 there they are at the Opera House, mirror- 
 ing "the greater audience in an audience 
 less," the absurd little boys in tight body- 
 coats and high hats, swinging jewelled canes, 
 the girls laced, fringed, flounced like their 
 mammas, flirting, too, like them, their costly 
 fans with the imitated air, and too often 
 
54 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 with the genuine expression of the matur- 
 est coquetry. Over them the moralist 
 drops a* tear. The hopeful traveller re- 
 calls with grateful heart the memory of 
 other little ones, more in number, too, 
 than the Piper left in Hamelin, in whose 
 bright eyes childhood laughed, whose red 
 lips budded only in the sinless smile of 
 happy infancy, and thereupon, beholds the 
 Cuban future shine more cheerily upon his 
 thought. 
 
 This winter Havana has had no Italian 
 troupe. I should have been glad to see 
 one of those deifications, which have so 
 easily won for Havana the reputation of 
 being a very musical city. A StefFanoni, 
 crowned with silver, and pelted with jewels, 
 a Marini, ranting in regal state, would have 
 been a sight worth seeing. The applauses 
 of such an audience as Havana could 
 furnish, must come down like a tropical 
 shower, uncliscriminating, fierce, and appall- 
 ing. For while the musical cultivation 
 of Havana is evidently very imperfect, the 
 Creole nature and the Creole education 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 55 
 
 must make the Habaneros very suscep- 
 tible of the titillating influence of merely 
 sensuous music. One would not look 
 here for such an intelligent and judicial 
 furore as those that have so often shaken 
 the walls of the Fenice and La Scala, of 
 the Pergola and San Carlo, but a gushing, 
 irrational, dispenclious enthusiasm is always 
 entertaining to the calmer spectator. It is 
 pleasant to see how much the Creoles en- 
 joy the very indifferent music which they 
 like. The Clubs of Havana (for the Eng- 
 lish club-house has wandered further than 
 the Chinese herb, or the Arabian berry, and 
 has undergone as many culinary modifica- 
 tions as they,) partake of the character of 
 Philharmonic Societies. It was very agree- 
 able to see this innovation upon the bearish 
 system of the club-house, and though the 
 performances were ordinary enough, and 
 the programmes such as are now served up 
 only for the delectation of second-rate New 
 England towns, the extravagant, and evi- 
 dently sincere enjoyment of the audiences 
 quite won my sympathies. The music sell- 
 
56 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ers in the town, too, though their shelves 
 would have driven a genuine Mendels- 
 sohnian of Boston quite wild with disgust, 
 seemed to be doing a more extensive busi- 
 ness than I should have fancied possible, 
 in a community where aesthetic cultiva- 
 tion generally is at so low an ebb. Ger- 
 man and classical Italian music are in very 
 little demand, but Donizetti and Verdi must 
 weep and howl by turns, through a third 
 of the better houses of Havana. This is 
 very well for a city where you cannot pur- 
 chase a decent box of colors, or a tolerable 
 drawing-book. 
 
 And I was really surprised to hear that 
 Jenny Lind had not paid her expenses in 
 Havana. For it required hardly more than 
 the sense of hearing to fit persons of merely 
 average capacity for the enjoyment of her 
 delicious singing, at once so singular and 
 so simple was it in its excellence. What 
 mattered the cloud of humbug from which 
 the angelic accents issued ? Had she been 
 conducted by a company of Connecticut 
 clock-makers; had she been pardoned out 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 57 
 
 of the galleys, I should not have supposed 
 that any tolerably educated public could be 
 insensible to the fascinations of her voice 
 and her method. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Sta d' alta torre, e scopre i monti e i campi." 
 
 Tasso. 
 
 Few persons expect to find much beauty 
 in the environs of Havana. Yet few cities 
 of the New World can compare in this 
 respect with the Cuban capital. It was my 
 
 good fortune to fall in with S , the 
 
 grave scenery-hunting German painter, 
 who, after filling portfolio upon portfolio 
 with visions of Egypt and the East, of 
 Europe and of Africa, had wandered hither 
 on his way to Yucatan and Mexico. In 
 his company I spent many a delightful 
 hour upon the fine sloping hills which sur- 
 round the city. The suburbs, of Eegla 
 where the foreign ships anchor, and the 
 admirable storehouses stand, Jesus del 
 Monte, Griianabacoa, which claims to be 
 an old Indian town, where Caciques ruled 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 59 
 
 and the terrible Cemis was worshipped, 
 and the Cerro, are all interesting in them- 
 selves; and offer various and noble views of 
 the city and the bay. The Dane in the 
 Improvisatore who exclaims as the dili- 
 gence rolls into Itri, that dirt and the pic- 
 turesque are inseparable, would rejoice over 
 these ancient villages, so solid at once and 
 so squalid. Such rich browns and blacks 
 in the interiors! Such fine besmooched 
 red roofs! Guanabacoa is the most fash- 
 ionable watering-place of the Island dur- 
 ing the summer months. The lavish in- 
 stincts of the Creole nature, and the opu- 
 lence of Cuban society, are then displayed 
 in all their brilliancy. In the winter the 
 old Indian city is a quiet, dreamy, deserted 
 place, as dull as a dead moth. You may 
 reach it by a charming road which runs 
 around the bay, or, more appropriately, by 
 a kind of decayed railway, from which the 
 noise and the speed of the engine have 
 vanished, as the glitter and the chatter of 
 young life from this Newport of the Cubans. 
 Tired mules haul the faded, battered, soli- 
 
60 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 tary car along the worn and shaking rails. 
 But however you may reach them, the hills 
 of Guanabacoa disclose a prospect which 
 roused the enthusiasm even of the firm and 
 patriotic New "Yorker, whose pleasant com- 
 pany made more pleasant my first visit to 
 the spot, and who loved the magnificent 
 harbor of his own city, as warmly and as 
 wisely as its glorious loveliness deserves. 
 The Cerro is a suburb nearer the citv, and 
 full of villas. In the soft evening light, the 
 drive thither is delicious ; the landscape 
 quite East Indian in character, made up of 
 houses with overhanging eaves, groves of 
 palm-trees, Brahminee bulls, such as lord it 
 over Benares, and Chinese coolies. The 
 villas, qidntas they are called here, are built 
 in a large palatial style of architecture, with 
 charming gardens, and as you go sway- 
 ing along in your volante, ever and anon 
 sweeping views break on you of the rich 
 exuberantly verdant country, of the for- 
 tress-crowned heights, and of the blue trem- 
 bling of the distant ocean. Not less deli- 
 cious is it in the hot noon, when all the city 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 61 
 
 dozes, to take shelter in your shaded vo- 
 lante from the vertical rays of the sun, and, 
 driving off at a pace which quickens the 
 air into a breeze, to seek the refreshing 
 green of the quinta gardens. The nobles 
 to whom most of these gardens belong, 
 courteously throw them open to the public. 
 The gardens are much neglected, but open- 
 handed nature lavishes her savage beauty 
 upon them. Gorgeous flowers, fruit-trees 
 like the zapote and the aguacate, that rival 
 shade trees in their size and their masses of 
 foliage, sublime palm avenues, these and 
 the pleasant air make a morning's ramble in 
 these places one of the most agreeable feat- 
 ures of Havana life. The queer old negro 
 gardener of the Quinta de Palatino, hob- 
 bling through "the crisped shades and 
 bowers," with his sweet burden of clustering 
 flowers, is a pleasant figure- in the memory 
 of many a Northern heart. I can but hint 
 at the charms of that free and genial hospi- 
 tality which has made the name of the 
 Cerro musical in many ears. Stately 
 ceyba of the Bishop's garden, long maj^ 
 6 
 
62 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 thy lordly benediction welcome companies 
 as courteous and as gay, as those with 
 whom I wiled away the careless hours 
 about the buttressed majesty of thy co- 
 lossal trunk ! Towering palms of Palatino, 
 may the smiles of Heaven never fail upon 
 your sweeping leaves, the smiles of glad- 
 dened human hearts beneath your grace- 
 ful arches ! 
 
 There are fine drives, too, out to Puentes 
 Grandes, or the " High Bridge," where the 
 green Almendares, the Guaclalquiver of the 
 Havana poets, glides under the hanging 
 groves, and past the sentimental canas 
 hravas of lordly grounds, so stealthily you 
 see not its swiftness, till its seaward course 
 is impeded, and its speed betrayed by a 
 ledge of rocks, over which it leaps angrily 
 enough in a series of small cascades ; or to 
 the tangled, treacherous mangroves of the 
 Chorera, where the same Almendares slips 
 quietly out into the Gulf. And lovely" is 
 the row by moonlight across the landlocked 
 bay, dotted all over by the stately forms 
 of ships sleeping on the tide ! 
 
PICTUEES OF CUBA. 63 
 
 But perhaps the finest excursions around 
 Havana, are to be made to the different 
 fortresses. The city is excellently fortified, 
 particularly on the seaward side. The 
 Morro Castle and the Cabanas, if properly 
 manned and armed, might defy the largest 
 fleet, so narrow is the entrance to the har- 
 bor, and so commanding is their position. 
 When the English took Havana in 1762, 
 they landed their troops at two points, east 
 and west of the city. At one of these points 
 an insignificant fortification, called the Eng- 
 lish fort, is still standing near the mouth of 
 the Cogimar river. Since that time the ad- 
 ditional forts of Principe and Atares have 
 been erected, so that Havana has become 
 more defensible against land attacks. But 
 none of these fortresses are adequately gar- 
 risoned, nor can they possibly be so with the 
 force which Spain usually maintains in the 
 Island. When the troops were sent from 
 Havana to fight the battle of Las Pozas, 
 the fortresses were left in so unprotected a 
 state, that a few resolute young men might 
 have made themselves masters of the city. 
 
64 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 I enjoyed very favorable opportunities for 
 visiting the great strongholds of the Morro 
 and the Cabanas in company with Capt. 
 
 , a most amiable and accomplished 
 
 officer of the Spanish army, and spent two 
 mornings there very delightfully. The as- 
 pect of the massive walls, as you approach 
 them in your boat, is very imposing, and 
 the solid masonry which commands the 
 winding ascent to the fortresses is truly 
 Cyclopean. One wall of this inclined plane 
 is formed by the solid rocks, and the pas- 
 sage is completely commanded by the em- 
 brasures of numerous batteries. But it is 
 only when you have passed the last of the 
 heavy gateways, and traversed the broad 
 burning square within, and mounted the 
 huge parapets, that you begin to appre- 
 ciate fully the grandeur and extent of forti- 
 cations which well support the hard earned 
 fame of the Spaniards as builders, and quite 
 throw into the shade even the defences of 
 Quebec. It is said that the building of the 
 Cabanas cost forty millions of dollars, .a sum 
 which startled even the stupid Charles III., 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 65 
 
 who, on receiving the account, is reported 
 to have taken up his spy-glass, and to have 
 commenced a careful survey of the horizon. 
 On being asked what object he sought, the 
 King answered that he was looking for the 
 Cabanas, which he certainly ought to be 
 able to see at any distance. 
 
 The quarters of my friend the Captain, 
 were low and by no means extensive, yet 
 the walls are of such immense thickness 
 that they must be as cool as a cavern. A 
 few gardens, carefully cultivated in different 
 parts of the vast inclosure, and a marble 
 monument raised to commemorate the 
 " Valor and Loyalty," of the brave who fell 
 in beating back Lopez and his crew, are the 
 only ornaments of these gigantic walls. 
 But the view from the battlements is glori- 
 ous. Far clown below you, wall beneath 
 wall, stretch the huge defences, in the whole 
 so lofty that the stately vessels at anchor in 
 the bay beneath, show like shallops. The 
 closely crowded, diversified buildings of the 
 populous city, that seemed so many and so 
 great, when you walked the narrow streets, 
 6* 
 
66 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 occupy the smallest space of the vast land- 
 scape opened to your sight ! 
 
 Between the Cabanas and the Morro 
 Castle, lies an undulating, bare, and rocky 
 space of ground, a sort of sheepwalk. There 
 are subterranean communications, also, be- 
 tween the two fortresses. The entrance to 
 the Morro Castle, on the side of the Ca- 
 banas, is steep, sudden, and very striking, 
 the surrounding ditches deep and tremen- 
 dous. The fortification itself is much less 
 extensive than the Cabanas, of which how- 
 ever it is practically but an outwork. Yet 
 to the unprofessional visitor, the Morro is 
 the more interesting of the two, from its 
 more castellated character, and its superb 
 position. Standing on the outer parapets, 
 you may look over them sheer down into 
 the sea, which, notwithstanding its great 
 depth, is here so surprisingly clear, that 
 even from this great height, objects may be 
 clearly discerned upon the bottom. The 
 sea-view from the splendid and admirably 
 appointed light-house of the Morro, can 
 hardly be surpassed. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 67 
 
 The visible armament of the Morro, like 
 that of the Cabanas, is certainly inadequate. 
 The famous cannon called the "Twelve 
 Apostles/' are heavy guns, but they seemed 
 to me to be in a not much better condition 
 than the other ecclesiastical institutions of 
 the Colony. Ten thousand men, at least, 
 would be required to defend these vast for- 
 tifications. At no time during my stay in 
 Cuba, was the Spanish force in all the 
 island, reckoned at more than 13,000 men 
 by the most competent judges. Properly 
 to man all the forts around Havana, includ- 
 ing Principe, Atares, La Punta, and other 
 lesser defences, not less than 15,000 men 
 would be necessary. Principe and Atares 
 are both of them important and consider- 
 able posts. Atares has obtained a melan- 
 choly celebrity as the scene of the great 
 military execution which followed the de- 
 feat of Lopez. 
 
 A precise knowledge of the plans and 
 outlines of these fortresses cannot easily be 
 obtained, for the Spanish authorities are as 
 rigidly severe as the Austrians in their hos- 
 
68 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 tility to sketch-books. A friend of mine 
 was staying at the same hotel with a young 
 Englishman, one of the devotees of Bristol- 
 board, whom you meet all over the world, 
 putting in the Pyramids in sepia, touching 
 up the Coliseum with burnt sienna and 
 flake-white, washing over the vale of Interla- 
 chen with a flood of sap-green. The young 
 Briton, who had made himself, as pleasant 
 young Britons are apt to do, quite the life 
 of the house, sallied out one morning for a 
 dab at the Bay, but returned not to his 
 dinner, nor yet to sleep, nor with the next 
 morning. The day wore on, and as he did 
 not appear, some of his fellow-lodgers had 
 begun to think of looking after him, when a 
 messenger arrived to say, that the lover of 
 nature was lodged in the Morro Castle, and 
 had sent for his Consul and for clean linen. 
 The gallant old representative of England 
 was soon on the alert, and discovered that 
 his young countryman had been seen 
 sketching the Morro from a boat, brought 
 to by a sentinel, arrested, and by reason of 
 his ignorance of the Spanish tongue, incon- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 69 
 
 tinently shut up. It required all the good 
 sense and the courage of the Consul to con- 
 vince the authorities that the liegeman of 
 Victoria had no designs upon the dominions 
 of Isabella, although on the evidence of the 
 sketch itself, nobody could ever have con- 
 victed its author of attempting to portray 
 the outlines of the Morro. A similar inci- 
 dent, terminating more agreeably, occurred 
 to a German gentleman quite recently. 
 The base of the hill on which Atares stands, 
 is leased to a market gardener. Our Ger- 
 man being in the neighborhood one day, 
 was struck with the odd appearance of the 
 crooked wooden plough, still used to scratch 
 up the rich soil of Cuba. He had nearly 
 transferred the object to his sketch book, 
 when he was pounced upon by a corporal, 
 and led off into the presence of the com- 
 manding officer. For some time all passed 
 in dumb show, till a German soldier in the 
 fort being sent for, explained the affair. 
 " If the corporal charges me with sketching 
 the fortress," said the German, "let him 
 produce his proofs ! " " The proofs are here, 
 
70 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Senor!" cried the delighted subofficer, and 
 he exhibited the captured sketch book. A 
 single glance at the drawing sufficed to 
 satisfy the commander, who burst into a fit 
 of laughter, dismissed his sagacious subordi- 
 nate with a reprimand, and invited the 
 German to dinner. 
 
 These fortresses serve as prisons for polit- 
 ical . offenders, and there is rarely a time 
 when their dungeons are unoccupied. Be- 
 yond a doubt men have been brought to 
 trial and to military execution within 
 these walls, whose fate is still a mystery to 
 their friends and families. It is very easy 
 to exaggerate the atrocities committed by 
 a despotic government, but it is certainly 
 idle to question facts which are. involved in 
 the very being of such a government. The 
 traditional Spaniard of Anglo-Saxon and 
 Protestant countries, the legacy of Alva and 
 the Inquisition, of the Armada and the wars 
 of the Spanish main, is indeed an absurd 
 and frightful creature, quite out of nature. 
 But a tyrannical system makes tyrannical 
 measures, and tyrannical men. Moreover 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 71 
 
 what Leigh Hunt somewhere says is not 
 unfounded, that the Spanish character is 
 less truly European than that of any other 
 w r estern people. 
 
 The walk along the shore beyond the 
 Morro to the English fort, and the Cogi- 
 mar, is very interesting. The formation of 
 the coast is singular. The coralline rocks, 
 broken and jagged, are in color very like 
 the old red sandstone, of which some 
 English cathedrals are built, and in shape 
 resembles masses of dead iron such as are 
 flung out of old furnaces, or the heaps of 
 scoriae which encumber the sides of Etna 
 and Vesuvius. They are overlaid and 
 strewn with innumerable fragments of 
 coral, exquisite sea fans, and sea shells often 
 very beautiful, but generally much shatter- 
 ed and worn by the waves. The sea-view 
 is magnificent. The promontory and towers 
 of the Morro, conceal the city ; and as far 
 as the eye can range, nothing is visible but 
 the widening deep blue waters of the Gulf, 
 save when a huge bird goes swaying 
 through the air, or a gallant ship scuds 
 
72 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 along the horizon, or the great gold ball of 
 the Sun sinks out of sight in the floods of 
 the west, impurpled by his last rays. 
 
 Lonely, wild, and solemn, are now these 
 rugged beaches. But time rolls on, and 
 the prophetic eye saddens to discern the 
 day, when where the Morro Castle now 
 frowns defiance from its sombre rock, a 
 huge white many-windowed b.uilding with 
 broad piazzas, and multitudinous Ionic col- 
 onnades- may rear its ghastly form ! Where 
 the weary sentinel paces his solitary round, 
 the polka will be then madly danced by 
 beardless boys and brainless girls, to the 
 music of Dodsworth's band. The irregular 
 shores over which the searcher after shells 
 and stones, now picks his careful way, well 
 beaten into a capital road, will mock the 
 tossing foam of the sea, with the manes of 
 fast horses urged to speed by faster men in 
 trotting wagons, and the summer glory of 
 Newport and Nahant, will be outshone 
 through all the winter months, by the 
 splendid follies of the Castle Morro Hotel ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " To still retreats, and flowery solitudes.' 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 It is not an easy thing to get away from 
 Havana. There is a story that when Prince 
 William Henry of England was here, as a 
 gay midshipman with Kodney, he came on 
 shore to dine, and stayed so obstinately, 
 that the Admiral could only compel his 
 return by threatening to sail without him. 
 So mighty are the charms of the Creole 
 hospitality. But there is another difficulty 
 in the way. You cannot quit Havana 
 without a passport, renewable at the end 
 of your journey, and if you wish to go 
 anywhere by railway, you must rise in 
 time to walk out of town, about a mile, to 
 the railway station, before six o'clock, a. m. 
 More trains pass over one of our great 
 northern roads in a day than are run in a 
 7 
 
74 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 week on all the roads of Cuba. Between 
 Havana and Matanzas, the New York and 
 Boston of the island, there are but two 
 trains run, one each way daily, and those 
 leave their respective cities at 6, a. m. Un- 
 der these circumstances, one cannot but be 
 profoundly impressed by the sagacity of a 
 regulation which forbids the volantes to 
 appear in the streets before seven o'clock ! 
 When I at last resolved to see the interior 
 of the island, I rose by candlelight, took 
 the inevitable morning cup of coffee, and 
 having put my portmanteau into a large 
 basket, saw the same shouldered and then 
 headed by a giant African, w r ho started off 
 with it at a rapid trot. Things at the 
 railway station passed much as in America, 
 for in Cuba you have all the annoyances 
 and. none of the comforts of despotism. 
 The cars had a familiar look, having been 
 built in those long port-holed edifices, which, 
 when transfigured by distance and the sun- 
 set light, seem to the romantic traveller 
 over the West Boston bridge, quite as pic- 
 turesque as the barracks of Naples, or the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 75 
 
 palaces of Portici. We ran — no, we mov- 
 ed at a calm, dignified pace, through a beau- 
 tiful country, fertile and well-tilled, past 
 orchards of fine fruit-trees, among which 
 the dark glistening leaves and shining 
 globes, the "golden lamps in a green 
 night" of the orange, and the conical, 
 dwarfish proportions of the pine-apple were 
 best known to me, on to the station of San 
 Felipe, a sort of Grand Junction, where we 
 made a halt, and were regaled with all 
 manner of fruits, the oranges being by far 
 the best I had tasted in the island. Beyond 
 San Felipe, groves of the bushy-topped 
 cocoa-palm, and hedges of the plumy beau- 
 tiful bamboo appeared. We reached at last 
 the Almacen of Batabano, a place half bil- 
 liard room and half Posada, and there, at 
 the end of an immensely long pier, lay a 
 great, white, neat Yankee-looking steamer, 
 the General Concha, the pride of the 
 Southern coast. I afflicted five gentlemen 
 in shirt sleeves, by declining their several in- 
 vitations to eat up their savory breakfast 
 of beefsteaks, which had been first stewed 
 
76 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 with garlic, and then fried in butter ; criti- 
 cally examined an interesting series of 
 highly-colored prints representing the con- 
 quest of Mexico, as well as authentic por- 
 traits of five European sovereigns, of Gene- 
 ral Jose de la Concha, and of a heroic Ser- 
 geant of Lancers, who fell valiantly at Las 
 Pozas, after transfixing fourteen of the 
 "pirates and robbers;" and accurately sur- 
 veyed the upper and lower decks of the 
 handsome steamer, consuming in this way 
 about two hours, at the end of which time 
 our worthy little Captain "concluded to 
 start," We steamed off into a perfectly 
 calm tropical sea. The deck was crowded 
 with Monteros in their huge cloaks, silver- 
 hilted swords, and deerskin shoes, who 
 stalked loftily about among the wretched 
 groups of hospital patients, numbers of 
 whom are yearly sent by a truly benevo- 
 lent society of Havana, to the medicinal 
 baths of San Diego. The cabin was filled 
 with passengers of a higher and undis- 
 tinguished grade, whose cigars and expecto- 
 rations conspired, with the whole aspect of 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 77 
 
 the vessel and her decorations, to make me 
 feel quite at home. The berths alone were 
 novel. These, instead of any mattress or 
 sheet, revealed nothing but a stout piece of 
 admirably tanned brown hide, stretched 
 along the bottom, and furnishing a cool 
 and elastic couch perfectly adapted to the 
 climate. After dinner, a Spanish dinner, 
 served with gravity, and discussed with 
 a composure and goodbreeding which I 
 am sorry to say did not remind me of simi- 
 lar scenes at home, we walked the deck, 
 the little old Captain and myself, till sun- 
 set, admiring the fine outline of the moun- 
 tains of the Vuelta Abajo, which we kept 
 in sight all the afternoon. At dark the 
 gambling began. The Spaniards play con- 
 stantly, but with moderation, and the game 
 of Monte was carried on by the majority 
 of the passengers all the evening with no 
 noise, and in a solemn good-humored way. 
 But moonlight against Monte, I went on 
 deck. The night was unspeakably beauti- 
 ful. The Isla de Pinos, ancient haunt of 
 pirates, lay dusky and dim on the South- 
 7* 
 
78 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ern horizon, quiet was in the air and on 
 the sea, no sail in sight. Swiftly, almost 
 stealthily, we glided over the tranquil 
 waters, the shining treacherous waters, so 
 often cloven by the keels of fierce and cruel 
 robbers. That sense of something evil in 
 the air, which haunts the heart at Naples, 
 came upon me. The divine South is full of 
 sadness. But the feeling of which I speak, 
 is like the shudder of life at the touch of 
 Death. Then, this delicious beauty, warm, 
 glowing, luxurious, seems to us a Lamia, a 
 Melusina ; the woman vanishes, the loathly 
 serpent chills us with her clammy, poison- 
 ous coil. Is it because, as Landor says, " The 
 heart is hardest in the softest climes," and 
 these lovely lands are charged with a 
 weight of frightful memories ? Or must we 
 not look more deeply, into the very consti- 
 tution of our natures? In the tropics all 
 lower life, the life of vegetables, the phys- 
 ical life of animals, nay, of man himself, 
 nourishes, the life of the affections and the 
 intellect, the life of the kingly passions in 
 man alone degenerates. There is the 
 
PICTURES OP CUBA. 79 
 
 realm of matter. The elements are in 
 alliance with our bodies. The throne of 
 the high powers within us is threatened. 
 We become suddenly conscious of the possi- 
 ble divorce between the spirit and the flesh. 
 Our dream of the Fountain of Youth 
 grows sensual, and the spirit trembles for 
 its dominion. Whatever be their source, 
 such feelings were crowding on me, when 
 a new direction was given to my mind by 
 the sudden stoppage of our steamer. We 
 had stuck fast in the fango, Anglice' mud, 
 for the shores of this part of the coast shoal 
 out very gradually into the sea. This Mis- 
 sissippian feature in iny sea-voyage I had 
 not anticipated. Our little Captain came 
 aft and told us it was a quite uncertain " 
 when we should get off again ; the engine 
 was stopped, and the passengers as com- 
 posedly as if they expected to remain sta- 
 tionary till the summer rains should fall, 
 gathered about the tables in the saloon, 
 without one exclamation of impatience or 
 dissatisfaction, and began to play Monte 
 more assiduously than before. Finding 
 
80 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 that all the berths had been taken during 
 our stay at Batabano, I was preparing to 
 " turn in" upon a sofa, when a young Span- 
 iard came up to me, and insisted on my 
 taking his place. I was a foreigner, he 
 said, and he, though not a native, yet a resi- 
 dent of the island, and if I would not take 
 his berth, nobody should occupy it. Famil- 
 iar as I had already become with the grace- 
 ful courtesy of his people, this self-sacrific- 
 ing politeness seemed to me extraordinary. 
 At home I fear I should have distrusted it, 
 which is hardly a compliment to our own 
 race. But there was no doubting the sin- 
 cerity and disinterestedness of this young 
 Castilian. 
 
 Whatever may be the charms of the 
 game of Monte to the players, it is cer- 
 tainly the most soothing of games to the 
 spectators. It consists apparently in a 
 monotonous iteration of numerals. " Sesen- 
 ta-cuatro, Yeinte-dos," and the like, mur- 
 mured- in the slow drawling fashion of the 
 island, are a most effectual lullaby. 
 
 We did move on again at last, and reach- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 81 
 
 ed La Coiuma about 4, a. m. There I found 
 
 the calesero of my friend waiting for 
 
 me with a volante, at a large, rambling, 
 nondescript establishment, which appears as 
 a village on the maps. A jaunty grey- 
 headed old Creole with small, twinkling, dis- 
 agreeable eyes came up to me here, flour- 
 ishing a gold-headed cane of that flexible 
 animal fibre so much prized in Cuba, and 
 
 assuring me that Don was his bosom 
 
 friend, very obligingly offered to take a 
 seat with me as far as our roads should lie 
 together. I had no objection to make, and 
 after taking some excessively bad coffee, 
 we set off, in company with several meek- 
 looking persons, apparently armed to the 
 teeth. The road was wonderful ! Now up, 
 now down, now plunging up to the horse's 
 girths in a small river, now running tilted 
 at an angle of 45 degrees along a sand- 
 bank, and always at full speed. If the led 
 horse lagged, the calesero hauled him along 
 like a pig ; if the saddle-horse flinched, the 
 calesero boxed his ears. Biding like a cen- 
 taur, he flung horses and volante down gul- 
 
82 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 lies, and jerked them up hills with a seem- 
 ing recklessness, which at first made me 
 uneasy. But as my companion seemed to 
 think it all right, I tried to fall into the 
 same state of mind, and entered into con- 
 versation with him. 
 
 The road for the whole way ran through 
 a savanna, a sort of tropical Cape Cod, with 
 palm-trees instead of stunted oaks, and tall 
 pine-trees springing out of the weedy 
 ground. My companion expatiated on the 
 waste of these lands, the uselessness of the 
 pine-trees, (that might be so profitable,) and 
 the miserable government to which these 
 things, and all the other short-comings of 
 Cuba were to be attributed. He was evi- 
 dently a male content of the first water, but 
 he looked for deliverance only to foreign 
 arms, and inquired anxiously into the 
 chances of war between the United States 
 and Spain. This unmanly tone thorough- 
 ly disgusted me, and I thought of astonish- 
 ing him with Sir William Jones's Ode, just 
 as we used to declaim it at Cambridge, but 
 contented myself with sundry suggestions 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 83 
 
 as to the importance of preparing the island 
 to hold her own, before inviting strangers 
 to set her free. I did not, however, say 
 what I could not but think, that these vast 
 unoccupied tobacco-lands of the Vuelta 
 Abajo would certainly tempt hither swarms 
 of settlers from Virginia and Kentucky, 
 whose presence and enterprise would soon 
 awaken in the Creole mind longing memo- 
 ries of the " good old royal days." When 
 my companion became confidential, and 
 began to talk of his own affairs, his remarks 
 were rather shocking. My Mediterranean 
 experience had made me tolerably familiar 
 with the singular skill in blasphemy of the 
 Southern nations, but I was hardly prepar- 
 ed to hear from living lips, an improvement 
 upon Dante's most audacious imagination. 
 "My w T ife died last year," said my com- 
 panion, " my sister died six months ago, my 
 wife's mother and my daughter have just 
 died ; now I should like to see what God 
 up yonder can do next ! I defy him, and 
 he may come on if he dares !" 
 
 Three hours brought us to an Almacen, 
 
84 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 or " country-store/' where this pious and 
 patriotic gentleman alighted. During the 
 journey, he had taken occasion to offer me 
 his cane, a blow of which, he said, would 
 inflict a wound like a sword-cut, and his 
 watch; now, on parting, he assured me 
 that I was the proprietor of his house and 
 estate, and begged me soon to come and 
 take possession of them. 
 
 In a few minutes, my volante, as its 
 name imports, was "flying" through the 
 rustic gateway, guarded by a white headed 
 old African, naked as a native on the Coast 
 of Congo, into the extensive pasture-lands 
 of Don 's plantation. Then past palm- 
 trees and mango thickets, giant ceybas 
 and gnarled parasites, by grazing herds of 
 oxen and scattered mules, over fields that 
 glowed with flowers of every hue, we dash- 
 ed on up to the low, broad stone house of 
 one story, with steep red-tiled roof, and 
 dark green verandahs. 
 
 Great dogs rushed out with most ambigu- 
 ous barking, to welcome me, and, presently, 
 with lounging graceful step, my friend 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 85 
 
 emerged, and I was instantly at home in 
 this strange world. 
 
 I told that his bosom friend had 
 
 favored me with his society, and described 
 the individual as accurately as possible. 
 " Friend ! " cried laughing. " The ras- 
 cal is one of the most respectable men, and 
 greatest scamps in this scampish district. 
 He insulted one of my men last week, and 
 has cheated me as often as he possibly 
 could ! Moreover he carried you half a 
 mile out of your way ! " 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " A pleasing land of clrowsyhead it was." 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 "Non unus mentes agitat furor/' all 
 men are not mad in the same way, says 
 Juvenal, speaking of traffickers by sea. 
 Perhaps like Ulysses and myself, Juvenal 
 was "semper nauseator," in which case, 
 hawking wares over the water might rea- 
 sonably have appeared to him quite lunat- 
 ical ; and I am sure that if the coin of the 
 realm seemed to him an insufficient induce- 
 ment to a Levant voyage, it never would 
 have satisfied him as the plea of a man 
 who should devote himself to a life on a 
 sugar-estate in the Western Ynelta Abajo. 
 As the only large sugar-planter in a popu- 
 lous district, my friend enjoys a ready 
 
 sale of his products on the spot, and as he 
 does not export, is not obliged to adopt the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 87 
 
 costly French machinery in use on the 
 northern coast. But the same causes 
 which make his position peculiarly profit- 
 able, deprive him of society. He lives in 
 a practical exile, relieved by occasional 
 trips to the States. Once he said to me, 
 "Nothing pleasant ever chances here, and 
 the best news I can have in the morning is 
 no news." Such persons as my friend and 
 his family, it is true, can never be without 
 the best company in the world, in their 
 own thoughts and feelings. But the best 
 of us need at least occasional intercourse 
 with our fellows. And this protracted se- 
 clusion from the busy world must wear 
 upon the most genial spirits. 
 
 Yet, to the casual guest, how delicious is 
 the careless monotony of such a seques- 
 tered existence ! The climate of this re- 
 gion is far finer than that of Havana. In- 
 valids come to the Vuelta Abajo from 
 other parts of the island, and the diseases 
 which ravage the northern coast, rarely 
 wander here. 
 
 Nor are the heavens more bland than 
 
88 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 the temper of my Southern home. No- 
 body is in anybody's else way. We live 
 like the Thelemites of Rabelais. All our 
 moments are employed "selon notre vou- 
 loir et franc arbitre. Notre regie n'est que 
 cette clause, Fais ce que voudras!" The 
 early morning here is truly divine, having 
 gold in its hands, as the Germans say, and 
 things better than gold, beauty glittering 
 dewy-bright on every leaf and blade of all 
 this leafy world, and softest breezes breath- 
 ing health ! When you weary of lounging 
 in the broad piazza, to sketch the graceful 
 palm-trees that surround the house, or the 
 long-eared, browsing mules, you may stroll 
 out across the flowery fields, to yonder vast, 
 low sugar-house. You have been watching 
 the soft wreaths of smoke curl lazily about 
 its lofty chimney, the only moving things 
 in all the sleeping landscape, for half an 
 hour, while your hand has been dallying 
 dreamily with your idle pencil. The great, 
 red-tiled shed of the mill is full to the top 
 of the cut and bundled canes, and the fat 
 old Spanish sugar-master (who eats irve 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 89 
 
 meals a day, and dreams every night he is 
 dying of hunger,) is nearly beside himself 
 with fear, lest his enemy the mayoral 
 should have succeeded this time in hurting 
 him with his employer, by giving him more 
 juice than he can work up in his allotted 
 half of the week. So all the departments 
 are in full activity. Wild-looking, half-na- 
 ked hordes of negroes, many of them roaring 
 out jokes to each other in savage dialects 
 of the African coast, tramp up and down 
 the platform of the mill, thrusting armfuls 
 of the canes between the ponderous rollers 
 of the crushing machine ; and there is no 
 pause in the flowing of the milky stream of 
 cane-juice, which, plunging in a small cata- 
 ract from beneath the rollers, runs swiftly 
 through canals of cloven palm-trunks to the 
 vats of the neighboring purging house. 
 There is the heart of this small kingdom. 
 Beneath, huge furnaces glow with the 
 fiercely burning fuel of the dried canestalks. 
 Above, the juice, transferred from boiler to 
 boiler, endures all manner of transforma- 
 tions, simmering here, foaming there, here 
 
90 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 moocly and sluggish, a brown and turbid 
 pool, there tossing and bubbling, an un- 
 easy sea of liquid gold, sending up its 
 wholesome vapors in dense white wreaths ; 
 now beaten into a perfect syllabub by stal- 
 wart negroes, with long paddles made of 
 aloes-w T ood, and anon ladled out, in like 
 manner, into a trench with lofty sides, 
 wherein it is stirred, and flung aloft in 
 beautiful showers tinted with the softest 
 browns, crystallizing slowly as it falls and 
 cools. Sugar is in the air, the ground is yel- 
 low with sugar, the walls glitter with small 
 crystals of sugar, the dogs lap up the sugar 
 from the shallow pans, the little naked 
 negroes tumbling about the door-ways, are 
 crusted over with sugar; you have found 
 life's clumsy realization of childhood's sump- 
 tuous dreams. Thus the world mimics 
 Snowdrop's forest home. 
 
 But the sun rides high, and we draw 
 into the broad piazza our deep, backward 
 sloping Spanish chairs, chairs into which a 
 tired man sinks as easily as a sinner into 
 sin. Far as the eye can reach, we see 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 91 
 
 nothing but June ; June flowering over all 
 the fields, June in the deep blue of the 
 cloudless skies. The great, low red roofs 
 of the distant sugar-houses glow in the 
 warm sunlight. The gentle breeze which 
 stirs the air about us here, is just strong 
 enough to awaken the crisp rustle of the 
 drooping palm-leaves, and does not seem to 
 shake the heavy foliage of yonder magnifi- 
 cent ceybas. Just opposite, rises a huge 
 forest trunk completely mastered and ap- 
 propriated by the deadly parasite, the 
 jaquey-macho, whose closely set, shining 
 dark- green leaves, with their irregular out- 
 line, look as if they were embroidered up- 
 on the soft sky. Great crows fly chatter- 
 ing about the broad savanna, the bright 
 hues of parrots and paroquets glance in the 
 light, and countless pine-linnets wheel about 
 the trees, keeping up a continual delicate 
 singing. The hills to the north have put 
 on their noonday purple ; and to the south, 
 the bright yellow-green of the canefields 
 makes merry the horizon. Through the 
 amber-colored heaps of bagasso, the crushed 
 
02 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 canes drying in the sun, a swart African 
 woman makes her way, balancing a water 
 jar upon her head. The tinkling of the 
 mule-bells grows fainter and fainter, as the 
 long train of laden mules winds slowly on- 
 ward into the wood beyond those swaying 
 palm-trees. 
 
 Trouble not your brain with studious 
 plans, for this conspiracy of idleness will 
 surely defeat them all ! Your indolence is 
 indeed an indolence of incessant thoughts, 
 but of thoughts that glide from the grasp 
 of your will. They flow through your 
 mind like the sap of life through every 
 vein of this wonderful vegetable world 
 around you. You are roused at last, only 
 by the gathering sadness which this still 
 stream has borne into your soul. 
 
 • As day after day rolls on, the isolation 
 and the quiet of this life begin to close 
 around you. The Thebaid and the Cloister 
 become intelligible. Sometimes you are 
 conscious of a feeling, such as may have 
 dimly glowed in the mind of an antedilu- 
 vian toad, when the cavity of his refuge 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 93 
 
 began to narrow, and the cell to form, in 
 which, for a thousand years, he was to be 
 shut out from the sedges and the green 
 ponds. 
 
 Then you are grateful for the stirring 
 talk of " states and wars," and the game 
 thereto congenial, of time-honored English 
 whist, whereby your kind friend draws you 
 back to modern and expansive life. 
 
 You resolve to botanize, and find that 
 you have spent the morning at the foot of 
 a colossal ceyba, niched between two of the 
 broad buttresses that spring from its mas- 
 sive trunk, and watching th? sports of the 
 negro children in the field, or the diversi- 
 fied forms of viciousness displayed by the 
 mules, grandiloquent Pindar's " children of 
 the tempest-footed steeds," in their war of 
 independence with the sullen arriero their 
 tyrant. 
 
 In the afternoon rides with you to 
 
 the tobacco-farm, beautiful with the intense 
 verdure of the broad-leaved plants, or down 
 through the guava groves to give the re- 
 luctant bloodhounds a swim in the little 
 
94 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Laguna de San Matteo, or over to the 
 neighboring town, the capital of cock- 
 fights, balls, and lawsuits, for all the coun- 
 try round. It is a queer, dirty town, the 
 chef -lieu of a department, containing 1,000 
 inhabitants, and maintaining 30 shops, 
 where, by a simple process of alchemy, the 
 tobacco of the Vuelta Abajo is converted 
 into building materials for substantial cas- 
 tles in Spain. In this town a Lieutenant- 
 Governor holds his court ; there many law- 
 yers congregate, and in the barracks a 
 thousand troops are stationed. If we go 
 there by day, we see only a few dark eyes 
 and dirty faces staring at our volante, 
 through the iron bars of the low houses, 
 unless it be a festival, when the cockpit is 
 filled with a crowd which, like all village 
 crowds, comes one knows not whence, 
 and disappears when the show is over, as 
 mysteriously. At night, the little town 
 mocks in its provincial way, the greater 
 capital. The curtains drawn aside from 
 the huge windows, reveal handsome rooms 
 and menageries of fair ladies behind the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 95 
 
 iron bars. Perhaps we may make a call 
 upon some village family. Close shaven, 
 slender, sallow-faced gentlemen receive us 
 with elaborate courtesy ; we take our seats 
 in immense arm-chairs, and commence a 
 vapid conversation, which becomes still 
 more vapid when the ladies appear. They 
 saunter into the room, very lightly dressed, 
 and apparently quite overloaded and op- 
 pressed by the scanty dress they wear, sa- 
 lute us feebly, drop into the opposite arm- 
 chairs, and begin to fan themselves very 
 languidly. The few and foolish things they 
 say are uttered in a very nasal voice, 
 which sadly vulgarizes the sonorous Spanish 
 tongue. The poor creatures look as if life 
 were one weary dawdle, and so I suppose it 
 is to them. 
 
 No humane person can long endure the 
 sight of suffering which he cannot relieve, 
 so we take our departure,, are faintly bid- 
 den " go in a good hour," and drive up to 
 the Plaza, an irregular piece of ground, 
 decorated with a preposterous little church, 
 a parti-colored Governor's House, and sun- 
 
96 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 dry huts, hovels, and whitewashed barracks. 
 But the mingling lights of the moon and 
 of torches, make the forlorn little Plaza 
 picturesque, and it is not without pleasure 
 that we listen to the military band playing 
 "indifferent well." When we drive home 
 through the moonlit gullies, and across the 
 wild savanna, stories of the brigand age 
 that used to be fit well the scene. 
 
 In this life we lead, or which, more prop- 
 erly speaking, leads us, every change in 
 the aspect of nature is an event. The 
 changes of the skies, so interesting every- 
 where, become doubly fascinating here. 
 The Cuban skies are, I think, the most 
 beautiful I have ever seen. They combine 
 the various and splendid brilliancy of our 
 own skies with the soft luminousness of the 
 European. The sunsets are startling. Twi- 
 light belongs to the lands of the imagina- 
 tion. Here we pass in a moment from 
 darkness to day, and from the sunshine 
 into starlight, just as one moment's breath- 
 less silence takes you from the glowing 
 magnificence of the Bay of Naples, into the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 97 
 
 moonlight-blue of the Grotto of Capri. 
 There is no 
 
 " Gathering up the golden reins. 
 And pacing leisurely down amber plains ; " 
 
 only one broad sweeping gush of western 
 light, and then the purple drops suddenly- 
 over all, and the innumerable stars are 
 glittering larger and brighter than ours. 
 
 Sometimes the evening is made more 
 beautiful by a fire in the savanna, a sight 
 not uncommon in this region, and unpleas- 
 ant to the dwellers in the land, only when 
 it threatens a canefield in its course. One 
 evening, while watching the shadows of the 
 trees, and tree-like vines in the lake, and 
 the play of the graceful dogs on the shore, 
 I heard a rushing sound like the beating of 
 many wings upon the air, and looking in 
 the direction whence it came, saw clouds of 
 light blue smoke rolling slowly up against 
 the sky. In a few moments the southern 
 sky was stained all over in black and gold, 
 with the thick smoke and leaping flames. 
 We hurried to the house, and turning on 
 9 
 
98 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 the hill, saw a broad sheet of waving flame 
 running all along the southern border of 
 the lake and reflected in the still water. 
 More and more intense grew the conflagra- 
 tion, till it reddened the dark-purple sky, 
 and put out the stars above its path with 
 its fiery glow. The graceful or fantastic 
 shapes of the trees stood out finely from 
 this wild background, and from time to 
 time a fresh gleam of flame, seen through 
 the interstices of the thick low chapparal, 
 would flash like the heart of a carbuncle. 
 
 The most gorgeous atmospheric pageant 
 of the tropics, the thundershower, can only 
 be seen in perfection during the summer 
 months. Yet we had one shower which, 
 though not of the first water, was very fine 
 in the eyes of an inexperienced Northerner. 
 I had never seen clouds so dense and black 
 as were gathered in the south, while in the 
 west the blue sky still glittered with the 
 sun. The rain began with a few drops, 
 large as bullets, falling slowly, then came 
 the whole mass of water, beating down 
 every thing, and forming in a few moments, 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 99 
 
 under my windows, a depression in the 
 earth two or three inches deep. With the 
 rain came tremendous peals of thunder, 
 scaring the fierce hounds, and lightning 
 brighter than molten iron. The air was 
 full of electricity. I took up a pair of 
 scissors, and received a smart shock. With 
 the lull in the rain, there appeared from 
 north to south, across the eastern sky, a 
 magnificent rainbow, the arch complete, as 
 if seen over the ocean, only the southern 
 end dipped through the glistening foliage of 
 a superb ceyba, before it disappeared in the 
 beryl-bright waves of the canefields. And 
 over all the landscape such a flood of light ! 
 the mellow light of October, bathing every 
 leaf and blade of refreshed and sparkling 
 nature. Then shifting through a myriad 
 changes of hue and form, the cloud-racks 
 broke up, and slowly wandered off along 
 the burnished sky. The distant mountains 
 glowed amethystine, like the Apennines at 
 sunset. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Adieu! doux et brilliant rivage, 
 
 Ou 1' (Stranger reste comme enchaine\ 
 
 Bekanger. 
 
 " See Naples and then die," says the prov- 
 erb, with a fine extravagance. One soon 
 comprehends the spirit of the speech, when 
 the genius of the place has fairly possessed 
 his senses and his soul. It is not on re- 
 cord, to be sure, that anybody ever really 
 overturned his cup of life, simply because 
 Naples had filled it to the brim. Men and 
 women have sung in serious earnest the 
 song of Thekla, but not for that. But 
 Naples so satisfies the body and the brain 
 with a glowing sensuous beauty immanent 
 in the air, the skies, the landscape, and the 
 sea, that one finds the proverb rising to his 
 lips, laughs at the ciceroni, is glad of no 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 101 
 
 guidebook, cares not to see a single sight, 
 and, for long days, dreams wide awake in 
 the balcony of his hotel, finding the true 
 Pompeii and Herculaneum in the visions 
 which the blue smoke-wreath of far Vesu- 
 vius is hourly weaving, the Roman with his 
 fierce luxury, the Greek with his voluptu- 
 ous grace, in Capri's stately cloud, and soft 
 Sorrento's sunlit height. 
 
 The life of this tropic " Castle of Indo- 
 lence," is more dreamy than the dream of 
 Naples. Thoughts vanish like vapors in 
 this warm sunlight, and the mind is cloud- 
 less as the skies. Hayti and Jamaica loomed 
 large upon the horizon of my purpose when 
 I wandered here, but they have gone like a 
 vision of sails. 
 
 Day after day has glided noiselessly by. 
 " Why should I seek to gather up in scat- 
 tered fragments here and there, the Cuba 
 whose very essence is held here in a golden 
 cup to my lips?" Thus I dreamt and mused, 
 till the sound of the Easter bells rang in 
 our ears, and roused us to seek the city. 
 For this year the holy Easter time was to 
 9*' 
 
102 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 be pompously celebrated. The fighting 
 bulls of Spain were to assert their triumph 
 over the pacific bull of Pope Pius V. by a 
 magnificent contest on Easter Sunday in 
 the new Plaza de Toros at Havana. A 
 quadrille of bull-fighters had just arrived, 
 headed by one Juan Pastor of Seville, 
 whose name has been consigned to fame 
 by Mr. Waliis, in his pleasant book about 
 Spain. 
 
 Every thing was to be arranged in the 
 true Castilian style, for the authorities hope 
 to galvanize Cuba into loyalty by the good 
 old Spanish excitement. So we set out one 
 fine morning after a heavy thundershower 
 which had converted the shallow trench, 
 or deep rut, called a road, into a lively 
 watercourse. 
 
 A great part of this district is accessible 
 only on horseback. The mule driver with 
 his long string of beasts tied together, and 
 depending each upon the strength of his 
 predecessor's tail, is the great carrier. The 
 mail is taken on horseback from the con- 
 siderable town of Pinar del Rio to Ha- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 103 
 
 vana, though there is a railway and steam- 
 boat communication nearly all the way ! 
 This, however, is perhaps to give Her Ma- 
 jesty's courier time to read at his leisure 
 all the contents of Her Majesty's mails. 
 
 The Baths of San Diego are the chief 
 Spa, the Saratoga of Cuba, The waters 
 are highly medicinal, and the river San 
 Diego, besides "tasting of warm flatirons," 
 exhibits a phenomenon rarely witnessed in 
 nature, though familiar enough in the 
 world of politics and human feeling, by 
 running hot, cold, and lukewarm, within 
 a very short career. Numbers of people 
 throng to these baths every year, and 
 though the cabins are naturally enough as 
 detestable as the accommodations at more 
 renowned resorts of invalided fashion, one 
 would expect to find the road thither at 
 least passable. But it is atrociously bad ; 
 as much more appalling than a char-a-banc 
 pass in Switzerland, as earth is more yield- 
 ing than rock, and a smother in unfathom- 
 able mud more awful than a cleanly tum- 
 ble down a grand ravine into a clear, 
 sparkling mountain stream. 
 
104 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 We reached the Almacen de la Columa 
 about ten o'clock, and I had leisure to sur- 
 vey the place. These Spanish-American 
 variety-store-warehouse-hotels, have pecu- 
 liar features of their own. Instead of the 
 dreary counter, and the shelves with their 
 rows of sinister-looking decanters and demi- 
 johns, we had here a small apartment, very 
 like a booth at a fair, arched over with a 
 painted arch, decorated with the Spanish 
 colors, and bearing the attractive inscription 
 "Las Delicias de la Columa;" the fitness of 
 the title being apparent on a glance at the 
 shelves of sweetmeats, cigars, sardines, cor- 
 dials, and aguardiente. The dispenser of 
 these delights was an olive-complexioned 
 boy of fifteen, with laughing black eyes, 
 like those of Murillo's musical ragamuffins 
 at Dulwich. His deference to his seniors 
 was quite astonishing, to one accustomed to 
 the independent and uncompromising style 
 of "Young America" in such positions. 
 
 Within the spacious warehouse were to 
 be found all manner of things, from codfish 
 to preserved figs, coarse cloth for the slaves, 
 and coarse jewelry for the Yegueras. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 105 
 
 Above the storehouse and along the cor- 
 ridors, were the rooms of the " hotel," occu- 
 pied just then by the families of the small 
 planters in the neighborhood, who had come 
 for the " sea bathing," that is, for the privi- 
 lege of spending a couple of hours a day, 
 paddling about in three feet or so of salt 
 mud and water, within a space of twenty 
 feet by fifteen, under a heavy covering of 
 palm thatch. 
 
 The permanent population of "La Co- 
 luma," consists of three men and a boy, five 
 cats, eleven dogs, and a game-cock, the latter 
 creature,during his " piping times of peace," 
 being tied by the leg to a huge hidebound 
 chair in the storehouse. We asked the head 
 of the house how many guests were staying 
 with him. " Fifteen women" he replied, " be- 
 sides some men and children, perhaps forty in 
 all." The next " Woman's Rights Conven- 
 tion," ought to be held in La Columa, for it 
 is plain that the male population of that 
 place is better prepared for an unconditional 
 surrender of the antiquated privileges of 
 man, than any other beyond the borders of 
 
106 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 California or Australia. We spent four or 
 fiYe hours at the Almacen, waiting, as usual, 
 for the steamer, during which time the 
 fifteen females, so precious in the eyes of 
 their host, came out into their saloon, this 
 same saloon serving at the same time as a 
 coach-house for a dusty volante, and as a 
 private dining-room for a family party, while 
 its position on one side of the house, and 
 its mural arrangements, — there being no 
 doors, — enabled the occupants to observe 
 the arrivals and departures, and to enliven 
 their retirement with the spectacle of diver- 
 sified dog-fights. The women were a yel- 
 low, sickly-looking set of creatures, dressed 
 in very bright colors. Their manners and 
 customs were peculiarly naive and uncon- 
 strained. I was particularly attracted by 
 one old lady of sixty, whose parchment face 
 reminded me of Heine's dame in the Harz 
 mountains, whose countenance resembled a 
 palimpsest in which a monkish homily had 
 been written over a Greek love story. Her 
 dress still wore a hue of youthful folly. She 
 was arrayed in scarlet and white muslin, 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 107 
 
 orange colored stockings, a blue silk shawl 
 gorgeously embroidered with large dahlias 
 and roses in green and yellow silk ; a bunch 
 of artificial flowers adorned her hair, and 
 huge gold ear-rings glittered in her ears. 
 Thus wonderful in her appearance, she 
 glided gracefully into the storehouse, pur- 
 chased a long Jenny Lind cigar, asked the 
 favor of a light from a Montero gentleman 
 in a striped blue shirt, with a sword at his 
 side, and silver spurs on his stockingless feet ; 
 and then returning to the "saloon," while 
 the soft smoke curled about her head, took 
 up a broom and proceeded to sweep away 
 the remnants of the morning's meal. The 
 family party dined in private, shortly after. 
 They courteously invited every one who 
 passed by to take a seat at the table, but as 
 four mules were loading at the time, one of 
 whom liked to back viciously into the saloon 
 every time his master came near him, we 
 declined their invitation, hoping for a decent 
 dinner on board the boat. But the boat 
 did not come, so that we were forced to 
 dine at the table d'hote of the Almacen in 
 
108 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 company with the people of the house, some 
 laborers, the crew of a lighter, and a dra- 
 goon partially intoxicated. And I must say 
 to the honor of these good souls, that their 
 manners, though by no means elegant, were 
 vastly more decent, unselfish, and becoming, 
 than have been displayed by much better 
 dressed companies at railway stations and 
 on board of steamers at home. Even the 
 drunken dragoon only evinced his state by 
 bad behavior towards the dogs, which kept 
 running under the table. He kicked at 
 them, traitorously seduced them to approach 
 him, and then cuffed them dreadfully, and 
 when they " fought shy " of him, earnestly 
 adjured " Maria santissima, purissima," to 
 interest herself for their eternal perdition. 
 This dragoon was a short red-faced, white- 
 haired, jaunty fellow, very like an Irishman 
 in form and features. This is by no means 
 an uncommon thing here among the Span- 
 iards of the lower orders. One's romantic 
 notions of the haughty, sad-eyed Castilian 
 face are sadly shocked in Cuba. Once I 
 saw a white-robed Dominican covered like 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 109 
 
 Sancho, " four fingers thick with good Chris- 
 tian fat," who might have been the Man- 
 chegan squire masquerading ; and there is a 
 berlin-driver in Havana who perfectly re- 
 produces Lazarillo de Tormes : but, generally 
 speaking, the Spanish type has deteriorated 
 and lost character in Cuba. On the way 
 up in the boat, which came at last, long 
 after its time, I had a conversation with a 
 civil engineer, who told me he had just been 
 selling a hacienda of land, in the western 
 department of the Vuelta Abajo, wliich had 
 brought on an average nine hundred dollars 
 the Caballeria of about thirty- three acres. 
 This was regarded as an extraordinary price, 
 though the hacienda comprised some of the 
 best tobacco lands under cultivation in Cuba, 
 one small vega or farm on the estate, tilled 
 by one man alone, without slaves, having 
 netted one thousand dollars to its tenant 
 during the past year. This region is the 
 promised land of the small planters of Ken- 
 tucky and Virginia. 
 
 We reached Havana on Good Friday. 
 That day there was to have been a great 
 10 
 
110 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 and thoroughly Spanish show of the pro- 
 cession of the Sacred Interment, and the 
 subsequent waitings in the churches, a sort 
 of etude a deux crayons, a caricature in black 
 and yellow-white, of the magnificent cere- 
 monies of Seville — was to have been, but was 
 not, for the rain fell in torrents from ^.Ye in 
 the afternoon till ten at night. Nothing 
 was even attempted, which was very wise, 
 for excepting a pic-nic in May, nothing is so 
 pitiable as a damp procession. The Cafe- 
 men who count largely upon the gains of 
 Good Friday, were disappointed, the priests 
 were disappointed, the strangers, everybody 
 but the young citizens who have to do es- 
 cort duty to their female relations, and find 
 them in countless ice-creams all along the 
 route of the parade. On Saturday morning 
 the sun rose clear, and, by daybreak, the 
 Paseo, without the walls, was crowded with 
 carts and wheeled vehicles of every kind, 
 jostling and jolting together for the prece- 
 dence. At ten o'clock, the circulation within 
 the walls, suspended during Good Friday, 
 begins again, and the cartmen regard it as 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. Ill 
 
 an omen of good luck for the whole year, 
 to be first on the wharves. At ten the can- 
 non boomed, the bells began to ring, and 
 the rattle of innumerable wheels, the bray- 
 ing of donkeys, the yells and cries of men, 
 made the fair Easter-day hideous. They 
 are worse here, particularly in the matter 
 of bells, than in Italy. A convent hard by 
 my hotel, rang out a lively jig in honor of 
 the holy clay, during four long hours. It is 
 said that the priests find it a good thing to 
 dispose of their negro penitents by setting 
 them to ring the bells, and the frequency 
 with which the genuine "break-down," in 
 all its modifications, assails the ear, inclines 
 one to accept the story. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon, the first bull-fight 
 in the new Plaza was to have come off; but 
 the rain began again, at four o'clock. A 
 Creole marquis, enriched by the ingenious 
 appropriation of a number of negroes, hired 
 out to him by the mixed commission of 
 England and Spain, intended to have opened 
 the show in the state affected on such occa- 
 sions by the nobles of Old Spain, in a gilded 
 
112 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 coach, with outriders and banners and what 
 not. The rain, which spoiled his sport, af- 
 forded an impoverished Spanish marquis of 
 my acquaintance, who condescends to a 
 berth in the custom-house, an opportunity 
 of dilating upon the magnificence of the 
 outfit with which he himself would have 
 adorned the show, had the weather per- 
 mitted. The grand Catalan ball also had 
 to be postponed, as the ballroom was knee- 
 deep in water. And the only spectacle of 
 Easter Sunday was the grand mass at the 
 Cathedral in the morning, when the Te 
 Deurn was sung in honor of the queen's 
 escape from the knife of the crazy priest 
 Martino, a year ago. This was really a bril- 
 liant affair. The Cathedral itself is very 
 like San Ignazio at Eome, without the gild- 
 ing, the lapis lazuli, and the marbles — a 
 large, tawdry, Komanesque church of the 
 seventeenth century, with stuccoed pillars, 
 a bright blue organ, quantities of brass or- 
 naments, wax divinities, artificial flowers, 
 and poor pictures. The interest of the 
 building centres about the tomb of Colum- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 113 
 
 bus, a mural monument of white marble, 
 with an imaginary bas-relief portrait, and a 
 paltry inscription. Yet the style of the 
 choir, with its lofty altar of porphyry and 
 its dark mahogany misereres and desks, lends 
 a pleasant Italian character to this last rest- 
 ing-place of the great Genoese, who, for 
 weary years, bore the New World about in 
 his throbbing brain, praying the nations of 
 the earth to take the magnificent gift at his 
 hands. On Easter Sunday the Cathedral 
 appeared to the best advantage. The high 
 altar glowed with candles, little and large. 
 The great aisle of the nave was lined on 
 each side with mahogany benches, covered 
 with scarlet velvet, the floor between being 
 appropriated to ladies. Before nine o'clock, 
 flights of fair Cubans in their graceful cos- 
 tume had occupied nearly all this space, 
 kneeling on praying-carpets spread for them 
 by little negro pages, whose gay liveries, 
 chiefly scarlet, or blue and white, contrasted 
 finely with their dark faces. I was aston- 
 ished to see how few of the ladies wore the 
 old " regulation black," of the church. Silks 
 10* 
 
114 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 of every color rustled and glistened in the 
 fine sunlight. The effect was not so rich as 
 that produced by the dark masses of figures 
 at an Italian high mass ; but the flowing 
 mantillas and veils were there, and remem- 
 bering how near to Cuba may be the inva- 
 sion of the bonnets, I was grateful for what 
 yet remained of the picturesque. Officers 
 in various uniforms, ecclesiastics in capes 
 and cassocks of yellow and purple and scar- 
 let and black and green, kept coming in, 
 and the mahogany benches soon began to 
 be filled ; while an increasing crowd of mu- 
 lattoes and quadroons and negroes, of dra- 
 goons in lemon-colored jackets, and foot-sol- 
 diers in full dress of blue and red, looking 
 like awkward National Guards, and Creoles 
 in black, and foreigners in white, swarmed 
 in the side aisles. The Plaza outside was 
 full of volantes, and the fine horses reared, 
 and plunged, and backed, greatly to the de- 
 light of the vociferating caleseros. 
 
 Soon, a brilliant staff of officers, glittering 
 with orders, announced the Captain-Gene- 
 ral 5 and then, accompanied by a couple of 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 115 
 
 • 
 
 aids-de-camp in scarlet uniforms, Canedo 
 himself, stiff with gold lace, blazing with 
 plaques and stars, and cut in two diagonally 
 by a huge crimson ribbon, inarched up the 
 broad aisle among the kneeling ladies, with 
 the stately step of a pluralist rector. As I 
 stood in the Cathedral, and saw this repre- 
 sentative of the ancient crown of Spain 
 advance, in all the paraphernalia of his 
 rank, and looked around me on the strange 
 throng of decorated officers, and silken ec- 
 clesiastics, and collegians in black doublets 
 and square ruffs, recalling the days of Eu- 
 bens and Vandyck and Velasquez, I seemed 
 to be gazing on a "dissolving view," the 
 next mutation of which would present to 
 the eye, "lean and hungry" yankees in 
 black satin waistcoats ; for the Captain-Gen- 
 eral and the Bishop, the " Governor of the 
 State," and the "reverend clergy," and for 
 a "grand mass in honor of the queen," a 
 Fourth of July oration in the Tacon theatre. 
 These visions were soon scared away by 
 the uproar of the service. The music was 
 Moorish in the matter of clangor and rack- 
 
116 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 et; and the bell-ringing at the altar, now 
 at brief intervals, with the impetuous sud- 
 denness of a steamboat bell signaling " stop 
 her " and " ease her," now prolonged and 
 stunning, like a dinner-bell, was more intol- 
 erable than I have ever heard elsewhere. 
 There was a great deal of posturing, as 
 usual, by men in cloth of gold and cloth of 
 silver, but the service, though not less Bud- 
 dhistical, was less brilliant than in even the 
 smaller Italian cities. 
 
 I happened to be very near four censer- 
 men, two in red velvet dressing-gowns, and 
 two in red damask. They had the potato- 
 like faces of the most forlorn sons of Con- 
 naught; the soiled collars of their seedy 
 black coats peeped over the splendors of 
 their robes; the huge silver urns hung 
 dejectedly, for the day was hot, and the 
 men were as weary as jaded hacks around 
 a railroad station. These wretched men 
 haunted me till I left the church. What 
 possible purpose of religion could be an- 
 swered by the incense of such miserable 
 mortals, who seemed to loathe their heavy 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 117 
 
 silver censers as the tired stoker loathes his 
 coal-hod ? 
 
 After the grand mass we had a parade. 
 The Captain-General reviewed about two 
 thousand men, infantry and artillery. The 
 men are very sensibly dressed in white linen 
 uniforms, and present a respectable appear- 
 ance. They were then armed with heavy 
 Spanish muskets, for which I understand 
 Minie rifles have since been substituted. 
 How much of the old stuff that made up 
 the armies of Charles V. and Philip II., when 
 the infantry of Spain were the best of Eu- 
 rope, and the Ugotes of Alva gave a fitting 
 name to all tyrants in religion, is still to be 
 found under the turreted flag, is a question 
 I will not undertake to settle. One thing 
 at least is certain. In those old times the 
 Spanish soldier was a gentleman, and well- 
 born men passed their lives in the ranks. 
 Now the Spanish soldier is treated like a 
 dog. I saw men kicked and cuffed by the 
 officers on parade. Common soldiers every- 
 where, are not apt to be the elite of man- 
 kind, says Leigh Hunt, and these troops are 
 
118 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 no exception to the rule. Mr. Wallis speaks 
 in high terms of the spirit and martial bear- 
 ing of the Spanish troops in Cadiz and the 
 neighborhood, but the troops at Havana are 
 certainly not distinguished in that way. 
 Perhaps the climate affects them, but they 
 look dejected and dull. 
 
 Easter-Tuesday, closing the Easter festi- 
 vals, sent back many unlucky people to 
 their business, who had come up to the city 
 for amusements with which the " norther " 
 had sadly interfered. In different rural dis- 
 tricts the season passed off brilliantly. At 
 San Antonio and Guanajay, for instance, two 
 young ladies being severally chosen queens 
 of the yellow and the crimson bands, ap- 
 pointed their courts, created nobles, and, of 
 course, declared war against each other. 
 The cockpit was their Flanders, and the 
 conflict was waged by those gladiatorial 
 birds, whose courage makes them the vic- 
 tims of man's ferocious tastes. The news- 
 papers of Havana for a fortnight had been 
 full of pompous proclamations from these 
 rival queens, records of levees, and loyal 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 119 
 
 poetry quite as poor as the effusions of more 
 conspicuous laureates. On Sunday, accounts 
 of the successive cockfights were transmit- 
 ted to Havana. This nonsense, like the fol- 
 lies of the Carnival at Rome, is sedulously 
 encouraged by the government. 
 
 The disappointments of Easter week fell 
 heavily on the Catalans, whose Orphan So- 
 ciety is aided by the profits of annual balls 
 at Easter. These balls are usually given in 
 the Opera House, but this year the proprie- 
 tor of that building, (a notorious ex-pirate, 
 to whom Tacon granted great privileges, 
 including the monopoly of the fish-market,) 
 was so unreasonable, that the Catalans got 
 permission to erect a great shanty in the 
 Campo Marte or parade ground. The de- 
 parture of the country people was a sad 
 blow to the Catalans, and the ex-pirate prob- 
 ably rubbed his hands with delight at every 
 shower. But when at last they gave their 
 ball, the attendance was good, and the scene 
 very lively. There were masks of all sorts, 
 negroes, animals, Chinamen, Indians, slim 
 little brown Highlanders in white kilts, Cos- 
 
120 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 sacks in patent leather pumps, an English 
 jockey in a red cotton frock coat and yellow 
 Spanish boots, with other such vraisemblcmi 
 characters as one usually sees at such places. 
 But there were also some genuine novelties, 
 Andalusians in the maja, Biscayans, Astu- 
 rians, Gallicians, in their national costumes. 
 Coniparsas, or bands of young men, performed 
 on a great platform, different national 
 dances. And yet the show was the very 
 faintest shadow of that enthralling and 
 astounding Walpurgis-night, the masked 
 ball of the French Opera. The Spaniard 
 wants the wit and diablerie, the Creole lacks 
 the vigor and vivacity of that most naive, 
 extraordinary, blase and yet inexhaustible 
 youth, the true Parisian. 
 
 The Spaniard would never tolerate those 
 jocose and frivolous parodies of the bull- 
 fight, which used to win such applause at 
 the Hippodrome ; neither would the Parisian 
 endure the brutality of the veritable " cor- 
 rida de torosV The horror of the bull-fight 
 does not consist in the danger to the men. 
 As Lord Byron well says, an English box- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 121 
 
 ing-match ought to be ten times more dis- 
 gusting on that score. Neither do I think 
 that the sufferings of the bull are such as to 
 shock us greatly. The bull is a fierce crea- 
 ture. On Dr. Watts's theory he should be 
 allowed to "delight" in bellowing and but- 
 ting, "for 'tis his nature to ! " Every thing 
 conspires to excite him ; and when his blood 
 is up, he can hardly be even so conscious of 
 the wounds which he receives, as is a man 
 or a boy of the blows which he takes in a 
 battle of fisticuffs. The true loathsomeness 
 of the spectacle (the moral influence of the 
 whole practice is, of course, detestable) con- 
 sists, I think, in the appearance of the 
 wounded horses. I saw but one bull-fight, 
 and such was the impression left on my 
 mind. Yet that was a i: gentle and joyous 
 passage of arms," for only two horses per- 
 ished. Three of the bulls indeed played 
 the ox, and refused the encounter, justifying 
 thus the sneer of that Captain-General who 
 refused to establish bull-fights on the plea 
 that there were no bulls in Cuba. One of 
 these recreants, as soon as the picador rode 
 11 
 
122 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 at him, lance in rest, turned tail and trotted 
 off as if before the herdsman. Round and 
 round the arena he trotted, looking up pa- 
 thetically at the people, till the audience 
 clamored for his removal. The beast was 
 so astounded and alarmed, that when the 
 door was opened he kept running by it, till 
 some person wisely thought of backing in 
 another bull, at sight of whose familiar tail, 
 the bull within made a rush and followed 
 his cousin out. A brave black bull who 
 fought fiercely, received great applause from 
 the amateurs round about me. " Ay ! ay ! " 
 cried one, " that is like the little ones (los 
 chicos) of Navarre ! " This bull was struck 
 by the matador (or killer) very unsteadily, 
 so that his first rush upon the extended 
 sword did not slay him, and he was dis- 
 patched by a second blow. This was en- 
 tirely against the rules of the "art,"' and the 
 unlucky matador was chased out with hisses 
 and cries of " Blockhead ! assassin ! foul fin- 
 gers! butcher!" "Ay de mi!" sighed an 
 enthusiast near by me, " so. noble a bull so 
 basely killed ! " I was reminded of Byron's 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 123 
 
 story about the priest's bull at Cadiz, that 
 was cheered for tossing three horses. All 
 these fights were criticized in the " Diario 
 de la Marina/' as gravely and elaborately as 
 the performances at the theatre. But the 
 show and the criticism interested only Pen- 
 insulars. The Creoles- do not love the sport 
 in itself, and they regard its revival as a 
 mere farce. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 "Into the green- reGessed woods." 
 Keats. 
 
 The change from the endless levels, pine 
 barrens, swamps, and sluggish streams of 
 Eastern Carolina and Virginia, to the high- 
 lands, clean forests, and quick waters of the 
 mountain districts, is not more complete 
 than from the rolling savannas, ' sentinel 
 palms, and motionless lagunas of the Vuelta 
 Ahajo, to the hill roads, dense vegetation, 
 and broad, sweeping vistas of the north 
 coast. The south is tropical to the spirit, 
 the north more superbly tropical to the eye. 
 Here is the domain of that gorgeous and 
 formidable vegetation which wages such a 
 constant war with the works of man, the 
 vegetation which has toppled down the 
 temples of the Aztec, and hidden the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 125 
 
 cities of Central America in a green night, 
 and built along the Orinoco and the 
 Amazon fortresses of barbarism and of ig- 
 norance, impregnable alike by commerce 
 and by curiosity. The wastes of north- 
 ern Cuba are jungles of closely twining 
 plants, gay with the myriad hues of strange, 
 magnificent flowers, and overtopped by 
 gigantic trees, whose trunks are not less 
 gay with fantastic embroideries, and from 
 whose Briarean arms hang countless veils 
 and fringes of creeping plants, the names of 
 which cause upon the ear the same indefi- 
 nite impression of savage magnificence that 
 is made by their blended, indistinguishable 
 forms upon the eye. All things, which to 
 ns of the temperate zones are creatures of 
 boxes and of bales, creations, we might per- 
 haps as truly say, of the merchant and the 
 grocer, meet us here at every turn, wild and 
 bold in the woods, the fan-like cacao-tree, 
 the spreading vanilla, the parasite tamarind, 
 the gaunt and desolate guava. The cactus 
 no longer struggles for existence in the fee- 
 ble sunshine of a three pair back window 
 11* 
 
126 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 A with a southern exposure ; but, swollen to 
 the size of a scrub-oak, impedes your way 
 with its cluli 7 hideous, prickly leaves, and 
 flaunts its great flowers in your face. You 
 may cool your thirst by day with the sweet, 
 clear waters of the cocoa-nut. You may 
 cool your heated eyes by night with such 
 floods of golden moonlight as would have 
 driven Shelley mad. The moon, which gives 
 expression to the most tedious landscape, 
 and the most unmeaning face, and converts 
 the delight of gazing upon beauty into a 
 kind of frenzy, the moon makes all men 
 Enclymions in Cuba. 
 
 The silence of these tropic forests is tre- 
 mendous. Still are they as the seat of 
 Saturn. No beast crashes through the 
 undergrowth, no bird sings in the branches, 
 no wind sighs through the mighty tops. 
 The living creatures of that world glance 
 noiselessly through the air, or glide stealth- 
 ily beneath the heavy sound-deadening 
 verdure. Your own voice startles you. 
 Sublime at first, this silence soon grows 
 insufferably oppressive. You are on the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 127 
 
 point of giving an impatient shout, when 
 your purpose is anticipated by nature with 
 a shriek which pierces your very brain, a 
 shriek mean and malicious as the cry of an 
 imp. Saddening is the absence of song 
 birds from the Cuban landscape. With the 
 exception of a few visitors from the Florida 
 coast, the birds of Cuba are only gaily 
 dressed birds of the ball-room. America, in 
 general, has been ill-treated in this matter. 
 Among the woods of our own New England, 
 we may not hold our breath to hear as in 
 Surrey or in Switzerland : — 
 
 " The selfsame song that found a path, 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, 
 She stood in tears among the alien corn ; " 
 
 nor soar with " the scorner of the ground," 
 till our own souls become " blithesome and 
 cumberless," as that "sightless song;." Yet 
 for us the clarion of the wood thrush rings 
 nobly sweet through the aisles of the pine 
 forest, and the Canadian whistler outpipes 
 all Arcady among our stately hills, and the 
 bubbling rapture of the bobolink chases 
 
128 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 awhile the thought of death that haunts our 
 fatal shores. Cuba has no such voices. Her 
 landscape is worse than soulless. The par- 
 rot gives it an uncanny soul, a sprite of evil. 
 Is there not at least an elective affinity be- 
 tween scandal-mongers and parrots, between 
 those shrewish, furbelowed, feathered dowa- 
 gers, and their ill-tongued gossips, the 
 " Kaffeeschwestern," the unmusical human 
 souls that love " the treasons, stratagems, 
 and spoils " of social life ? The white par- 
 rot in particular, has something positively 
 diabolical in the tone of its voice. Had 
 Ver-Vert been a white parrot, he had never 
 needed a trip to Lyons to corrupt him. 
 
 But if the ear be defrauded of its dues in 
 Cuba, the eye luxuriates. The island com- 
 prises within its borders the most beauteous 
 extremes of hill and plain — plains un- 
 broken as prairies, mountains that rival the 
 highest peaks of the Appalachians. The 
 towns, it is true, are monotonously alike. 
 In seeing Havana one has seen the leading 
 traits of appearance and of social character 
 which distinguish all the lesser cities. There 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 129 
 
 are, however, a few places of some note 
 which possess a picturesque individuality. 
 Matanzas, the " home of the Muses " in Cuba, 
 has its lovely bay, shoaling out so far from 
 shore that between the fleet of ships and 
 the noble quay the moon at night makes a 
 broad lagoon of gold, dotted over with little 
 scudding cloud-like boats and launches ; and 
 it's long, rolling, flower-studded hill of the 
 Cumbre, parting the busy town from the 
 happy valley of the Yumuri, a valley bright 
 with the contrasting beryls and emeralds of 
 the cane fields and the woods, and peaceful 
 with the calm presence of colossal ceybas, 
 that rise above its green and golden undula- 
 tions of foliage, like holy bishops, full of 
 power and pastoral love. In its effect upon 
 a landscape the ceyba singularly resembles 
 that most impressive of trees, the Roman 
 pine. 
 
 Ancient Baracoa, the earliest settlement 
 of the Spanish, stands like one of the eyry 
 cities of the Rhine, a watchtower looking 
 to the east. Santiago cle Cuba, scarred by 
 earthquakes from which its magnificent 
 rocky portals, its pillars of Hercules, were 
 
130 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 no defence, asserts in its stately position and 
 in the French tone of its society, a right to 
 particular mention. So, too, I suppose would 
 revolutionary Puerto Principe, which had 
 the courage to shut up its doors and win- 
 dows during the visit of his Excellency the 
 Captain-General, giving the lie by the som- 
 bre silence of the houses and the compara- 
 tive desertion of the streets, to the loyal up- 
 holstery of the public buildings and the 
 Plaza. Enterprising Trinidad boasts of its 
 fine harbor, and its handsome houses, and 
 of the princely sugar estates which assure 
 its prosperity. Even the little new western 
 port of Cabanas lifts up its voice, concerning 
 the grandeur of that arm of the sea which 
 for seven miles forces its way through bold 
 shores luxuriant with a gorgeous vegetation, 
 and affords a space wherein, as the geogra- 
 phies say, " all the navies of the world might 
 ride securely at anchor." The oyster eater 
 will find his way to Sagua, and the man 
 who " depends on shooting a flamingo," like 
 the traveller in Switzerland whose heart is 
 set on a chamois, will probably see more of 
 the island than he will care to describe. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 131 
 
 Less than one third of the land m Cuba 
 being under cultivation, large regions are as 
 little known as the interior of Asia. From 
 every height which the traveller attains, he 
 may descry a horizon teeming with wonder 
 and with fancy, out of the ignorance and 
 silence of whose purple mystery no voice has 
 come, these hundred years. There are for- 
 ests, the refuge of the wild clog and the 
 wilder man, the fierce Maroon, the black 
 pioneer of doom, haunting the outskirts of 
 a tyrannous civilization. There are moun- 
 tains, unmeasured and ungauged, couching, 
 it may be, above treasures which the venge- 
 ful Cemis hid from the greedy murderers of 
 his mild worshippers. 
 
 Much of the inhabited interior, too, is as 
 little visited as the western slopes of the 
 southern Alleghanies. The primitive method 
 of travelling, and the antique hospitality of 
 the rural regions, throw a charm of mediaa- 
 val unreality over scenes that may be really 
 explored. The magnificent vale of Mariel, 
 fair as those outer realms of Paradise over 
 which the eyes of Adam ranged from his 
 
132 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 a heaven-kissing verdurous walls ; " the ro- 
 mantic cliffs that mirror their wealth of flow- 
 ers in the green glistening waters of the 
 winding Canimar ; the mighty steeps of the 
 Loma de Indra, from whose heights the view 
 sweeps to either ocean, and away to the dim 
 blue hills of Jamaica; the endless fragrant 
 palm-studded solitudes of the south-west; the 
 picturesque ravines of the north-east, where 
 young girls may be seen riding on the backs 
 of oxen ; the subterranean streams gushing 
 suddenly into the moonlight from the black- 
 ness of the sumideros, or caverns, which hon- 
 eycomb the surface of the island; the hun- 
 dred sequestered nooks where still the gua- 
 giro chants his rude improvisations, melodi- 
 ous and full of meaning as the cries of a 
 bellman, or the songs of a gondolier, and 
 charms, in the skilful gymnastics of the zap- 
 ateado, groups of soft-eyed girls, graceful as 
 the palm-trees arching overhead; all these 
 you reach over roads that transport you to 
 the middle ages. Rudely marked out with 
 limits which the irrepressible gush of vege- 
 table life is continually obliterating, worn 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 133 
 
 by the huge wheels of ox-carts, often lead- 
 ing you through the small rivers of the 
 country, and always guiltless of even the 
 semblance of a bridge, these "highways" 
 make intelligible to you old Froissart's hesi- 
 tation in recording the feat of that young 
 Percy, who actually travelled from Berlin to 
 Ghent in fourteen days, to join the army of 
 king Edward III* Riding along these 
 wretched roads you meet only the most pri- 
 meval vehicles, long files of packhorses and 
 mules, and armed' horsemen glittering with 
 spur and sword. 
 
 In bygone years, all invalids who visited 
 the island were obliged to find their way 
 into the interior, depending upon the un- 
 
 * The dweller in the land, who does n't care for the middle 
 ages, looks with small complacency upon these roads. A friend 
 of mine imported from Antwerp some machinery, which was 
 sent about seventy miles into the interior, to his estate. The 
 cost of land transportation was much greater than the freight 
 across the Atlantic. 
 
 One is struck in Havana by the apparent waste of power in 
 the manner of loading the maloja, or green fodder, on the backs of 
 mules. But a single trip into the country satisfies you, that a five 
 miles' journey in a cart would turn the greenest fodder into exe- 
 crable hay. 
 
 12 
 
134 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 failing hospitality of the planters. Now the 
 coast lines of railway have changed the sys- 
 tem, and a few well-known boarding-houses, 
 comparatively easy of access, secure the 
 traveller a sufficient variety of scene and 
 atmosphere. Most of these places are on the 
 northern shore, though the southern towns 
 are within an easy journey of Havana now, 
 by the Batabano railway and the steamers 
 which run along the coast. Guines, Buena 
 Esperanza, and Limonar are the points to 
 which strangers are generally directed. The 
 intelligent author of " Notes on Cuba," Dr. 
 Wurdeman, considers Limonar the most de- 
 sirable spring residence on the island. It 
 may be reached now easily by railway, en- 
 joys a most delicious climate, and offers the 
 further attraction of comfortable houses, 
 well kept and in a cheerful neighborhood. 
 Guines, which used to be the most celebrated 
 hospital town in Cuba, has sunk in impor- 
 tance of late years. The rides in the neigh- 
 borhood are pleasant, though by no means 
 so lovely as those about Limonar, This con- 
 sideration is of the first consequence for 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 135 
 
 convalescents. Nothing can be more fatal 
 than confinement to a great dreary board- 
 ing-honse in a foreign country. I shall 
 never forget the melancholy face of a young 
 American lady whom I saw at Guines, left 
 there with her young child, to recover from 
 an attack premonitory of consumption. She 
 had not been out of the house for days, and 
 though it was plain that her health had not 
 been seriously shaken by her disease, the 
 solitude and wof illness of her situation were 
 doing her more harm than all the winds of 
 the East could have wrought. The balmiest 
 climate can do little for the body while the 
 mind is nipped and chilled. One sees many 
 people in Cuba who seem to be taking the 
 sweet air, just as they would take black 
 draughts and blue pills. Of course it is not 
 surprising that they derive no more benefit 
 from the one than from the other. Those 
 who can visit the tropics in favorable cir- 
 cumstances, and before disease has destroyed 
 their power of enjoyment, should, be in all 
 ways encouraged to undertake the voyage. 
 To them Cuba will be indeed a " Garden of 
 
136 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Delight." To all others it is quite as likely 
 to be a u Garden of Death." If a man is left- 
 alone with his ailing consciousness, unable to 
 comprehend the life going on around him, 
 brought into none but mercenary relations 
 with his fellow-creatures, and cannot run 
 away; a sick deer in a strange herd, what 
 can he do but die ? And such is the vigor 
 of that nature, death grows as rapidly as 
 life. Decay does not crumble, it crushes. 
 
 Eeckless as is the temper of modern times, 
 death among strangers must still be dread- 
 ful to all who have ever loved a home. All 
 that accompanies death, too, in Cuba, is par- 
 ticularly repulsive. Difficulties are thrown 
 in the way of the becoming burial of those 
 who die out of the communion of the Holy 
 Church of Ferdinand VII. and Isabella II. 
 The Campos Santos ? or burial-grounds, are 
 vile places, where corpses are thrown aside 
 as they are in Italy, without respect and 
 without memorials even so lasting as the 
 widow's tears or the tolling of the funeral 
 bell. Before burial, the dead, dressed in the 
 gayest manner, are exposed on catafalques 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 137 
 
 set around with candles, in the great saloon 
 of their homes. Ghastly faces stare sud- 
 denly out on you from within the iron-barred 
 windows, as you walk the city streets. Un- 
 coffined and unshrouded, for the most part, 
 the dead are flung into shallow graves, 
 whence they will soon be jostled by their 
 successors in the endless procession. Dark 
 stories are told of those who have charge of 
 these interments. A certain countess, who 
 died near by us in Havana, was laid out in 
 state and superbly arrayed. When the, day 
 of the funeral came, one of the friends with 
 a knife, cut into shreds the fine silks and sat- 
 ins of her robes, making them valueless as 
 merchandise. 
 
 Among the conservative old Spanish a 
 great deal of formality obtains in the mat- 
 ter of mourning. It is considered proper 
 for the family to shroud every thing in the 
 house of death. Pictures are turned to the 
 wall, furniture gloomily draped. Immedi- 
 ately after the funeral, all the relations and 
 connections of the deceased meet at the 
 house, where they dine together, the family 
 12* 
 
138 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 keeping out of the way in private rooms till 
 after dinner, when they appear, and two 
 great circles are formed in the saloon, the 
 females gathering into one and the males 
 into another. Lugubrious conversation then 
 commences. This ceremony is repeated 
 daily during nine days ! and is plainly only 
 a variation of, and as plainly not an im- 
 provement upon, the barbaric mourning of 
 the East. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " Destiny cast them among the plantations, and the gardens, where 
 were fruits growing in clusters." Akabian Nights. 
 
 The great sugar estates of Cuba lie in 
 the Vuelta Arriba, the a upper district/' the 
 region of the famous " red earth." The face 
 of this region smiles with prosperity. In 
 every direction the traveller rides astonished 
 through a garden of plenty, equally im- 
 pressed by the magnificent extent, and the 
 profuse fertility of the estates whose palm 
 avenues, plantain orchards, and cane fields 
 succeed each other in almost unbroken suc- 
 cession. Many of these properties yield 
 princely revenues, and are worked by 
 "gangs" of slaves, much larger than are 
 common in the American States. The orig- 
 
140 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 inal outlay upon such an estate is very large, 
 although land can be procured cheaply 
 enough, and the expenses of management 
 are very heavy. The salaries of engineers 
 upon estates worked in the old-fashioned 
 manner, average about one hundred and 
 twenty dollars a month, during the grinding 
 season. But the French machinery- is con- 
 ducted by persons of superior capacity, who 
 are tempted hither from Europe or America 
 by the offer of permanent situations at much 
 higher salaries. Four or five such persons 
 must be maintained upon a large estate. 
 To the amount thus expended, must be 
 added the wages of white subordinates, the 
 expenses of five hundred or of a thousand 
 negroes, the value of cattle annually de- 
 stroyed, the incidental outlay, and in the 
 majority of cases, the interest upon the large 
 sums which the planter has borrowed in a 
 country where money has an extraordinary 
 value. Yet so productive are the estates, 
 and so steady is the demand for the plant- 
 er's crop, that the great sugar planters of 
 Cuba are in truth princes of agriculture. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 141 
 
 Cholera, sweeping away troops of his slaves, 
 the match of an envious, or the cigar of a 
 careless montero kindling a flame that nothing 
 can arrest, are alike powerless to interrupt 
 seriously the prosperous career of an intel- 
 ligent and enterprising hacendado. The rui- 
 nous practice of absenteeism, which pre- 
 pared for the British West Indies that 
 sudden ruin, so often and so unjustly charged 
 upon emancipation, is comparatively un- 
 known in Cuba. The administradores of the 
 Cuban estates are frequently members of 
 the proprietor's family. And the proprietors 
 themselves generally pass a part of the year 
 on their estates. The master's eye keeps 
 watch over those admirable arrangements 
 and tasteful decorations, which make a great 
 sugar estate so delightful to the stranger. 
 Particularly beautiful are the estates to 
 which a cafetal is attached. The coffee cul- 
 ture was introduced by the French refugees 
 from Hayti, men of taste and refinement, 
 who in laying out the grounds of their new 
 homes, took thought for the beautiful as 
 well as for the useful. The Spaniards gen- 
 
142 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 erally, (Garcilaso to the contrary notwith- 
 standing) seem to have done but little for 
 the advance of landscape gardening, and the 
 glorious opportunities offered by Cuba to the 
 art, have been little improved excepting in 
 the cafetales. Although Brazil has quite 
 broken down the Cuban coffee trade, these 
 coffee estates are still numerous in the Vu- 
 elta Arriba, where they are kept up on the 
 French models, chiefly as ornaments to the 
 sugar estates, vegetable farms, and homes 
 for the younger or the decrepit negroes. 
 The imposing scale of the operations on a 
 great ingenio, imparts a character of barbaric 
 regal state to the life one leads there. The 
 haracon becomes a town, the planter a feudal 
 lord, administering hospitalities as lavish as 
 the bounty of the climate and the soil. 
 Living in such a region, one soon enters into 
 the spirit of that eastern munificence and 
 profusion which disdains limits and calcula- 
 tions. The singular number falls into disre- 
 pute. A kind of gorgeous superfluity seems 
 only fit and becoming. Your thought is all 
 " of Africa and golden joys." The luxuri- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 143 
 
 ous seductions of the land persuade you 
 into a new charity towards men so superbly 
 tempted. The energy with which the ad- 
 ministradores address themselves to their 
 work is surprising to you. You feel as if 
 the calls of prudence, in such a region, might 
 well enough be met in the spirit of Nou- 
 redclin, when to all his steward's remon- 
 strances he calmly answered, "Know 
 steward ! that if thou hast in thy hands 
 what will suffice for my dinner, thou shalt 
 not burden me with anxiety respecting my 
 supper ! " 
 
 Looking at them simply as an entertain- 
 ment, the mills of these great sugar estates 
 are not incongruous with the easy delight 
 of the place. Every thing is open and airy, 
 and the processes of the beautiful steam 
 machinery go on without the odors as with- 
 out the noises that make most manufacto- 
 ries odious. Many ingenious applications 
 of chemical and mechanical science lend an 
 interest to the De Eosny trains,* which were 
 
 * The term train is given to the succession of boilers and vats 
 through which the cane juice passes in the course of its transmu- 
 tation into sugar. 
 
144 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 invented by a Frenchman who had never 
 seen a sugar estate, and who on coming to 
 the West Indies, could not work profitably 
 his own machinery. The most interesting 
 to me of these arrangements was the cen- 
 trifugal process. The molasses, which on the 
 old-fashioned estates eventually distils into 
 diamond drops of aguardiente, is converted 
 by this process into sugar. It passes into a 
 large vat, by the side of which is a row of 
 double cylinders, the outer one of solid 
 metal, the inner of wire gauze. These cyl- 
 inders revolve each on an axis attached by 
 a horizontal wheel and band to a shaft 
 which communicates with the central engine. 
 The molasses is ladled out into the spaces 
 between the external and internal cylinders, 
 and the axes are set in motion at the rate 
 of nineteen hundred revolutions a minute. 
 For three minutes you see only a white in- 
 distinct whirling; then the motion is ar- 
 rested; slowly and more slowly the cylin- 
 ders revolve, then stop, and behold ! the 
 whole inner surface of the inner cylinder is 
 covered with beautiful crystallizations of a 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 145 
 
 light yellow sugar ! Watching this inge- 
 nious process, I used to fancy that somewhat 
 in this wise, might the nebulse of space be 
 slowly fashioning into worlds. 
 
 But the cafetal is after all the great charm 
 of these northern ingenios. On one of the love- 
 liest in the island, I spent a season,the brevity 
 of which I shall always regret. Early in the 
 
 inspiring morning, my friend Don used 
 
 to summon me for a drive. A dozen ne- 
 groes would appear,to harness one little lively 
 horse, into a light American wagon, bought 
 by my friend for the purpose of driving over 
 the thirteen miles of sugar and coffee es- 
 tates, on which he has made good broad 
 roads. A whole pack of dogs started off 
 before us, yelping, leaping, and darting in 
 all directions, and then we dashed away at 
 a brisk pace, through the seemingly endless 
 cane fields. The heavy dew, glittering on 
 the waves of green, gave them a soft bril- 
 liancy ; the cloudless skies, the buoyant air, 
 beguiled the way, till we drove into the 
 cool shades of the plardaneria, or plantain 
 grove, the unfailing adjunct of all estates 
 13 . 
 
146 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 in this land, where plantain and pork are as 
 much the staff of life to the montero, and 
 the negro, as are beef and water to the 
 guacho, or bacon and greens to the Virgin- 
 ian. The plantain tree, though by no 
 means lofty or imposing — looking, indeed, 
 more like a seedy cabbage with long leaves 
 or an overgrown flag, than like a tree — still 
 reaches the height of twenty feet or more, 
 and its heavy dark green leaves nodding 
 over the ruddy ground, make a delightful 
 shade, a sort of cool baptistery, from which 
 you pass into the statelier sanctuaries of the 
 cafeial There the full-leaved orange, the 
 thrifty, dark, glossy foliage of the mango, 
 the tall elm-like aguacate, the coneshaped 
 mamey, cover the land on both sides as far 
 as the eye can reach. Everywhere you see 
 the light, shrubby outlines of the coffee 
 plant springing up beneath the taller trees. 
 Avenues, miles in length, lead to the differ- 
 ent quarters of the estate, and formed as 
 they are of the full exuberant mango, or the 
 branching aguacate, planted alternately with 
 the towering royal palm, become forest 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 147 
 
 aisles of surpassing beauty. The height of 
 the palms is immense, many of them rising 
 more than a hundred and twenty feet into 
 the air. Overtopping thus the other trees, 
 their sweeping noble arches do not exclude 
 the sunlight, which pours through the inter- 
 vals as through the clere-story windows of a 
 cathedral, and illuminates the green solem- 
 nity of the majestic colonnades. 
 
 The cottage of the cafetal was an elegantly 
 proportioned little tropical mansion, cool, 
 dark, floored with marble, wainscoted, and 
 furnished with rich cleep-hued Indian woods. 
 A garden filled with heavy blooms, of jas- 
 mine and roses, and the gorgeous purple 
 Carolina, and a hundred drooping odorous 
 flowers, made the air faint with fragrance. 
 A dense grove of orange trees near by, was 
 lighted up through all its recesses by the 
 glowing fruit. Oranges lay all about on the 
 bright red earth, little naked negroes kick- 
 ing aside, and satiated pigs disdainfully neg- 
 lecting great luscious fruit, which the North 
 would pile with pride, upon salvers of silver 
 and porcelain. 
 
148 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Whenever we rode over to the cafetal, we 
 always found lying on the marble tables of 
 the saloon, a heap of these superb oranges, 
 with the morning still in their fragrance, or 
 a huge golden pineapple. 
 
 Pineapples, like poets, appear to the best 
 advantage at home. The ripe orange from 
 the tree has a delicate atmosphere of its 
 own, but in substance is hardly better than 
 a well ripened orange from the fruiterer's 
 shop. The " lush banana," is never allowed 
 to ripen on the tree, as it falls out of its 
 sheltering purple glove immediately on 
 coming to maturity. Miss Bremer, there- 
 fore, might have " made friends " with the 
 banana, as well in New York as in Havana. 
 But the pineapple of Cuba is another crea- 
 ture from that stringy, sour, indigestible 
 thing which we tolerate for the chance of its 
 aroma, just as people who have no Italian 
 read Hoole's Ariosto. It is as unquestionably 
 the king among tropical fruits, as is Bur- 
 gundy among the wines of France. The 
 famous aguacate is really no fruit, but a veg- 
 etable, eatable only as a salad, and of the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 149 
 
 daintiest. The zapote, that potato-faced 
 peach, and the mamey, are rich and sweet, 
 but lack savor. And generally, the West 
 Indian fruits are decidedly inferior in deli- 
 cacy and pungency of flavor to the fruits of 
 the temperate zones, and of the east. The 
 lordly, aromatic strawberry, the melting 
 odoriferous pear, the peach, that carries in 
 its ruddy heart such sweet memories of its 
 Persian home, "the cherry delighting the 
 sense of every man," these are unrivalled in 
 Cuba. The universal monotone of the 
 tropics is struck for the palate too. The 
 fruits lack piquancy, as the inland landscape 
 almost invariably lacks the life of running 
 water. 
 
 I have already spoken of the exceeding 
 beauty of the Cuban nights, and of the 
 golden moon, which pours over the tropical 
 landscape a flood of luxurious splendor, quite 
 unimaginable by those who have but 
 watched her climb the northern skies with 
 a wan face, and with sad steps. Beneath 
 the moon, too, and the stars, the night 
 glances with living meteors. The cucullos 
 13* 
 
150 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 are indeed inconceivably brilliant. " Watch- 
 men of the insects/' serenos de los bichos, a 
 lovely quickwitted boy of four summers, 
 the child of one of my friends, called these 
 torchbearers, when he first saw them; and 
 flying in long lines, with their double lights, 
 they do produce an effect similar to that of 
 the long processions of the watch at Ha- 
 vana. They are quiet, however, in wdiich 
 they do not resemble those worthies, who 
 must be called serenos in irony, for they 
 make night dreadful with periodical howls, 
 much more prolonged and eloquent than 
 the similar uproar with which peace is 
 hourly proclaimed at night in Philadelphia. 
 The light of the ciicuUo is really strong 
 enough to serve as a candle. It is also very 
 delicate, a fine green luminousness, precisely 
 like the effulgence which emeralds shed 
 upon a lovely neck. But the emeralds of 
 inca or sultan may soon be counted, and these 
 glories are showered indifferently into the 
 verandah of the noble, and the baracon of 
 the slave. Children delight in them, keep- 
 ing them shut up, by forties and fifties, in 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 151 
 
 little cages of reeds. They are carefully 
 washed at morning and night, and fed with 
 sugar-cane, (if fed with sugar the saccharine 
 particles adhere to their legs, and they fall 
 upon each other like Kilkenny cats,) and in 
 this way may be kept alive and shining for 
 many days. They have been carried thus 
 to New York, and set free in Broadway to 
 the great wonderment of the Gothamites. 
 The nature of their light I do not know. 
 But all the underpart of the body is trans- 
 parent, and the light appears to be under 
 the cucullo's control, flashing and failing 
 like the bottled up auroras of Professor 
 
 L at Cambridge. 
 
 The calm eternal stars, look hardly more 
 divine than these mortal stars, that seem 
 sent to cheat us poor moths, out of our 
 
 " Devotion to something afar 
 From the sphere of our sorrow," 
 
 into a desire for more accessible, though 
 more evanescent, joys. Once I caught some 
 and gave them to a little girl, who forth- 
 with hung them around her light dress, say- 
 
152 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ing, that " God had made them with hooks 
 to fasten on little girl's dresses." An inde- 
 feasible inference ! the hooks are certainly 
 there. 
 
 Did God also make mahogany trees to be 
 hacked into canoes ? One day I saw a 
 couple of Africans hewing away, to convert 
 a noble mahogany trunk into a mere vulgar 
 " dug-out." Probably Mr. Euskin would call 
 the destiny of that trunk more divine, in 
 being true as an honest, clumsy dug-out, 
 than in coming with a smooth and var- 
 nished face, as the deceitful veneering of a 
 pinewood table, to cherish dyspepsia and 
 scandal in polite society ! 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "Ho! ho! " cried Orlando, "you too are for throwing stones, are 
 
 yOU?" MORGANTE MAGGIORE. 
 
 Nobthekn life is not all peaches and roses. 
 Neither, alas ! is the life of the tropics only 
 pineapples and pleasant breathing. To me, 
 Cuba was, in the main, a garden of delight, 
 "where my heart was dilated, and my 
 anxiety ceased." And so far I have recorded 
 chiefly the delectable impressions which I 
 retain of the island. Were I writing of an- 
 cient Iceland or modern Tongataboo, I might 
 forbear handling more painful themes, ob- 
 serving a discreet silence concerning Snor- 
 ro's little weakness of piracy, and Amekam- 
 eha's passion for foreign flesh. When we 
 think of the Caliph in Gan-Eden, why need 
 we remember Sheikh Ibrahim, preparing 
 slight bastinadoes for improper characters at 
 the gate ? But there are Cubans in Cuba, 
 
154 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 and it is of no slight importance to under- 
 stand what manner of men they are. As 
 they seemed to me, so I must describe them ; 
 if need be, " throwing stones." I beg thee, 
 reader, to believe that I am led to this task 
 by no such instinct as sometimes constrains 
 the mildest of boys to " have a shy " at the 
 meekest of cats, when he sees her conspicu- 
 ous on a shed in the sun. That Marid and 
 taskmaster of the Anglo-Saxon race, " a 
 sense of duty," is the responsible party. 
 Consequently I shall be as faithful in the 
 work as I am reluctant to commence it. 
 
 When the brave town of Marblehead lay 
 beyond the borders of civilization, every 
 bewildered traveller who mistook that mu- 
 nicipal blind alley for a thoroughfare, used 
 to be greeted with a savage salaam of siza- 
 ble pebbles, accompanied with the intima- 
 tion that a small pecuniary tribute was in- 
 dispensable. Cuba offered me tribute before 
 I evinced any hostile disposition. Had I 
 exacted of all the Creoles I happened to 
 meet, a just discharge of all their promises, 
 I should now be a large landholder in the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 155 
 
 island, and possess horses enough to mount 
 a regiment. But the remembrance of all 
 those unliquidated obligations shall not, I 
 hope, delay or divert my hand. 
 
 Of course, Cuba has great distinctions of 
 society. There, in the first place, is the vast 
 gulf between white and black Cuba. Of the 
 darker side of that gulf I shall hereafter 
 speak. I have to deal now with the grada- 
 tions of life in white Cuba. 
 
 The whites in Cuba numbering, I suppose, 
 (for nobody exactly knows,) about four hun- 
 dred thousand souls,* are divided primarily 
 into old Spaniards, or Peninsulars, and Cre- 
 oles. The old Spaniards fill all the offices 
 of the island, and transact by far the greater 
 part of its commercial affairs. 
 
 The mother country has been in the habit 
 of applying her sons, like leeches, to the 
 bodies of her colonies, and the successive 
 generations of old Spaniards have come 
 upon the Indies, like those great waves of 
 barbaric invasion which swept over the 
 
 * The unreliable census of 1849, says 457,132. 
 
156 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Eoman Empire. Naturally enough the old 
 Spaniard looks clown upon the Creole with 
 the contempt of a conqueror. Not less nat- 
 urally the Creole regards his kinsmen of Cas- 
 tile with a sort of spiteful aversion. The 
 bright-eyed boy at the cafe curls his full lip 
 with scorn,when you ask him if he was born 
 in Cuba, and his shrill treble grows a clarion 
 in the reply, " No, Senor ! soy Asturiano ! " 
 The judge on the bench, the beaten soldier 
 at the barracks, assume towards the native of 
 the island, something of the port with which 
 an Alvarado or a Sandoval imposed respect 
 upon the defeated Aztec. But the Spanish 
 superiority does not consume itself in sneers 
 and airs. The old Spaniards monopolize the 
 most profitable traffic. The Catalans, the 
 yankees of old Spain, the hard-headed, 
 shrewd Catalans, faithful to their motto of 
 "five years of privations, and a fortune," 
 are to be found in every town and hamlet, 
 and in every stage of social development, 
 from the domestic grub, toilsomely outspin- 
 ning the brilliant cocoon that is to be, up or 
 down to the gay and gorgeous butterfly of 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 157 
 
 the second generation, rejoicing in the sun- 
 shine of fashionable life. The Catalans are 
 generally very loyal, for they enjoy a num- 
 ber of monopolies which, like all monopolists, 
 they blindly and ignorantly cherish, to the 
 serious injury of Cuba. Political economy 
 in Spain seems to be just abreast with the 
 wisdom of the age of Walpole. For instance, 
 the flour monopoly so protects the exporters 
 of Ferrol and Santander, that the wheat of 
 northern Spain, originally very good, is 
 forced upon the Cuban markets, after under- 
 going voyages of such a length, that one can 
 only account for them, by supposing that 
 each captain, on every trip, has to find 
 the new world all over again, without refer- 
 ence to Columbus ! It was the loyal Cata- 
 lans who clamored most loudly for the exe- 
 cution of the foolish and unfortunate men 
 of the Lopez expedition. General Concha 
 was forced to threaten the Catalan leaders 
 in order to restrain their indiscreet zeal. 
 What nerves indeed are so sensitive as those 
 of trade ? Governments, not royal, have not 
 disdained to embrace the patriotism which 
 14 
 
158 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 started into life at the first thrill of a pecu- 
 niary panic ! 
 
 More irreconcilably hostile than the mer- 
 chants to the Creole population, are the 
 old Spanish officials. It is really hard to 
 exaggerate the extent to which bribery and 
 corruption are carried among these persons, 
 or the annoyances to which the unprotected 
 natives are subjected at the hands of Dog- 
 berrys clothed with more or less authority. 
 At Havana, it is notoriously impossible to 
 procure any paper of importance at the 
 government house, without employing an 
 agente or general broker, a limited number 
 of whom are licensed by the government. 
 I tried the experiment myself of applying 
 personally for a certain document, but after 
 dancing attendance for nearly a week in 
 the large and little rooms of the Palace, I 
 gave it up and put the matter into the hands 
 of an agente, who within the day brought 
 me the required parchment stamped con- 
 spicuously with the word gratis, and de- 
 manded seven dollars as the price thereof! 
 These fees are of course divided with the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 159 
 
 subordinates at the Palace. The whole 
 thing is in the purest oriental taste, but one 
 must be very immoral to enjoy it. 
 
 Throughout the country, the "paternal" 
 government is as affectionately watchful over 
 the people as a duenna aunt over a pretty 
 niece, and as judiciously firm as an old-fash- 
 ioned schoolmaster. Englishmen and Amer- 
 icans, more accustomed to worry than to be 
 worried by their governments, can hardly 
 bring themselves to believe in the reality of 
 such an incessant, inquisitive, undignified 
 tyranny as prevails wherever a " strong gov- 
 ernment " is " maintaining order." I knew 
 one man, whose small property happened to 
 lie on the road taken by a party of troops 
 conveying some miserable prisoners of the 
 Lopez " army " to Havana. One of these 
 captives fell by the way, and was left to die. 
 Found by some negroes, the dying man was 
 visited by the planter of whom I speak, car- 
 ried to his house and cared for. He, how- 
 ever, soon died. This act of humanity being 
 illegal, the planter became a marked man. 
 Military requisitions of carts were made 
 
160 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 upon him in the height of the grinding 
 season, vexatious searches, and all sorts of 
 small annoyances inflicted upon him. Nat- 
 urally enough, the object of this despicable 
 persecution sometimes gave vent to his feel- 
 ings in injudicious language. The doctrine 
 of " constructive treason " being thoroughly 
 understood in Cuba, he was at last arrested, 
 carried to Havana, and was lying there in 
 prison when I left the island. 
 
 Visiting the house of a friend one day, in 
 the country, I found there an old woman 
 wrinkled as only Spanish Creoles can be 
 wrinkled, who was tearfully discoursing 
 about her imprisoned son, whom she had 
 that day for the first time been allowed to 
 see. The youth, it seemed, was alone in a 
 damp, dirty cell, and compelled to eat his 
 vile meals without so much as a spoon. His 
 poor old mother told us she had been at 
 work all day, carving out two little wooden 
 spoons for him. " Muy bien hechas," " very 
 well made," she said they were ; and who 
 would wish to doubt it? My heart was 
 moved by the poor creature's story, but I 
 
PICTURES OP CUBA. 161 
 
 forbore to ask any questions while she was 
 present, for what a dreadful creature, what 
 a Cuban Jack Sheppard, laughing like love 
 at locksmiths, and rich in resources as Monte 
 Cristo's Abbe, must that criminal be, who 
 was thought capable of making his way 
 through a stone wall with a German silver 
 teaspoon! To my amazement, my friend 
 informed me that the prisoner was a lad re- 
 markable only for his poverty of spirit, a 
 flat fool in short, who lived on an estate only 
 as an incumbrance attached to his father the 
 overseer. This poor numbskull, going to 
 the Tienda, thought to give himself impor- 
 tance among the open-mouthed monteros, by 
 announcing that an American fleet had been 
 seen off Cape Antonio, bringing a mighty 
 army to avenge Las Pozas ! For this silly 
 lie, the boy had then been incarcerated more 
 than five months ! and might be for years, 
 since even in the regular course of law, a 
 trial is no necessary consequence of an ar- 
 rest, and the military authorities, right or 
 wrong, think it always best to make their 
 mark on their prizes. 
 
 14* 
 
162 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 In another partido, a lawyer of eminence 
 arrested at his own house in the night, re- 
 mained four months in prison, ineomumcado, 
 allowed, that is, to see no one. At the end 
 of that time, with no explanations given, he 
 was turned out, and sent home, to find his 
 wife dead, and his affairs in complete dis- 
 order. 
 
 A Brazilian gentleman, deputed by his 
 government to examine the sugar and to- 
 bacco culture, happened in the course of his 
 journeys to stay in my neighborhood, with 
 a Creole of high intelligence, who was sus- 
 pected of republicanism, and convicted of 
 manliness and independence. This was 
 enough to bring suspicion on the envoy of 
 a friendly empire, who was summoned be- 
 fore the Capitan de Partido. After many 
 absurd questions, "Why don't you study 
 tobacco-growing in the United States?" 
 asked the official. "Perhaps I shall," an- 
 swered the shrewd Brazilian, " but I dislike 
 the institutions of that country so much that 
 I am in no hurry to go there ! " This was 
 enough. The examination came to a pleas- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 163 
 
 ant ending, not without the offer and accept- 
 ance of a "token of regard." 
 
 No man can be trusted with irresponsible 
 power, and the system which multiplies 
 petty authorities beyond the reach of pub- 
 lic opinion, must entail upon any country 
 the curse which weighs on Cuba. To sup- 
 port the army which keeps this swarm of 
 functionaries safe, the Cubans are taxed 
 much more heavily than any other civilized 
 people* 
 
 From the officials, who aptly enough sup- 
 ply the places of the venomous and annoy- 
 ing insects from which Cuba is singularly 
 free, I pass to that great body of the natives 
 on which they feed. 
 
 The first conquerors of Cuba, like Harri- 
 son at Naseby field, "did not their work 
 negligently." The name of the second com- 
 mercial city of the island, Matanzas, or the 
 Massacres, commemorates, it is said, the last 
 
 * For full details of the despotic administration, and of the 
 taxation of Cuba, which, as there stated, amounts in the gross to 
 about 2^ per cent, per annum, on $800,000,000, the total of 
 property in the island, I refer the reader to the excellent work 
 entitled " Cuba and the Cubans," published at New York in 1850. 
 
164 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 of the great slaughters which overtook the 
 idolatrous Indians, who were so profane as 
 to object to the combined gift of slavery and 
 salvation which the Christians proffered 
 them. The trooper's sword and the miner's 
 spade evangelized Cuba, and the present 
 natives of the island, unlike the hybrid 
 peons of the continent, are of pure Spanish 
 blood. The twenty-two cities or towns of 
 some size which exist in the island, contain a 
 fair proportion of these Creoles, a few more 
 are scattered over the great haciendas or 
 estates of the sugar and coffee planters ; but 
 the great majority of the native born whites 
 is to be found on the vegas and tobacco 
 farms, in the villages and hamlets of the in- 
 terior. These are the people who must give 
 to Cuba its chief national peculiarities. The 
 planters, of course, give tone to the highest 
 ranks of Cuban society. To their number 
 belong the thirty or forty marquises and 
 counts of Cuba, the " sugar nobles," as the 
 old Spaniards call them in disdain, though 
 one might suppose that if blood may be 
 used to clarify sugar, sugar may reasonably 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 165 
 
 enough be used to clarify blood, and it is hard 
 to see why a title honestly bought with good 
 gold doubloons is not quite as good a thing 
 as a title taken by force of arms, or pur- 
 chased by worse than menial services ren- 
 dered to some vulgar sensual prince. Closely 
 allied with the planters are the great Creole 
 merchants. Often very opulent, these Cre- 
 oles of the first rank are almost always 
 distinguished for the easy courtesy of their 
 manners, and for the genial hospitality of 
 their households. Nor are they wanting in 
 enterprise. Cuba, in the matter of railways, 
 may compare favorably with many of the 
 American States, and the railways are the 
 result of Creole energy and enterprise. The 
 Creole planters are indefatigable in their 
 efforts to improve their estates, and to de- 
 velop the resources of their magnificent 
 island. No one of the Southern States can 
 show a finer, few can show so fine a body of 
 intelligent and well-bred gentlemen as the 
 haciendas and the cities of Cuba may be 
 justly proud of possessing. The women of 
 this class generally exhibit those qualities 
 
166 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 of warm and devoted affection which so 
 universally adorn the female history of the 
 Spanish race. But the imperfection of their 
 education, in many cases, and in many more 
 the absence of noble incitements to mental 
 and moral activity, condemns these fine na- 
 tures to a life which withers and wastes 
 their best energies. From these higher 
 classes of Cuban society have come the most 
 enlightened and fervent advocates of Cuban 
 liberty and independence. Were we to 
 judge of the intellectual and moral re- 
 sources of the island, by the proofs, with 
 which the poets, patriots, and orators of this 
 class have furnished us, of cultivated powers 
 and lofty aspirations, we should go far be- 
 yond the mark. With the exception of the 
 extraordinary mulatto of Matanzas, Placido * 
 all those Cubans who have distinguished 
 themselves generously, in literature or in life, 
 belong to the planting or urbane classes. 
 The multitudinous hamlets and villages, 
 the ancient vegas of the interior, have given 
 us neither song nor speech. This fact is 
 
 * And Placido himself, it will be seen, was a citizen. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 167 
 
 ominously significant, nor does a closer in- 
 vestigation dispel its significance. 
 
 In all the island in 1840, out of more than 
 ninety thousand free children, only nine 
 thousand attended any school, and of these 
 only one third were educated at the public ex- 
 pense, that is to say, had their ears pulled and 
 were beaten by certain incompetent friars. 
 The much abused Turks are not more illit- 
 erate than the rural Cubans. Newspapers 
 only reach the interior in the form of wrap- 
 pers. Dr. Wurdeman tells us of one yeo- 
 man, well-to-do in the world, who had bought 
 a school geography from a peddler for twenty- 
 five dollars, kept it ostentatiously in sight, 
 and professed to have learned therein that 
 the English and Americans were the most 
 notorious stabbers in the world ! This man 
 must have been a superfluous hypocrite, for 
 most of his fellows have a fine scorn of let- 
 ters. My friend told me one day that 
 
 a neighbor of his had just been condoling 
 with him about his insane visitor ; insane I 
 must be, it was clear, for I had been seen 
 very often, reading a book in the verandah ! 
 
168 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Great as is my respect for books, I do not 
 regard a knowledge of the alphabet as es- 
 sential to human excellence. Charlemagne 
 contrived to make his mark tolerably intel- 
 ligible, long before he could write his name, 
 and Caesar Borgia was a better scholar than 
 John Bunyan. The ignorance of the Cuban 
 mind would be far from hopeless, were the 
 Cuban heart enlightened by that sweet 
 knowledge, of which all the lore of the 
 brain is, and ought to be, the very humble 
 slave and servant. But this is not so. The 
 education of the popular heart and con- 
 science belongs chiefly, of course, to the 
 church. And the church in Cuba has prac- 
 tically abdicated its spiritual functions. The 
 tyrannical ostentation of religious uniformity 
 is indeed kept up, all Protestant settlers 
 being obliged to abjure their faith before 
 their oath of allegiance can be received; 
 perjury opening the door for loyalty to walk 
 in. But the majority of the Cubans hardly 
 give themselves the pains to pretend to an 
 interest in church matters. The attendance 
 on the church services is usually meagre. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 169 
 
 The newspapers indeed, in the dearth of 
 immaculate matter for their rigidly expur- 
 gated columns, devote a goodly space every 
 morning to compendious biographies of the 
 saints of the day. But the people who read 
 the newspapers, the merchants and men of 
 business, are rarely seen within the church 
 walls. Were it not for the zeal " devoti 
 fasminei sexus," as good San Carlo Borromeo 
 long since called them, the Havana churches 
 would be as empty as San Stefano Rotondo, 
 or any other of those stranded old Roman 
 ships of faith, which lie so high and dry, 
 beached on shores from which the tides of 
 human life receded centuries ago. Neither 
 painting nor music, nor the mere magnifi- 
 cence of gold and jewels, invests the ritual 
 of Cuba with attractive pomp. And what 
 is so dismal as shabby Romanism, the 'i scar- 
 let woman " in rags and tatters ? The old 
 French Encyclopedic reviles the church in 
 Cuba, for being so "revoltingly rich." The 
 riches have taken unto themselves wings, 
 and though a few of the dignitaries still 
 enjoy large incomes, the scanty revenues of 
 15 
 
170 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 the church greatly limit its power for good, 
 and aggravate its worst influences. The 
 church in Italy, or in Austria, is like Thack- 
 eray's Louis le Grand, stately in high-heeled 
 shoes and nodding periwig, glittering with 
 the factitious kingliness of velvet coats and 
 diamond stars ; the church in Cuba resem- 
 bles the same Louis, diminished in shuffling 
 slippers, and with bowed bald head shaking 
 above his withered and decrepid limbs. 
 This primitive simplicity of the rural church 
 however, only affects the externals of things. 
 Well says straightforward old Chaucer, "a 
 foul priest cannot make a clean parish." Of 
 course there are worthy and well-conducted 
 men among the village curas of Cuba, but 
 in general the ctira is regarded as a kind of 
 civil officer, and he thinks as little of utter- 
 ing, as his people do of hearing, homilies. 
 Often he is only the best boon companion 
 in his district, and the will of Gregory the 
 Great seems to have been set aside by the 
 common consent of clergy and people. One 
 cannot wonder at the impulse which revolts 
 from the unnatural and corrupting asceti- 
 
PICTUKES OF CUBA. 171 
 
 cism of the Roman Church, but it certainly 
 is a great misfortune for any country that 
 its religious teachers should be constantly 
 living in open violation of one of the most 
 sacred rules of their order. In truth, there 
 seems to be a tacit understanding between 
 the priests and the people, that neither shall 
 trouble the other \ the curas laugh and look 
 after their nieces, their nephews, and their 
 farms; the Monteros laugh, train fighting 
 cocks, dance, blaspheme, make love, and 
 play at monte. An oppressive government 
 and a tempting climate complete the edu- 
 cation of the yeomanry, for so we may ren- 
 der the title of monteros^ which is given to 
 the rural whites. Is it hard to imagine 
 the result ? The Condesa de Merlin, an en- 
 tertaining Cuban Scheherezade, who was by 
 no means critical in her collation of author- 
 ities, once gave an account of the monteros, 
 which resembled the reality of montero life 
 and character, just about as closely as Made- 
 moiselle de Scuderi's Persians resembled the 
 friends and followers of the great Cyrus. 
 According to her, the montero cavalier was 
 
172 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 a true knight and pilgrim of love, able to 
 ride fabulous distances, on steeds noble and 
 dear as Bavieea, outwatching the stars, and 
 with his lute " striking ladies into trouble, 
 as his sword struck men to death." Done 
 into pretty French, the Condesa's rich ro- 
 mance perfumed all the saloons of Paris. 
 The altars of Chateaubriand and St. Pierre, 
 of Paul and Chactas smoked again. Scoff- 
 ing debauchery, garde beurre frais, raved 
 about the majestic silence, and primeval 
 passion of the tropic forest, to sentimental 
 insincerity in gauze. Nature, gayly cos- 
 tumed and scented with the south, became 
 presentable and even fashionable. The Cu- 
 ban guagiro was not less fascinating than 
 Fra Diavolo. With him, with the Mexican 
 jarocho, and the Chilian pincheyra, the New 
 World was no longer savage. Less roman- 
 tic and more scrupulous writers than the 
 Condesa, have yet painted the montero in 
 the warm hues with which the tropics had 
 charged their palettes. A kindly man, 
 travelling from hospitality to hospitality, 
 and conscious every day of new vigor in 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 173 
 
 every organ, new ease in the discharge of 
 every physical function, naturally enough 
 pours something of his own inward delight 
 over every thing which he meets and sees. 
 But those who are thrown, by the necessities 
 of their position, into daily contact with a 
 people, are the safest guides, and the testi- 
 mony of all the planters I ever knew, goes 
 to confirm the inferences I drew from my 
 own observation, in regard to the montero 
 and lower Creole character. I need not 
 dwell upon the stories that are everywhere 
 current, of the occasional brigandage to 
 which the natives resort. Authentic in- 
 stances came within my own knowledge of 
 organizations formed for the purpose of high- 
 way robbery by individuals of considerable 
 standing. In one case, the leading lawyer 
 of a certain town was discovered to be the 
 chief of a set of banditti who had ravaged 
 the adjacent country, and had actually 
 stormed and taken one hamlet and storehouse 
 of respectable size. This lawyer being 
 brought to trial, escaped by oiling the hands 
 of justice. His fortune went to Spain in 
 15* 
 
174 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 remittances from certain functionaries. He 
 himself had leave to go to Mexico. His 
 brother sold his estate to a friend of mine, 
 who, on removing the barn, found six skele- 
 tons quietly disposed beneath the floors. 
 These instances might be paralleled, I know, 
 nearer home.* But there can be no doubt 
 that the monteros generally, entertain ideas 
 with regard to the intrinsic propriety of pi- 
 racy and robbery, much more in accordance 
 with the theory and practice of the ancient 
 Greeks, than of any modern people of the 
 west. General Tacon, in the universal 
 sweep which he made of all the liberties of 
 Cuba, included the freedom of the road, and 
 at present, those who go to Cuba with the 
 expectation of seeing gentlemen drop sud- 
 denly dead in the archways of the city, or 
 of surrendering their own purses to a Claude 
 Duval in leggings, will probably be disap- 
 pointed. How much of the present security 
 of the roads is clue to the energetic police 
 force, and how much to the prevalent im- 
 pression that firearms in the hands of an 
 
 * As, for instance, in the " Martha Washington " case. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 175 
 
 Englishman or American, are dangerous and 
 deadly things, it would be invidious to 
 inquire. 
 
 Indolent, beyond conception, the montero 
 certainly is. His rule of action is, " Never 
 do to-day what you can possibly put off till 
 to-morrow." That cabalistic word "Mana- 
 ma," "To-morrow," which comes upon the 
 fjery northman's impatience from every 
 Spanish lip, like the calm rebuke of the 
 Egyptian's patient eyes, is ten times more 
 appalling in the Creole mouth. You feel 
 that to contend with it would be like dash- 
 ing yourself against the barred doors of 
 destiny. 
 
 Nor is it much easier to load a restive 
 mule, than to lay a responsibility upon the 
 shoulders of a montero. His word is his 
 slave. He is as cunning as Clovis, and as 
 false as Lok. Yet one can understand how 
 the montero contrives to leave such a pleas- 
 ant impression on the minds of careless and 
 contented travellers. He has a ready smile, 
 a "well-placed word of glozing courtesy," 
 warm with the phrases of the Moor, always 
 
176 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 at his command. Rarely is the montero 
 surly or quarrelsome. The easy audacity 
 of his bearing is even attractive. The very 
 boys are lordly in their laziness. Wander- 
 ing over the tufted hills, you catch sight of 
 a fine clump of cocoa palms, and your heated 
 palate craves the refreshment which nature 
 has hung up yonder in those unsightly cups. 
 You look around you, and meet the flashing 
 eyes of a hatless, shoeless urchin, just such 
 a brown, white-toothed, glowing creature as 
 Murillo loved, lying in the shade of a broken 
 wall. You hail Lazarillo and tempt him 
 with silver. He rises to his feet, with such 
 a languid grace ! puts his fingers to his lips, 
 and with one shrill whistle brings his father's 
 only slave from the patch of land hard by? 
 sends him up the smooth, difficult mast, and 
 before you have recovered from your sur- 
 prise, offers you half a dozen of the won- 
 drous nuts ! 
 
 Fond of cheap vices, and proud of cheap 
 virtues, superstitious waiters upon Provi- 
 dence in all matters of business, and bold 
 blasphemers on the slightest provocation, 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 177 
 
 the monteros have so little weight of char- 
 acter, that they can inspire in each other no 
 mutual confidence. I should judge them to 
 be as incapable of maintaining a free and 
 orderly polity, as were the Hindoos before 
 the English conquest. In the event of any 
 political commotion, it is clear that the mon- 
 tero would side with the gods rather than 
 with Cato. They hate the Spanish govern- 
 ment, but dread the chances of an insurrec- 
 tion. Individually, I dare say the monteros 
 are not deficient in bravery, but regimented 
 they must form a despicable militia, revers- 
 ing the character of the French, who like 
 grains of gunpowder, however sputtering 
 they may be as units, are terrific in masses. 
 Physically, the monteros are by no means 
 an ill-looking race, though decidedly inferior, 
 as are the Creoles in general, I think, to the 
 natives of old Spain. Whether it be true 
 or not, that the European races degenerate 
 physically in the New World, is a question 
 not here to be discussed. Certain it is that 
 the Creoles are slighter in frame than the 
 Peninsulars, that the common tones of the 
 
178 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Creole voice are less full and musical than 
 those of the Spanish, and that the Creole 
 has lost something of the direct, vivid glance 
 of the Celtiberian race, a loss which is per- 
 haps counterbalanced by the richer, softer 
 beauty of the Creole eyes. In the rural 
 districts, where the practice of shaving is 
 very general, I was struck with the preva- 
 lence of an Irish type of face. The Irish 
 face of Kerry pleads strongly for the Mile- 
 sian claims of the sons of Erin. But the 
 Irish type I recognized in Cuba, is that more 
 common, heavier, and less attractive type 
 which all the world hails as belonging to 
 the "finest pisintry on the earth." The 
 montero, as you meet him riding along the 
 Cuban roads, if roads they may be called, 
 forms a striking feature in the novel land- 
 scape. Mounted on the small, sturdy, pacing 
 horse of the country, and sitting in his huge 
 high-peaked saddle as carelessly as if in a 
 cart, his brown skin, his wrought shirt, and 
 baggy trowsers red with the dust of the soil, 
 the montero, though by no means romantic, 
 is certainly picturesque. His slouching som- 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 179 
 
 brero flaps solemnly downward over his nose ; 
 his stockingless, saintly * feet thrust into yel- 
 lowish deerskin sandals, dangle in the heavy 
 stirrups, and seem drawn backwards by the 
 weight of his massive silver spurs ; the long, 
 straight, silver-hilted machete jingles against 
 the rows of silver buttons, sometimes in the 
 shape of silver coin, that adorn the seams 
 of his coarse trowsers. Our montero is 
 plainly of the mind of that fashionable lady, 
 who said she could easily dispense with the 
 necessaries of life, but not with its luxuries. 
 He must have his finery. This trait of his 
 character makes the fortune of the Catalan 
 traders who keep the Tiendas of the inte- 
 rior. Many a village whose high-sounding 
 name smacks of old Castile or fair Granada 
 is indeed of the proportions of Martin Chuz- 
 zlewit's Eden. Two or three warehouses, 
 and a Tiencla, are sufficient to constitute a 
 hamlet whither the monteros from miles 
 around shall daily resort. There they lounge 
 away the mornings, their horses tethered 
 
 * The Selloi at Dodona gloried in being, avnzTOTroSeC] and who 
 ever saw a clean Capuchin ? 
 
180 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 all around the stone-floorecl piazza, and 
 themselves hanging about the counters 
 within, drinking aguardiente, (the " slow, 
 sweet, Spanish name " for rum,) smoking 
 cigar after cigar, jockeying, betting, and 
 talking scandal. How many times has the 
 painful idea seized me, a sort of mental 
 stitch in the side, as I rode away from one 
 of these barefooted, barefaced, disreputable 
 assemblies, that the noisiest and most voluble 
 Sir Oracle of them all, might perhaps, at no 
 distant day, be inflicted upon our own unfor- 
 tunate Congress, as a representative from the 
 sovereign State of Cuba ! 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "By your leave, sweet welkin, I must sigh in your face." 
 
 Love's Labor Lost. 
 
 Man is at once the crown and the curse 
 of earth. Human love may lend perfume 
 to Paradise itself; human hate may make 
 the desert more dreadful. Not for their 
 snow are the wastes of Siberia most fearful; 
 deadlier vapors than rise from her swamps, 
 taint the sweet airs of the South. Within 
 the shadow of the Pyramids the squalid 
 Fellah skulks ; the Queen of the Antilles is 
 a Queen of slaves ! 
 
 I have called the great estates of Cuba 
 principalities. Feudal lordships they too 
 truly are. We cross the ocean to stare, 
 in the self-complacent pride of liberty, 
 upon the crumbling ruins of Kaglan, and 
 16 
 
182 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 of Baden, seeing in those grim walls 
 which nature's ivy, and man's i omance have 
 so softly veiled, the outward shape and 
 shell of a life long since extinct. Yet here, 
 near by our northern homes, that life is ac- 
 tive still, as stern and strong as ever ! 
 a Stone walls do not a prison make ! " " Cus- 
 tom," cried Teufelsdrockh, " doth make do- 
 tards of us all." The Paladin Orlando, the 
 traitor Ganeion are busy still in their diverse 
 paths, only serving or deceiving now a fool- 
 ish magnanimous public, instead of a foolish 
 magnanimous Charlemagne. The stone walls 
 of cruel law, and prejudice, and passion, 
 were the true prisons of the poor, the true 
 castles of the great in the old feudal clays. 
 They are standing now in the New World, 
 with guarded battlements, and drawbridge 
 lifted, and deep dangerous moat! Those 
 features which make the retrospect of feu- 
 dalism "romantic," are not wanting to charm 
 sentimental travellers into a half admiration 
 of modern slavery. The warm hospitality, 
 the gallant bearing, the manly natural dig- 
 nity of many a cultivated slave-holder, recall 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 183 
 
 to us the best traits in the pictures of Cer- 
 vantes and of Scott. 'The gentle-hearted 
 mistress is the refuge and the treasury of 
 her slaves ; the negro child bows his head 
 and asks a blessing as his master passes, and 
 the rude African, writhing in the agonies of 
 the cholera, cries out that he should not die, 
 if the master whom he reveres as a supe- 
 rior being, were only by his side. " Up to 
 the ears in corn and pumpkins," Quashee 
 blesses such God as he worships, for his hour 
 of laziness and sunlight, and thinks well of 
 life. Won by personal qualities, which are 
 everywhere the strongest bond between 
 man and man, some faithful slave may well 
 be found willing to die by his noble and 
 considerate lord, and incapable of conceiv- 
 ing a condition more satisfactory than his 
 own. Without falling into the weakness of 
 eclecticism, one may freely admit that the 
 relation of a humane master to his slaves 
 calls out certain virtues, which in the let alone 
 system of modern civilization, are less fre- 
 quently developed through the usual rela- 
 tions of society. But at each step of his 
 
184 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 progress towards a perfect social order, it 
 has been the constant destiny of man to 
 drop for a time some threads of the mighty 
 web he is weaving, which is nevertheless, 
 always advancing towards completion. We 
 must judge any state of society by the 
 totality of the impression it makes upon us. 
 And we must remember that the character 
 of that impression will depend very much 
 upon the vivacity of our own instincts. The 
 traveller in a slave country will find his love 
 of luxury, and courtesy, and generous ease 
 appealed to on every hand. Not less ur- 
 gently and continually will his respect for 
 man be aroused to protest against the tone 
 and temper of society around him. If the 
 couch and the banqueting-hall, the " clap- 
 ping of hands, jars of jewels, and violet 
 sherbet," carry the day, he will find more 
 reasons than an Escobar could give, why 
 just at this time, those things should be treated 
 with considerate forbearance. But if within 
 his heart, the wholesome thought of labor 
 curdles, when beside the swart husbandman 
 in the sunny fields, he sees the surly driver 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 185 
 
 lounging, whip in hand, and brow severe 
 with brief authority, no array of cunning 
 arguments can ever avail with him against 
 the witness of that moment's deep disgust. 
 Once clothed in flesh, the mystery of wrong 
 haunts the memory forever. 
 
 The metaphysics of evil are the anodynes 
 of the conscience, but the vision of tyranny 
 lights a flame in the soul, before which 
 doubts and opinions are as flax in the fire. 
 And by the vision of tyranny, I do not mean 
 the spectacle of what are usually called the 
 " horrors of slavery." I have never seen in 
 any slave country much positive physical 
 suffering, and I saw less in Cuba than I have 
 seen in Carolina. The " frightful sights " of 
 miy country are not easily to be seen by 
 the casual traveller. How many strangers 
 can honestly say that they ever saw as much 
 misery in London or in Paris, as they have 
 seen within an easy walk of their own 
 homes ? The sight of that which is usual, 
 calm, and unimpassioned in the relations of 
 the slave and the master, is itself the deep- 
 est " horror of slavery," to a lover of free- 
 16* 
 
186 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 dom. How much more appalling than this 
 or that detail of crime, is the perfect uncon- 
 sciousness with which the literature and the 
 art of antiquity reveal the secular riot of 
 the senses ! And thus, in a land of slavery, 
 it is the master's good-natured, unquestioning 
 superiority, the slave's natural, unconstrained 
 servility, which most shock the best instincts 
 of manhood, and like the mere sight of the 
 silent cannon and the ranged soldiery of 
 insolent authority bearding unarmed right, 
 rouse while they sadden the heart. 
 
 Slavery on parade is just as repulsive to 
 every thoughtful lover of the rights of man 
 as is slavery in undress. It does not better 
 the impression of the institution, that its 
 victims appear to us sleek, fat, and gay. 
 How does it affect our judgment of the 
 nature and tendency of military life, to hear 
 that General Jones visited the quarters of 
 the men, "tasted their soup," and pro- 
 nounced it excellent, and that the soldiers 
 expressed themselves entirely satisfied with 
 their condition? The London Board of 
 Health have observed that complaints never 
 
PICTURES OP CUBA. 187 
 
 come from the inhabitants themselves of the 
 dirtiest, vilest, and most squalid dwellings. 
 There can be no doubt that the praetorians 
 of a Jung Bahadoor, or a Napoleon, would 
 favor us with eulogistic views of despotic 
 government. Just so the bulk of slaves, 
 like the bulk of men everywhere, resign 
 themselves to the inevitable limitations of 
 their lot, and those of them who find favor 
 with their masters are very likely to con- 
 ceive exalted notions of their state. But 
 as in the case of the denizens of filthy Wap- 
 ping and close St. Giles's, though they may 
 neither feel nor proclaim the depth of their 
 own wretchedness, yet nature protests against 
 the outrageous wrong, in the brand of ugli- 
 ness and sin which she sets upon their faces 
 and their forms, and in the sudden declama- 
 tion of the pestilence ; so in the case of 
 slavery, though the slaves themselves should 
 find no fault, the eternal laws are vindicated 
 in the baseness of the slave character, and 
 in the sluggish chill that smites the life- 
 blood of society. 
 
 Every person who believes that man 
 
188 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 was made for self-government, and who 
 wishes to see the world about him flourish- 
 ing mainly in the characters of his fellow- 
 men, must look with utter loathing upon the 
 system which severs the social nerves of 
 feeling and of thought, and condemns the 
 vast main body of society to a movement 
 aimless, soulless, and mechanical. And this 
 loathing if it be sincere, will find a voice. 
 Slavery is everybody's business. It must 
 be attended to thoughtfully and reasonably, 
 like all other business, but the safety and 
 hope of mankind are lodged in the freedom 
 and force of private opinion, and the true 
 spirit of a Christian civilization makes every 
 man a missionary, to contend in his way and 
 measure, against every wrong which he sees 
 and feels in a world full of wrongs. Sancho 
 Panzas abound, with small hearts set upon 
 eventual Baratarias, but however common 
 the folly of Don Quixote still may be, his 
 nobility of mind and the unselfish devotion 
 of Christian knight-errantry, do not grow 
 like wild flowers. Whatever tends to en- 
 courage their culture, must give delight to 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 189 
 
 all, but to those who think that Jesus, when 
 he said, a Ye all are brethren," meant u Mind 
 your own business." Such must seek their 
 ideal of human society in savage New 
 Guinea, rather than in philanthropic New 
 England. 
 
 It was my fortune to see in Cuba perhaps 
 the mildest form of agricultural slavery. 
 Among the slave-holders of my acquaintance 
 are .numbered some of my most valued 
 friends, men of candor and of character, 
 with whom one could speak as unreservedly 
 on the subject of slavery, as with high- 
 minded officers on the subject of war. Un- 
 der their auspices I saw the system in its 
 most favorable aspects. Moreover, the Span- 
 ish slave laws rather resemble those of the 
 East than those of America. There is a 
 master too, above the masters in Cuba, and 
 though the supreme authority is exerted less 
 to benefit the slaves than to oppress the 
 slave-holders, still there are circumstances of 
 great superiority in the condition of the 
 Cuban over that of the American slave. 
 The American slave has no hope but that 
 
190 GAN-EPEN. 
 
 of which man cannot deprive him, the hope 
 of immortality. His earthly destiny is 
 taken completely out of his own hands. 
 He has no majority, and like a child or a 
 beast, must look to receive from another his 
 good or evil fortune, without an effort on 
 his part. The Cuban slave is protected by 
 the law in the enjoyment of a certain 
 amount of property, and may apply his 
 earnings to the purchase of his own liberty. 
 An authoritative arbitration may settle his 
 value, on his own appeal, and so soon as he 
 shall accumulate fifty dollars, his master is 
 obliged to accept that sum as an instalment 
 of the slave's price which buys for him a pro- 
 portionate command of his time, and in the 
 event of his sale to another owner before he 
 has accomplished his liberty, shall be carried 
 to his credit. I have seen slaves who were 
 free for five or six days out of the seven, and 
 would soon emancipate themselves entirely.* 
 
 * The large proportion of free negroes, (for they compose 
 nearly one sixth of the population,) is a standing witness to the 
 advantages enjoyed by the African race in Cuba. Moreover, the 
 free blacks and mulattoes enjoy privileges which would not be 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA, 191 
 
 The domestic relations of the Cuban slaves 
 are also protected by the law, and the great 
 immorality which exists among them, is a 
 consequence of their own unrestrained sav- 
 age instincts, and of the debasing example 
 of the lower whites, rather than of any such 
 tyranny as that which is too truly painted 
 in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Cuban law, too, 
 forbids the infliction of more than twenty-five 
 lashes (!) and the master who maltreats his 
 slave, is compelled, as in Turkey, to sell him. 
 The mildness of the climate is in favor of 
 the Cuban negro. And on the great estates, 
 the slave quarters, the baracones, are usually 
 as neat and well arranged as on the best, the 
 exceptional plantations of the South. The 
 baracon is generally divided into separate 
 domiciles which are about as large as an 
 average Welsh cottage, and are rarely so 
 dirty as the homes of the paradise of conso- 
 nants. To the baracon a hospital is always 
 attached, often under the charge of some 
 
 granted them for an instant, in the American slave States. They 
 are enrolled in the militia, and some of them have just been 
 called into active service. 
 
192 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 African Sangrado, skilled in leeching and 
 bleeding, and in the compounding of " snake- 
 butter,"* and other astonishing specifics, but 
 always superintended by a physician who 
 visits the estate once or twice a week, or 
 even oftener, according to its size. The 
 older women, exempted from harder labor, 
 (for Cuba does not traffic much, like New 
 Orleans, in second hand muscles) take care 
 of the children in a great nursery. The 
 children are not often numerous, for the 
 growth of the slave population in Cuba is 
 sadly checked by the influence of the slave- 
 trade, which keeps up an alarming prepon- 
 derance of the male sex. 
 
 The greatest severity of toil is endured 
 
 * " Snake-butter," extracted chiefly from the map, the largest 
 snake in the island, is considered a specific for the rheumatism. 
 St. Patrick seems to have visited Cuba also, though he contented 
 himself there with converting the snakes. None of them are 
 venomous in the slightest degree. Indeed, excepting the taran- 
 tula and the scorpion, neither of which is half so bad as its repu- 
 tation, Cuba has no dangerous creatures, even among the insects. 
 The skin of the majo, which sometimes grows to the length of 
 eight or ten feet, when tanned, makes a very pretty leather. 
 Of such skins the fierce Aztecs used to make their " wild war- 
 drums." For modern men of milder manners, they furnish the 
 neatest of slippers. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 19o 
 
 by the slaves, who in small bands of three 
 or four men, denied even such savage sem- 
 blance of family life as the great estates 
 afford, are worked upon the small tobacco- 
 farms, by owners whose poverty of means, 
 and love of luxury make them utterly in- 
 human. Under the moonlight, as under 
 the sunlight, these hapless wretches, with 
 little rest and no comfort, must plant and 
 tend and gather the pleasant poisonous 
 weed. From that so famous "tobacco of 
 the Vuelta Abajo," a cunning alchemist 
 might draw secrets more fatal than its 
 hidden nicotine ! 
 
 Even on the best of the great estates, 
 from November to May, the negroes are re- 
 quired to work sixteen and sometimes nine- 
 teen hours a day. They work, like sailors, 
 by watches, making the " night joint laborer 
 with the day," and startling the stranger 
 from his midnight sleep, with the prolonged 
 wailing cadences of their barbaric chants. 
 In this excessive toil both sexes bear an 
 equal part. It may, perhaps, be doubted 
 whether this particularly aggravates the 
 17 
 
194 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 case. The hoe in the fields may possibly be 
 less deadly to body and to soul, than the 
 needle in the garret. 
 
 The number of slaves in Cuba probably 
 rather exceeds than falls short of 350,000. 
 Of this number fully one half are Bozales, 
 muzzled ones, (so runs the expressive phrase,) 
 who cannot say whence they came. These 
 are the native Africans, most of whom have 
 been imported in defiance of the treaties 
 with England, and are therefore entitled to 
 their freedom. The complicity of several 
 Captain-Generals with the slave-trade is a 
 matter of notoriety in the island. The ad a 
 ministration of the honorable and high- 
 minded General Valdez, by showing how 
 much an honest executive could do to inter- 
 rupt this system of piracy, threw a heavier 
 burden of suspicion upon his successors, and 
 the innocence of General Canedo will not 
 be easily established, in the face of the fact 
 that large cargoes have been continually 
 landed along the coast during his term of 
 office. The energetic English consul has 
 occasionally succeeded in bringing a number 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 195 
 
 of newly landed slaves before the mixed 
 commission, but the slave-trade still goes on 
 profitably, and for the most part in Ameri- 
 can bottoms, sailing under the American 
 flag. The excitement which is sometimes 
 created in America by the news that a Brit- 
 ish cruiser has boarded an American vessel 
 in the Cuban waters, would, doubtless, be 
 considerably mitigated, did our patriotism 
 reflect upon the disgraceful way on which 
 our so-called " national honor " is constantly 
 made to serve as a shield for the pirates of 
 the slave-trade. The frequent advertise- 
 ment in the Havana journals, of " a new, 
 handsome, and swift American barque, en- 
 tirely ready for sea," has a meaning easy to 
 be mastered. The demand for these vessels 
 is permanent, for after a slave-ship has dis- 
 charged her fearful cargo, she is usually 
 scuttled and sunk. The profit on victims 
 who can be sold in Cuba at from six hun- 
 dred to seventeen hundred per cent, profit 
 on their cost in Africa, amply repays the 
 great expenses of these horrible speculations. 
 The freedom of the Bozales must be es- 
 
196 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 tablished before the mixed commission. 
 This mixed commission, of English and 
 Spanish judges, sits at Havana. The " eman- 
 cipados," or slaves declared free by this com- 
 mission, are apprenticed for a term of eight 
 years in the island, at the end of which time 
 they are set free, and may be carried back 
 to Africa, or to one of the British West 
 Indies, usually to Jamaica. As the unfor- 
 tunate men are generally captives of war, 
 it would be impossible to restore them to 
 their own countries, which, in many cases, are 
 in the interior, and could only be reached 
 through the territories of their natural ene- 
 mies. We are often told that Jamaica is a 
 much worse country for the negro than 
 Cuba, but thus much is certain, that the 
 slaves stolen from the British Islands, mani- 
 fest a singular desire to return there. Sev- 
 eral instances of the sort fell under my ob- 
 servation, in one of which I had the pleasure 
 of conveying to the English consul an inti- 
 mation of the existence and wish to escape, 
 of a negro, who, with two companions, had 
 been stolen seventeen years before that 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 197 
 
 time, from a fishing boat, and had been sold 
 and resold six times, in different parts of 
 Cuba. The emancipados have been often 
 very vilely treated, those to whom they 
 were hired selling them into slavery and 
 returning their names as dead, at the end 
 of the eight years. The honorable urgency 
 of England to obtain a more faithful fulfil- 
 ment of treaty obligations in regard to these 
 men, is the only foundation, so far as I could 
 learn, for the reports that England is trying 
 to excite Spain to an imitation of her own 
 democratic policy of emancipation. 
 
 The numerous body of Bozales, emancipados 
 and slaves, constitutes as may be supposed, 
 a nucleus of insurrection, which, in the 
 event of any general commotion, must prove 
 formidable. It would be rash to say that 
 the whites entertain any positive fear of the 
 negro population. The frightful atrocities 
 which attended the suppression of the 
 alleged insurrectionary attempt of 1843-44, 
 must be attributed to the rapacity of the 
 Spanish fiscals and low officers of the crown, 
 rather than to any panic among the Creoles. 
 17* 
 
198 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Though the black population of Cuba out- 
 numbers the white, the superiority of the 
 latter in habits of command and resources 
 of organization can hardly, under ordinary 
 circumstances, be shaken. In Hayti, the 
 blacks were thirty times more numerous 
 than the whites, but the servile war even 
 there, only attained importance through the 
 conflict between the royalist and republican 
 whites. 
 
 It is not, however, to be denied that the 
 wisest Cubans look with extreme dislike 
 upon the constant introduction of new 
 hordes of savages into the island. The 
 Junta de Fomento, a quasi-representative 
 body, now placed like every thing else, un- 
 der the control of the Captain-General, has 
 not hesitated to recommend, very urgently, 
 the introduction of white and Indian colo- 
 nists. Many coolies from China have been 
 already dispersed, over the island, and they 
 seem to give general satisfaction to the 
 planters who employ them. Miss Bremer 
 has described at length, the savage games 
 and dances of the negroes, the spirit and 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 199 
 
 zest of which are due entirely to the fresh 
 vivacity of barbarian feeling continually 
 infused into the negro population. The 
 mirth of " El Dia de los Reyes/' the " Day 
 of Kings/' has a strong flavor of the horri- 
 ble. The No Popery dances of Hugh and 
 Dennis, were Lydian measures when com- 
 pared with the canni balesque contortions of 
 that hideous carnival. 
 
 Among the Bozales, the tribe of Lucumis 
 is especially noticeable. The Lucumis are 
 not only numerous; they are the fiercest 
 and most warlike of the coast tribes, the 
 Caribs of Africa. Their pride is such that 
 they will rarely endure punishment. 
 
 Dr. Wurdeman tells us of a planter, who, 
 having purchased a gang of newly-landed 
 Lucumis, thought fit to punish one of them. 
 Soon afterwards he was summoned to the 
 help of his overseer, and found the Lucumis 
 dancing their war-dance around a tree on 
 which the Lucumi who had been punished, 
 was hanging, having taken refuge from 
 what he thought disgrace, in suicide. Mat- 
 ters looked very threatening. But the 
 
200 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 planter, with great tact, ordered the dead 
 body to be respectfully taken down, placed 
 upon a bier and borne to the baracon. He 
 followed it himself, hat in hand. The Lu- 
 cumis stared, fell into the procession, and 
 marched on in silence. At the baracon, the 
 planter addressed them in praise of the 
 brave Lucumi nation, and of that particular 
 hero there before them, assured them they 
 should be kindly treated, but must be gov- 
 erned, and then requested them to bury 
 their friend with all the honors of their 
 savage wake. This proceeding quite concil- 
 iated them, and the planter had little more 
 trouble with them. The Lucumis are not 
 merely proud and fierce. They are very 
 intelligent. I have seen them intrusted 
 with the care of important departments in 
 the complicated sugar machinery, and a 
 friend of mine in Havana, an admirable 
 chess-player, was badly beaten at his favor- 
 ite game, by a Lucumi, who had been but 
 four years in the island, and yet spoke Span- 
 ish as well as most of the Creole negroes. 
 And the Lucumis are by no means the 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 201 
 
 only fierce and intelligent savages imported 
 into Cuba. Whether this constant ground 
 swell into the sluggish waters of slavery is 
 favorable or not to the safety of the vessel 
 that floats on such a tide, my readers will 
 decide for themselves. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " They, too, have made verses, which have been published in books." 
 
 Tacitus de Orat. 
 
 I might go on with that fiery eulogist of 
 " Young Home," Aper, to add, " and which 
 are no better than the verses of Cicero/' 
 did I not remember how much pleasure I 
 took, long ago, in discussing certain " apples 
 of gold in pictures of silver," which came 
 to my hands as the first-fruits of the " gar- 
 den of delight." Doubtless the majority 
 of my readers will be surprised to hear that 
 Cuba has any literature at all. And when 
 we consider how completely the island has 
 been enveloped in the colonial system of a 
 government, which has always acted upon 
 the resolution frankly proclaimed by Charles 
 IV. when he suppressed the University of 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 203 
 
 Maracaybo, "that information should not 
 become general in America ; " and how ex- 
 clusively the energies of the Creole mind 
 have been directed to what is called practi- 
 cal life, that is, to eating, drinking, sleeping, 
 and trafficking, it certainly is astonishing 
 that Cuba should have produced any writers 
 capable of interesting mankind seriously by 
 the vigor, dignity, and beauty of their 
 works. Yet such, as I shall hope to show, 
 is the case. 
 
 I know how apt we are to overestimate 
 any thing which has any flavor of " caviare." 
 Superiorities of all sorts are sad snares. 
 " Those oysters we had at Venice," have 
 spoiled the appetite of many an untravelled 
 friend, who was beginning to be ignorantly 
 jubilant over the choicest products of 
 Prince's Bay. And the oldest thoughts, 
 clothed in a foreign tongue, affect us like a 
 familiar landscape seen through stained win- 
 dows. But after all deductions made, and 
 judging them in the most impartial spirit, 
 some of the Cuban authors deserve, it seems 
 to me, this high praise, that they have been 
 
204 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 thinkers and artists in a land indifferent to- 
 thought and to art, true lovers of liberty in 
 an atmosphere of oppression. Particularly 
 must this praise be awarded to three men, 
 Heredia, Milanes, and Placido. These all 
 are poets, and the best productions of the 
 Cuban mind must be sought in the field of 
 poetry. The poet is everywhere the morn- 
 ing star of mind, in whose light tyrants see 
 only another ornament of the night they 
 love, while the oppressed hail the harbinger 
 of day. No prose-writer could ever have 
 secured the publication in Cuba of the 
 thoughts and feelings which her poets have 
 given to the world. The government in 
 every case, it is true, has awakened, sooner 
 or later, to recognize the patriot in the min- 
 strel, and there are few of the noteworthy 
 bards of Cuba upon whom the hand of au- 
 thority has not fallen more or less heavily. 
 The works of most of these writers are now 
 contraband at home, and cannot easily be 
 procured. Formerly, there were several 
 journals and magazines in the island, which 
 used to be enriched with melodious sedition, 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 205 
 
 but the censors of the press have suc- 
 ceeded in purifying even the " Poet's Cor- 
 ner." The " Revista de la Habana," the first 
 number of which appeared during my stay 
 in the island, is as decorously dull as the 
 " Giornale di Roma " itself. 
 
 A brief sketch of the character and tem- 
 per of the poets whose names I have men- 
 tioned, will show the reader how much there 
 is to be repressed in the impulses of the 
 higher class of Cuban minds. I select these 
 writers, not merely because they seem to 
 me the first in point of literary excellence, 
 but because they sprang from three different 
 classes of the city population. 
 
 Jose Maria Heredia was a gentleman, by 
 birth and position. The son of a patriot, 
 whose patriotism made him an exile, Here- 
 dia, born in 1803, at Santiago de Cuba, was 
 carried in his childhood to Mexico. There, 
 at the age of sixteen, he lost his father, and, 
 returning to Havana, was admitted in 1823, 
 to practice as an advocate, by the Supreme 
 Court at Puerto Principe. His opinions and 
 conduct soon attracted the suspicions of the 
 18 
 
206 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 government, and in November of the same 
 year, he was obliged to fly to America. He 
 published the first collection of his poems, 
 at New York, in 1825. In 1826, he was 
 invited to Mexico, where he was at once 
 appointed assistant secretary of State, soon 
 afterwards became a judge of the Supreme 
 Court, and was sent to the senate of the 
 republic. He died at Mexico in the prime 
 of life, May 6, 1839. An edition of his 
 works was published at Toluca in Mexico, 
 in 1832, and another at Barcelona, the Mar- 
 seilles of Spain, in 1840. As a man, Here- 
 dia is honorably remembered for the gener- 
 osity, integrity, and amiability of his char- 
 acter ; as a poet, the dignity of his thought, 
 the harmony of his versification, and the 
 graces of his language well support his claim 
 to the high rank which his countrymen have 
 assigned to him; as a patriot, his love of 
 country seems to have been not less wise 
 than fervent. The following lines from one 
 of his unpublished poems, "The Exile's 
 Hymn," vibrate with the genuine thrill of 
 poetic feeling, and with the manliest passion. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 207 
 
 Fair land of Cuba ! on thy shores are seen, 
 
 Life's far extremes of noble and of mean ; 
 
 The world of sense in matchless beauty dressed, 
 
 And nameless horrors hid within thy breast. 
 
 Ordained of Heaven the fairest flower of earth, 
 
 False to thy gifts, and reckless of thy birth ! 
 
 The tyrant's clamor, and the slave's sad cry, 
 
 With the sharp lash in insolent reply, — 
 
 Such are the sounds that echo on thy plains, 
 
 While virtue faints, and vice unblushing reigns. 
 
 Rise, and to power a daring heart oppose ! 
 
 Confront with death these worse than deathlike woes. 
 
 Unfailing valor chains the flying fate ; 
 
 Who dares to die shall win the conqueror's state ! 
 
 We, too, can leave a glory and a name 
 
 Our children's children shall not blush to claim; 
 
 To the far future let us turn our eyes, 
 
 And up to God's still unpolluted skies ! 
 
 Better to bare the breast, and undismayed 
 
 Meet the sharp vengeance of the hostile blade, 
 
 Than on the couch of helpless grief to lie, 
 
 And in one death a thousand deaths to die. 
 
 Fearest thou blood ? O, better, in the strife, 
 
 From patriot wounds to pour the gushing life, 
 
 Than let it creep inglorious through the veins 
 
 Benumbed by sin, and agony, and chains ! 
 
 What hast thou, Cuban ? Life itself resign, — 
 
 Thy very grave is insecurely thine ! 
 
 Thy blood, thy treasure, poured like tropic rain 
 
 From tyrant hands to feed the soil of Spain. 
 
 If it be truth, that nations still must bear 
 
 The crushing yoke, the wasting fetters wear, — 
 
 If to the people this be Heaven's decree, 
 
 To clasp their shame, nor struggle to be free, 
 
 From truth so base my heart indignant turns, 
 
 With freedom's frenzy all my spirit burns, — 
 
208 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 That rage which ruled the Roman's soul of fire, 
 And filled thy heart, Columbia's patriot sire ! 
 Cuba ! thou still shalt rise, as pure, as bright, 
 As thy free air, — as full of living light ; 
 Free as the waves that foam around thy strands, 
 Kissing thy shores, and curling o'er thy sands ! 
 
 Heredia's fine poem of Niagara must be 
 known to many of our readers through Mr. 
 Bryant's excellent version. It has always 
 seemed to me one of the very best utter- 
 ances ever called forth by a scene, whose 
 praise, " expressive silence " best can muse. 
 Even upon the brink of the mighty cata- 
 ract, the palm-trees of Cuba sigh through 
 the wanderer's thought, whispering sadly of 
 the grievances and misery that flourish in 
 their shade. The " Season of the Northers," 
 inspires some natural and musical verses, in 
 which the dreams of the patriot mingle 
 still, with the blest reality of the husband's 
 happy love. 
 
 My happy land ! thou favored land of God, 
 Where rest his mildest looks, his kindliest smiles, 
 Oh ! not forever from thy soil beloved, 
 May cruel fortune tear me ! but be thine 
 The latest light that on these eyes shall shine ! 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 209 
 
 How sweet, dear love, to listen to the rain, 
 That patters softly on our humble home ; 
 To hear the wild winds whistling o'er the plain, 
 And the deep booming of the ocean's roar, 
 Where shattering surges lash the distant shore ! 
 
 There, by thy side, on softest couch reclined, 
 My throbbing lyre shall rest upon thy knees, 
 And my glad heart shall sing the boundless peace, 
 Of thy fair soul, the light of thy dear face, 
 My happy lot, and God's surpassing grace. 
 
 Clearly Heredia was a man to be seriously 
 " discouraged " by any despotic government. 
 Milanes, born in a more humble rank of life, 
 and bound by his occupation to the mercan- 
 tile class, was not less warm and sincere in 
 his patriotism than Heredia, But the tem- 
 per of his mind was melancholy, and his 
 sweetest strains are full of a sad, mystical 
 fervor. His brother says of him in the pre- 
 face to an edition of his works, published at 
 Havana, that he "was inspired with the 
 noble enthusiasm of accomplishing a great 
 social mission, and possessed of faith and 
 hope, selected, for the subject of his songs, 
 moral or philosophical ideas." He is indeed 
 a very plaintive poet, and in reading his 
 verses we are haunted with a continual in- 
 18* 
 
210 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 definite sound of wailing. Certainly there 
 is not much in the condition of Cuba which 
 can inspire her bards with pride and pleas- 
 ure. But the intense melancholy of Mi- 
 lanes has a tone of personal suffering, like 
 that which pervades the sonnets of Camoens, 
 or the complaints of Tasso. The gloomy 
 tendencies of the temperament of Milanes, 
 aggravated by private troubles, and still 
 more, no doubt, by the consciousness of his 
 impotence to redress those wrongs of his 
 country which he so keenly felt, finally over- 
 powered his reason. 
 
 The story of this young man, the purity 
 of whose character, the elevation of whose 
 aims, and the delicacy of whose genius have 
 secured for him a real and beneficent influ- 
 ence in his own country, sad as it is, is by 
 no means the saddest to be found in the 
 brief literary history of Cuba. A darker 
 tragedy closed the career of the most inter- 
 esting of the Cuban poets. Gabriel de la 
 Concepcion Valdes, (not unknown in Amer- 
 ica by his nom de plume of Placido,) was a 
 mulatto of Matanzas, a comb-maker by trade, 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 211 
 
 whose education was of the very rudest 
 kind, a Pariah of society, bearing in his very 
 form and color the ineffaceable badge of dis- 
 grace and servitude. Yet this man tri- 
 umphed over all the obstacles in his way, 
 and after establishing a high reputation as a 
 poet, set the seal to his fame by a dignified 
 and heroic death. In 1844, particulars of 
 an intended insurrection of the colored pop- 
 ulation, came from various sources to the 
 ears of the supreme authority in Cuba, and 
 seemed to demand investigation. Every 
 tning like a representative body having 
 been abolished by Tacon, there was no ap- 
 parent way open for consulting with the 
 Creoles on the subject. The Captain-Gen- 
 eral coolly resolved to settle the business by 
 military commissions, and immediately let 
 loose upon the island a horde of inferior 
 officials, who proceeded to collect testimony, 
 and to inflict punishment, after the fashion 
 of the " process of the Templars," or " Jef- 
 frey's Campaign." Numbers of free persons 
 of color, and of slaves, died under the lash* 
 
 * The British Commissioner, Kennedy, says three thousand. 
 
212 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 many others were summarily shot, and such 
 infamous excesses were committed by the 
 fiscals as beggar belief. The victims of this 
 dreadful persecution were stripped of their 
 property, and the crown officers (with a few 
 honorable exceptions,) soon converted their 
 system of terror into a grand financial ex- 
 pedient. White Creoles, and foreigners, were 
 not exempted from this pestilence of power, 
 and the planters were compelled to ransom 
 their slaves at great cost, from the hands of 
 a tribunal which arrested without accusation, 
 and condemned without inquiry. The con- 
 spicuous position of Placido among his peo- 
 ple, marked him out as an early victim. It 
 is not improbable that Placido may have 
 been concerned in the conspiracy which 
 there is really reason to suppose was then 
 organizing, and though he contemptuously 
 denied many of the charges brought against 
 him, he does not appear to have shrunk 
 from maintaining the right of the negroes 
 to rise against oppression. He was found 
 guilty and sentenced to be shot. He be- 
 haved in prison with great propriety and 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 213 
 
 composure, and won the admiration of the 
 numbers who visited him. In the intervals 
 of his preparation for death, he composed 
 some of his finest poems, particularly his 
 " Prayer to God." Can we deny the honors 
 of genius to the Cuban mulatto who could so 
 feel and speak ? 
 
 O God of love unbounded ! Lord supreme ! 
 
 In overwhelming grief, to thee I fly ; 
 
 Rending this veil of hateful calumny, 
 0, let thine arm of might my fame redeem ! 
 
 Wipe thou this foul disgrace from off my brow, 
 
 With which the world hath sought to stamp it now. 
 
 Thou King of kings, my fathers' God and mine, 
 Thou only art my sure and strong defence ; 
 The polar snows, the tropic fires intense, 
 
 The shaded sea, the air, the light, are thine ; 
 The life of leaves, the water's changeful tide, 
 All things are thine, and by thy will abide. 
 
 Thou art all power ; all life from thee goes forth, 
 And fails or flows obedient to thy breath ; 
 Without thee, all is naught, in endless death 
 
 All nature sinks, forlorn and nothing worth. 
 Yet even the void obeys thee, and from naught, 
 By thy dread word, the living man was wrought. 
 
 Merciful God ! how should I thee deceive 1 
 
 Let thy eternal wisdom search my soul ! 
 
 Bowed down to earth by falsehood's base control, 
 Her stainless wings not now the air may cleave. 
 
 Send forth thine hosts of truth, and set her free ! 
 
 Stay thou, Lord ! the oppressor's victory. 
 
214 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Forbid it, Lord, by that most free outpouring 
 Of thine own precious blood for every brother 
 Of our lost race, and by thy Holy Mother, 
 
 So full of grief, so loving, so adoring, 
 
 Who, clothed in sorrow, followed thee afar, 
 "Weeping thy death like a declining star. 
 
 But if this lot thy love ordains to me, — 
 
 To yield to foes most cruel and unjust, 
 
 To die, and leave my poor and senseless dust 
 The scoff and sport of their weak enmity, — 
 
 Speak, thou ! and then thy purposes fulfil ; 
 
 Lord of my life, work thou thy perfect will ! 
 
 A letter which Placido sent to his wife on 
 the night before his death, is worthy of a 
 place beside the more famous one which 
 Padilla wrote in circumstances so similar. 
 And thus the despised laborer bade farewell 
 to his mother. 
 
 The appointed lot has come upon me, mother, 
 
 The mournful ending of my years of strife ; 
 
 This changing world I leave, and to another, 
 
 In blood and terror, goes my spirit's life. 
 
 But thou, grief-smitten, cease thy mortal weeping, 
 
 And let thy soul her wonted peace regain ; 
 
 I fall for right, and thoughts of thee are sweeping 
 
 Across my lyre, to wake its dying strain, — 
 
 A strain of joy and gladness, free, unfailing, 
 
 All-glorious and holy, pure, divine, 
 
 And innocent, unconscious as the wailing 
 
 I uttered at my birth ; and I resign, 
 
 Even now, my life ; even now, descending slowly, 
 
 Faith's mantle folds me to my slumbers holy. 
 
 Mother, farewell ! God keep thee, and for ever ! 
 
PICTUKES OF CUBA. 215 
 
 On the morning of June 28, Placido was 
 led, with nineteen others, to the Plaza of 
 Matanzas. He passed to his death, like an 
 Indian chief, chanting for a death song his 
 own noble "Prayer." He was to suffer 
 first, stepped into the square, knelt with un- 
 bandaged eyes, and gave the signal to the 
 soldiers. When the smoke rolled away, it 
 was seen that he had only been wounded, 
 and had fallen in agony to the ground. A 
 murmur of pity and horror ran through the 
 crowd; but Placido slowly rising to his 
 knees, drew up his form proudly, and cried, 
 in a broken voice, " Farewell, world ! ever 
 pitiless to me ! Fire ! here I " raising his 
 hand to his temples. 
 
 Possibly this dark history may not yet 
 have rounded to its close. Men like Tous- 
 saint and Placido, fall not obscurely nor un- 
 avenged. Their friends are 
 
 exultations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 
 
 A Spanish traveller in Cuba, Salas y Qui- 
 roga, says of Placido's poetical merits, "I 
 
216 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 know no American poet, Heredia included, 
 who approaches him in genius, in polish, in 
 dignity." The same critic, after analyzing 
 Placido's poetry, writes thus : — 
 
 " It is truly wonderful to hear a poet, esteemed humble by the 
 society in which he lives, addi-essing himself to the Queen-Re- 
 gent of Spain in language like this : — 
 
 Some one there is, who, with his golden lyre, 
 
 Worthier thy sovereign ear, shall chant 
 
 To the vibrations of its jewelled strings 
 
 More grateful songs, perchance, but not more free ! 
 
 And these lines are equally bold and daring : — 
 
 And beats not thy heart, too 1 Therefore will I, 
 While the pure dawn her snowy canopy 
 
 Hangs on the orient sky, 
 Bid my rejoicing hymns to God on high, 
 Upborne by gentlest breezes, swiftly fly : — 
 Let them who fear be dumb, for not of them am I ! 
 If thou with pleasure hearest, let thy prayers 
 Swift seek the Eternal, that my songs may rise 
 Even to his throne, and then on Cuba fall, 
 Impearled in blessings from the echoing skies ! 
 
 " It was important for me to paint the poetic character of Pla- 
 cido, to bring into clearer and clearer relief his astonishing merits. 
 I fear, nevertheless, that my readers will not sufficiently appre- 
 ciate the true condition of a miserable laborer in the island of 
 Cuba, and only by such an appreciation can they fully estimate 
 the great value of the lines I have quoted. The vigor of Pla- 
 cido's versification corresponds to that of his thought. What 
 poet, however loftily elevated by earthly glory, would not rejoice 
 to be the author of the four following verses, so full and pol- 
 ished, to which our language has few superior ? 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 217 
 
 De gozo enajenados mis sentidos, 
 
 Fije mi vista en las serenas ondas, 
 
 Y vi las ninfas, revolver gallardas, 
 
 Las rubias hebras de sus Arenzas blondas. 
 
 " Almost all the versification of this poet is of this manly na- 
 ture ; his sonnets to Napoleon, to Christ, and to William Tell, 
 are three jewels of our literature ; the conclusion of the last is a 
 noble cry of indignation : — 
 
 That even the insensate elements 
 
 Fling back the despot's ashes from their breasts. 
 
 It is equally surprising to see the facility with which he manages 
 the tenderest themes, and some of his compositions touch the 
 deepest emotions of the soul. My task would be endless, should 
 I attempt to extract all the beauties of these poems ; for if there 
 are very few that can be quoted in full, there is not one unre- 
 lieved by the light of genius. Their faults arise from the poet's 
 want of instruction, their inspiration is celestial " 
 
 And this man, be it once more remembered, 
 was a person, whom many an American 
 lady would have thought sufficiently hon- 
 ored with a place behind her chair at the 
 dinner-table, where he might have listened 
 to edifying conversation, about the insulted 
 genius of Burns, and the prejudices of a 
 snobbish nobility ! 
 
 I must not dwell here upon the names 
 
 and works of Cuban poets of various merit, 
 
 numerous enough to furnish some future Dr. 
 
 Griswold with ample matter for one grand 
 
 19 
 
218 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 division of the a Poets and Poetry of Span- 
 ish America ! " It is enough if I have 
 clearly indicated the existence, in various 
 ranks of Cuban civic society, of nobler 
 thoughts and higher aims, than the press, or 
 the prevailing character of social life reveal. 
 The chief interest of the literature of Cuba 
 is indeed derived from the proofs which it 
 affords us, that the seeds of liberal thought 
 and pure desires, which the winds and waves 
 have somehow wafted even to those block- 
 aded shores, have germinated, and are bear- 
 ing fruit. As works of art, the poems which 
 have fallen under my notice, cannot, in gen- 
 eral, be highly commended. The literature 
 of Spain, since the days of Cervantes and 
 Calcleron, has been fertile chiefly in bad 
 models. The vast majority of the later 
 Spanish poets oscillate between the trivial 
 and the dreary. The Spanish Pegasus has 
 been broken to a tyrannous manege. The 
 influence of a system of versification, not 
 much less absurd than the rules of the mas- 
 ' ter singers, is felt by the most careless reader, 
 in the indescribable tediousness of Spanish 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 219 
 
 poetry. The study of the French Romanti- 
 cists, (for France is the true teacher of the 
 enlightened Cubans,) has indeed somewhat 
 relieved the Cuban poets from this thral- 
 dom. While Yolney and De Tracy have 
 tauerht the Cubans materialism in morals 
 and philosophy, Victor Hugo and Lamar tine 
 have disclosed to them new secrets of poet- 
 ical composition. But the prevailing tem- 
 per of the tropics is hostile to the highest 
 forms of poetry. In that eternal summer 
 the voice grows languid as the mind. tt Out 
 of their few warm days," says Landor, a the 
 English, if the produce is not wine and oil, 
 gather song, and garner sensibility." Out 
 of their unchanging heats and splendors, the 
 sons of the tropics gather tears and garner 
 sentimentalism. The Cuban muse rarely 
 tries the flights of the " Theban eagle ; " as 
 rarely, the soaring rapture of the English 
 lark ; she sits in the heavy foliage of her 
 delicious home, and there "her sad song 
 mourneth well," or ill, as the case may be. 
 
 The names of the Cuban poets, those 
 rich, sonorous Spanish names, which you 
 
220 C^AN-EDEN. 
 
 cannot utter without an unconscious infla- 
 tion of the voice, and an involuntary wave 
 of the hand, tempt one to expatiate upon 
 this subject. But I shall forbear. The 
 titles of some of their works will convey a 
 sufficient idea, to the judicious reader, of the 
 school to which they should be referred. 
 "Leaves of My Soul," "Heart-Beats/' "Whirl- 
 winds of the Tropics/' "Passion-Flowers/' 
 such are the baptismal phrases in which 
 the Cubans delight. Gleams of manlv as- 
 piration are not wanting in these writings, 
 nor the comfortable light of a true respect 
 for what is truest in womanhood. Milanes 
 is not alone in the faith, that 
 
 Still in woman's heart the true Eden lingers, 
 Bearing fruit of Loving, Feeling, and Belief. 
 
 Vivid descriptions of natural scenery, much 
 in the glowing Portuguese manner, illumin- 
 ate their pages. Imaginative, these poets 
 rarely are. With that quality, none of them 
 was so richly gifted as Placido. His images 
 are often pathetic in their originality ; as, 
 for instance, when he compares the sudden 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 221 
 
 passing of the moon from behind the cliffs 
 into the open starlit sky, to the advent into 
 the ball-room, of a beautiful woman, su- 
 perbly dressed,, and wearing a Cashmere 
 shawl ! Quaintly barbaric this image seems, 
 yet how charged it is with the sad history 
 of gorgeous dreams and warm visions, pris- 
 oned in the poet-brain of an outcast and a 
 Pariah ! 
 
 The prose literature of Cuba may be 
 quickly reviewed. "How can we speak, 
 who have no freedom to will," cried Jacques 
 de Molay to his judges, "for with the loss 
 of freedom to will, man loses every thing, 
 honor, courage, eloquence I" No plea of 
 "poetic license/ , avails the Cuban whose 
 words are not tagged with rhymes. The 
 Havana bookstores contain nothing to indi- 
 cate that the " University of Havana " has 
 borne any more fruit than El Azhar, the 
 Oxford of the Arabs. The periodicals are 
 trashy in the extreme, the newspaper press is, 
 of course, entirely in the hands of Spaniards. 
 
 In the feidlieton, the ladies are generally 
 furnished with a translation of some French 
 19* 
 
222 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 novel. The editorials are often able, but 
 the body of the paper is filled with very 
 much such matter as one finds in the col- 
 urns of the " newspapers " which young la- 
 dies at boarding-schools sometimes concoct. 
 The current news of the island is only to 
 be picked up at hearsay in Havana, and 
 chiefly on the covered quay at the mouth 
 of the harbor, where every morning, u the 
 merchants most do congregate." The old 
 Spaniards are very chary of their commu- 
 nications, and the Creole hatred of the gov- 
 ernment acts like a mordant, biting in the 
 blackest shades of every picture. 
 
 While I was at Havana, the garrotte was 
 several times erected at the Punta, and 
 twice for the punishment of political offend- 
 ers. The newspapers made no allusion to 
 any of these events. In one instance, I 
 happened to be dining on board a man-of- 
 war, where an officer in the company gave 
 us the history of one of the political prison- 
 ers, (both of whom, by the way, were re- 
 prieved at the place of execution, and sent 
 to the galleys at Ceuta,) telling us that his 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 223 
 
 name was Garcia, and that he was a misera- 
 ble old creature, at whose house two of the 
 Lopez party, badly wounded, had been left. 
 He treated them very well, but they died. 
 Shortly afterwards the news of Las Pozas 
 reached him, and our Cuban FalstafF in- 
 stantly produced his dead pirates, alleging 
 that he had slain them, "for Queen and 
 Country." He was rewarded with a deco- 
 ration, but the truth coming to light after a 
 while, Senor Garcia was compromised, and 
 finally brought into the shadow of death. 
 A day or two after the reprieve, there ap- 
 peared in the Diario, what purported to be 
 a sort of Jubilate from the wife of one Garcia, 
 who ought to have suffered something, but 
 had been spared by the Queen's mercy. No 
 one, who had not in some surreptitious way 
 heard of Garcia and his story, could possibly 
 have comprehended this singular communi- 
 cation. Two mutinies of troops, at least, 
 accompanied with fusillades, came to my 
 knowledge, one at Villa Clara, and the other 
 at Santiago de Cuba. They were only 
 darkly glanced at, in leaders laudatory of 
 
224 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 the " firm justice of Spain," and contemptu- 
 ous of the scandal, which something not 
 stated, might cause in " a neighboring na- 
 tion." The Cuban press is indeed no tran- 
 script of the Cuban, but only of the 
 " Peninsular " world. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " Concini. Mais ce qui me rapporte le plus, c'est de tirer les horo- 
 scopes et de dire la bonne aventure. Isab. Vraiment ! vous savez 
 dire l'avenir ? " A. De Vigny. (La Marechale d'Ancre.) 
 
 These are many Concinis in our councils 
 of State, gipsy politicians, who become pro- 
 phetic as soon as their palms have been 
 crossed with the silver of office. And these 
 men have so satisfied the people that the An- 
 tilles also are our inheritance, that it may be 
 dangerous to hint a doubt on that subject. 
 It seems to be settled that Spain is at best, 
 but a tenant for years in her colony. Is it 
 rumored that Spain thinks of abolishing sla- 
 very in Cuba ? Instantly the heir cries out, 
 "Spain shall by no means commit waste. 
 Nothing is so dear to me as my slaves, pres- 
 ent and to come ! " The continent clamors 
 for its « manifest destiny." What chance is 
 
226 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 there of a hearing, for a few deprecatory 
 voices? Were it even conceivable that a 
 minority could be in the right, yet wisdom 
 exclaims with Moliere, " Qu'est ce que la 
 raison avec un filet de voix, contre une 
 gueule comme celle-la ? " It is a rash 
 thing to disturb that comfortable slumber 
 of a decided opinion, which majorities 
 love. The laws of Menu protected the 
 quiet of Brahmins, by pouring hot oil into 
 the ears of anybody who ventured to offer 
 them so much as a hint, on any moral 01 
 religious subject. Only less severe, are the 
 punishments ordained for those who dare 
 question the political creed of a majority. 
 Wiser in their generation, are those writers 
 who, whether historical or prophetic, as 
 Montaigne observes. " make it their trade to 
 turn all events to our advantage, in spite of 
 sense and reason, and omit every considera- 
 tion in the least degree ticklish ! " 
 
 Spain is tyrannical, Cuba is rich, America 
 is ravenously republican. From these prop- 
 ositions it has been deduced that Cuba must 
 soon become a member of our great and 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 227 
 
 glorious confederacy. Admitting the prop- 
 ositions, I feel bound to question the conse- 
 quence. And this is the method of my 
 croaking. 
 
 The Spanish rule in Cuba is undoubtedly 
 hateful. The immense majority of the 
 Creoles as undoubtedly hate it. And neither 
 the cause nor the effect is of recent origin. 
 Why then is Cuba still a Spanish colony, 
 and why does it bear the title of " Ever 
 Faithful ? " It is long, since the legend on 
 the Spanish coins, calling the sovereign 
 " prosperous in both worlds," became an idle 
 lie. The Peninsula succumbed to France, 
 and was saved by England. One after 
 another, the provinces of America tore them- 
 selves from the desperate clutch of the 
 mother country. 
 
 Cuba and Porto Rico alone were left to 
 the crown. And for this reason. The Creoles 
 of these islands preferred their colonial de- 
 pendence, to such independence as that of 
 San Domingo. It was doubtless disagreeable 
 enough to the hidalgos of the mainland, to 
 coalesce, in any degree, with the peons of 
 
228 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 Mexico or Peru ! The Cubans could not, 
 for a moment, endure a mulatto republic ; 
 they knew that in the event of a war they 
 must secure the negroes as auxiliaries, or 
 meet them as antagonists, and they preferred 
 quiet to either of these alternatives. Unfit- 
 ted as I believe the great body of the Cuban 
 Creoles to be, for the conflict or the triumph 
 of liberty, Cuba has never lacked men 
 enough, fully equal in courage and charac- 
 ter to the best and bravest patriots of Span- 
 ish America, whose influence might have 
 roused their fellow-countrymen to a success- 
 ful revolt. But slave-holding Cuba dares 
 not attempt her freedom. 
 
 "Yet if Cuba cannot be revolutionized 
 from within, may she not be revolutionized 
 from without?" ^e hear constantly of 
 "armies of deliverance" on the way to 
 those fair shores, and it has been not indis- 
 tinctly hinted, that the strong arm of the 
 American government may be stretched out 
 to aid the oppressed islanders. If Spain 
 could be driven suddenly from all her foot- 
 holds in Cuba, by a grand coup de main 7 and 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 229 
 
 the places of the Spanish troops could be 
 instantly filled by an equal force of Ameri- 
 can soldiery, regular or irregular, it is cer- 
 tainly possible that " order " might be main- 
 tained in the new republic. But those who 
 count upon an easy and immediate victory 
 over Spain, reckon, it is to be feared, with- 
 out their hosts. The Spanish troops in 
 Cuba are now more than respectable in 
 numbers, and though they are probably in- 
 ferior, in many important attributes, to our 
 own, still they come of a brave stock, and 
 of a people particularly famous for fighting 
 behind stone walls. Spain, too, has often 
 shown that she is never so much to be feared 
 as when contending in a desperate cause. 
 Nations as well as individuals have their in- 
 sanities of honor, and nothing is more for- 
 midable than the tenacious ferocity which 
 clings to a falling cause, and never counts 
 the cost. Our own country is, at this time, 
 most lamentably weak upon the water, and 
 we shall do well to remember that the noble 
 sea-coasts of Spain swarm with poor, and 
 bold, and skilful sailors, ready for the service 
 20 
 
230 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 of speculative adventurers in the old world 
 and the new. Glib orators at Tammany 
 Hall may find proposals for the conquest of 
 Cuba sweet in the mouth, but they will 
 prove bitter in the digestion. And when 
 the Spaniard shall have been driven from 
 the island, are we to expect a pleasant en- 
 joyment of our prize ? How will the patri- 
 archal communities of the South relish the 
 society of a state charged with permanent 
 and organized negro insurrection ? We need 
 but turn to the history of the Maroons in 
 Jamaica, or to the bloodier and more recent 
 career of the revolted Indians in republican 
 Central America, if we would form some 
 notion of the state into which Cuba would 
 be plunged by a servile war, Cuba, whose 
 negroes are to be counted by hundreds of 
 thousands, and whose vast wildernesses are 
 not less deadly to the white man, than the 
 everglades of Florida. 
 
 A violent transfer of Cuba from the hands 
 of Spain to those of America, would be at- 
 tended with the most disastrous effects upon 
 her prosperity. The tobacco crop might 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 231 
 
 perhaps be increased, but the sugar interest 
 would be sadly shaken, and those canny 
 economists who read the fate of nations in 
 the Sibylline leaves of the ledger, can see 
 no good flowing from such a consummation, 
 to any American State, unless, perhaps, to 
 Louisiana, which might rejoice over the pros- 
 tration of her greatest rival. The political 
 and moral influence of a Cuban common- 
 wealth, exasperated by the most debasing 
 of wars, certainly would not tend to dissi- 
 pate the clouds which now overhang the 
 nation. 
 
 Will the conquest of Cuba be attempted ? 
 There can be no doubt that slavery, despair- 
 ing of her northern frontiers, has long been 
 looking to Spanish and Portuguese America 
 as her future domain, into which the power 
 of the Union must be made to force her 
 way.* The accidental defeat of her designs 
 
 * The charming naivete with which Lieut. Herndon, an officer 
 of the American navy, officially exploring- the valley of the Am- 
 azon, talks of the fitness of the soil of Brazil for slave labor, 
 (Report, pp. 268, 281, 341,) is but one evidence among many, of 
 this fact, and of the kindred fact, proofs of which are by no 
 means so hard to find as we are slow to find them, that slavery 
 
232 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 upon California, has naturally enough stim- 
 ulated her zeal in other directions. Mexico, 
 Central America, the valley of the Amazon, 
 lie along the horizon of her hopes. Cuba 
 and Hayti are near at hand. But the South 
 sadly overrates the resources of repression 
 at her command, and as sadly underrates 
 the explosive forces sleeping in the bosom 
 of Cuba, in anticipating a real accession to 
 her power from the conquest of that island. 
 "May not Cuba, however, be fairly pur- 
 chased ? " The wealthy states of America 
 may perhaps be won over by their persua- 
 sive southern sisters, to furnish the funds for 
 such a purchase, and the present tyrannical 
 and corrupt government of Spain, may pos- 
 
 has thoroughly identified itself with American policy and the 
 American name. It is truly humiliating for a traveller, to see 
 how generally it is taken for granted, that an American must be 
 friendly to slavery, and to the prejudices that grow out of it. I 
 happened once, at a country-house in Cuba, to be called upon 
 for my opinion, in a controversy as to the propriety of admitting 
 negroes into railway carriages and coaches. When I said that 
 it seemed to me neither republican nor well-bred to object to the 
 presence, in a public conveyance, of any decent, and well-be- 
 haved person of whatever color ; " Ah ! " cried a lady in the 
 company, " I thought you did not look like an American, and 
 now I see that you must be an Englishman ! " 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 233 
 
 sibly be seduced into the sale. But the 
 antecedents and the temper of Spain make 
 such a transaction in the last degree 
 unlikely. And if it were quietly accom- 
 plished, would the clouds be thereby raised 
 from the future of Cuba ? To rear in that 
 fair island a slave-holding republic, is only 
 to postpone, not to avert her ruin. 
 
 The " Orators of the Human Race," may 
 consider it their professional duty to deny 
 this. They may tell us that the annexation 
 of Cuba will bring with it newspapers, and 
 the ballot-box, and representation for the 
 whites, and they may point us to the States 
 of the South, where freedom and slavery 
 have so long lived on amicable terms, and 
 the building of the commonwealth has been 
 safe, while thunderstorm after thunderstorm 
 of thought has overswept the world. It is 
 hard to reason with " Orators of the Human 
 Race," but harder to believe that buildings 
 can be safe, whose lightning rods end on the 
 roof ! 
 
 Clouds and darkness overshadow the fu- 
 
234 GAN-EDEN. 
 
 ture of fair and fertile Cuba. Physical 
 geography, and the nineteenth century have 
 not quite done away with the old mysteries 
 of doubt and doom. 
 
 The finest regions of the earth lie still 
 unblest by happy human life. The loveliest 
 climates of the conquered world, are breathed 
 and have been breathed, for ages past, by 
 despots and by slaves. The broadest rivers 
 bear least upon their bosoms. These are 
 ways of God which even our curious cen- 
 tury shall not find out. 
 
 While the chances of life cheat individual 
 hope, shall we wonder at and deny the re- 
 tributions that overtake national sins and 
 follies ? Do we see, in individual men, the 
 permitted waste of noblest powers, the ty- 
 ranny of vice, the dissolution of life, and 
 shall we be startled out of measure, at the 
 mystery of national wrong and national deg- 
 radation ? Within the narrowest circle of 
 human interests and affections, lie wrecks 
 and deserts, melancholy as those that deform 
 the shores of the oceans and of the ages. 
 
PICTURES OF CUBA. 235 
 
 The same faith which brightens our private 
 experience of good and ill, alone can cheer 
 the stern realities and dark expectancies of 
 the world's wider life. 
 
L'ENVOI. 
 
 I. 
 
 The young breath of the northern spring is lifting, 
 The airy curtains drooping round my head; 
 Small argosies of summer, wrecked and drifting, 
 Sink through the seas of moonlight round me spread. 
 
 II. 
 
 Fair Odalisque upon the purple lying, 
 Luxurious daughter of the South, farewell ! 
 Upon my car the palm-tree's passionate sighing, 
 Fades, with the summer sea's voluptuous swell. 
 
 III. 
 
 Our years decay. Our souls sail onward, teeming 
 With hopes and wishes unfulfilled below; 
 Oh, North of life ! Oh, South of gorgeous dreaming ! 
 Whence shall the undeceiving breezes blow 1 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., 
 May 25, 1854. 
 
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