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Gift of
Prof. Fred. W. AVilliams
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Cuban Sketches

JAMES W. STEELE

" In a free country there is much clamor, with little suffering ; in a. despotic state
there is little complaint, but much grievance." Carnot.
" Woe to the centuries without Quixotes ! Nothing remains to them but Sancho
Panzas." A. DE Gasparin.

NEW YORK
P. PUTNAM'S SONS
27 « 29 WEST 23D STREET
I88I

Copyright by
G, P. PUTNAM'S SONS

uvkV-

)3.
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Press of
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York

JOHN JAMES INGALLS

PREFACE.
A large number of men and women have gone forth to
Cuba with diaries, and have, after some days or weeks,
returned again, bringing their notes with them. Some
of these excursions have borne fruit in books, accurate
and entertaining, and otherwise, in their descriptions of
life among our next-door neighbors. This small volume
is one of these, excepting from the points of resemblance
the unimportant items that the author never made any
memoranda, did not visit the country for the purpose of
describing it, wished himself somewhere else while there,
and while he staid was chiefly occupied in collecting —
and distributing — the princely income of an United States
Consul. So it comes that the following chapters are the recol
lections and conclusions, in brief, of some years' residence ;
the results of having slept in the Cuban bed, and eaten
at the Cuban table, and of having been much sought
after by the tropical mosquito.
Among their many imperfections that of a seeming in
completeness may seem the most prominent. That the
details of the sketch are left to be filled in by the reader,
5

VI PREFACE.
and something is to be inferred from a few facts dis
tinctly stated, I am aware, but I am not sure it is a fault.
It is not a guide-book. Many of the statements made
will be politely doubted, or denied in toto by those who
have themselves lived in Cuba. For, to every clime and
kindred there are lovers, haters, and the totally indiffer
ent ;— those who see nothing, and those who see and infer
too much. I have met persons who had never seen the
island, to whom I have been happy to concede the fact
that they knew more about it than I did. I am, indeed,
less satisfied with the form and matter of these sketches
than I should be had I written them some years ago, for
then I had quite made up my mind about the country
and its inhabitants, and with entire satisfaction to myself.
I have, however, so far revised some of my yearling con
clusions as to have quite forgotten the several items of
them. These sketches are but brief and perhaps rambling
statements of unavoidable conclusions formed by per
sonal experiences, and simply attempt to describe the
Cuba of to-day or of last year. In their composition I have
not made use of a book of any kind, and have not at
tempted any statistical or commercial information. Believ
ing that the men and women, the fishermen, farmers, and
shopkeepers, the streets they have made, and the houses
they live in, the horses, dogs, and donkeys, tell the true
story of a country, I have written of them, and having
reference to no special locality have set down nothing I
do not myself believe.

PREFACE. Vll
To conclude, I believe that a certain essential in narra
tives of this kind is oftener overlooked than remarked.
That is, that nothing is strange in the customs of a people
save by comparison. The Spaniard in the United States
may, and does, find as many things to remark as strange,
ridiculous, uncivilized, inconsistent, immoral, etc., as an
American may in Cuba or in Spain. All that follows in
this little volume might as well have been named, " Cuba
as it appears to an American."

CONTENTS

CRAPTER I. GOING THERE ....
II. FIRST IMPRESSIONS ,
III. IN GENERAL ....
IV. THE CUBAN AT HOME
V. THE SPANIARD IN CUBA
VI. LA SENORITA
VII. SPANISH RULE IN CUBA ,
VIIL WAR-TIME AMONG THE NON-COMBATANTS
IX. CUBAN TOILERS , . , ,
X. THF. CUBAN TOWN .
XI. RURAL CUBA ....
XII. TROPICAL WEATHER .
XIII. DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS .
XIV. MUNICIPAL CONVENIENCES .
XV. PASSIONS AND AMUSEMENTS
.XVI. MOTHER CHURCH
XVII. WHAT WE EAT ....
XVin. ISLAND IDEAS
XIX. THE AMERICAN IN CUBA

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12
25
33
44 57
66 77
87
102"5127
139155164173
188
197
210

CHAPTER I.
GOING THERE,
IN these days of almost universal wandering, a sea*
voyage is one of the commonest of experiences.
Thousands of men and women, and even children, every
year become acquainted with the sensations induced by
finding themselves rocking upon that vast and wander
ing waste, which is, with its deceptive smiles and shining
depths, the type of remorseless and irresponsible power.
The sailor, taken with all his peculiarities one of the
queerest of those mortals who are educated by circum
stances, is to a great extent master of the sea. The
landsman is its almost invariable victim. Even after the
first spasm — if that can be called a spasm which often
lasts a week — the pallid faces and languid bodies that
gather on deck, and sit disconsolate in the shadow of a
sail or the lee of a smoke-stack, rejoicing in the calm and
sunshine that always succeed the storm, tell plainly, the
misery endured in those narrow cabins and shelf-like beds.
Mysterious in all things, even the punishment inflicted
by the sea upon those who rashly trespass upon her
domain is a mystery ; an infirmity without an explained
cause or a proposed remedy. It passes, and people en-
dure it again and again, because it is not fatal. It has
three pronounced stages, gliding imperceptibly one into
the other. In the first the victim is afraid he will die ;

2 CUBAN SKETCHES.
in the second he does not care whether he does or not ;
and in the third he is afraid he will not die.
A landsman's acute nose is apt to detect a faint and
by no means appetizing odor about the cleanest of
steamers. If he is quite green, he sometimes asks what
causes it. Sailors, when they do not deny its existence
absolutely, and look with an amused and weather-beaten
face of pity upon the questioner, merely remark that it
is " bilge," and waddle away, and, of course, one under
stands at once all about it. This is the beginning, the
first sensation, and one of the little things longest re
membered. For the peculiar sea smell penetrates the
state-room, and saturates the clothing, and lingers be
tween the leaves of books, and reminds one of the voyage
a year after.
One is apt to enter his state-room, and look about him
the first time with a feeling very different from that with
which he inspects his room at the hotel. He knows,
without putting his thought into terms, that this narrow
chamber is going to rock and sink and slide and tip-tilt
with him for many days. It is to be his refuge at times
when he will not particularly care to be visited and con
gratulated, and when he will be content to leave the de
tails of navigation to the captain, and the bill of fare to
the steward. He is to lie there and listen to an incessant
rumble in the ship's bowels, and to the wash and splash
of the waves when they rise up and insist upon doing
the whole of the deck-washing. He is to see its floor at
all angles with the horizon, and his discarded garments
making semicircles on the leaning wall. On one side
he finds two berths, like shelves, and at the head of each
a very clean pillow. In the corner there is a miserable
little washing-stand, in and about which may sometimes

GOING THERE. 3
be found water enough to bathe his face. On the wall
there is a printed notice, which warns him, in case of
disaster, to betake himself to boat No. 2, on the star
board side. He thinks he will do well to remember this,
though a little dazed as to which side relatively " star
board " may be. He is, by a second notice, duly advised
that there are life-preservers under the bed, and is de
sired to try one on. This he sometimes does, only to be
convinced that in case of use it would be likely to drown
him. The regret at leaving a season so delicious as May in
the United States, was tempered by the thought that we
were going to a land where May could not be regretted ;
to the home of eternal spring-time, where it would be im
possible to feel the loss of that compensation which every
Northerner feels is due him after " the hardest winter
since 1840."
Nor were we to be taken by surprise, on arrival, by any
strangeness of the land. For I had read Robinson's red-
bound volume, and Thompson's as well, and had glanced
at Furguson's, each of whom, as all men know, had been
to the island and had written a book about it. I, at least,
knew where and to whom I was going ; I even imparted
to others considerable information upon the subject be
fore leaving. ,
We had, in effect, chartered the steamer, for there
were, besides ourselves, only one lady passenger, half a
dozen Cubans, and a baby. It rained dismally, and I
remember the unhappy feeling with which, as the dreary
evening fell, I heard the rumbling of the screw, and saw
the shore fade in mist and darkness, with all the sea be
fore us, and a long residence in an untried country,
beneath an ugly red-and-yellow flag, in prospect. There

4 CUBAN SKETCHES.
is a regret at leaving the land where we were born, not
inconsiderable at the moment of departure, and so
deepening as time passes that it becomes strong enough
at last to bring even criminals back to sentence and
punishment. I believe nobody has ever quite satisfactorily painted
sea pictures. I am told that the most successful efforts to
represent a wave on canvas have only been applauded
because a little more like it than other similar attempts
have been. To cause a careering mass of water to stand
poised in white-and-green upon canvas, is much like
carving a stone cataract. Nor has anybody ever suc
ceeded in describing the sea. She presents the spectacle
of an ever-changing monotony. With the limited ex
perience of a few voyages, one may remember her so
placid that the vast surface appears like oil, and the rim
of the horizon and the verge of the sky are indistinguish
able. In an hour the decks will be untenable, even for
sailors, and successive waves wash them from end to end.
Then is the landsman's winter of discontent. Being a
landsman, such times dwell in my memory. Then, after
rolling off of the cabin sofas, passengers are often con
tent to lie on the floor, as helpless and indifferent as
basketless potatoes. Sometimes, during what sailors are
in the habit of calling " fine weather, sir," a sudden up
heaval of the ship's quarter will occur, as though a whale
had put her shoulder under. There are then in order
various shrieks of dismay from the female portion of the
passengers, a sudden and futile snatching at something
to hold on by on the part of everybody, and a general
tumbling of passengers, chairs, and every thing movable
to the lower side of the deck. Presently she rises slowly,
rights herself, and the regular swing, up, down, right, left.

GOING THERE. 5
begins again. But, once begun, the huge gymnastics are
apt to be overmuch repeated, and one or two of the grand
rolls are a sign for the immediate thinning out of the
deck party.
Imagine a perpetual earthquake. Fancy floors, walls,
ceilings, doors, windows, beds, and the dining-table, sway
ing and sliding, oblique and aslant, for days and weeks
without a moment's rest. Nobody would choose a resi
dence like that, yet that is what it is to be " rocked in the
cradle of the deep." It is a strange statement that after
a while you cease to be conscious of it. You become
accustomed to the ceaseless restlessness of the unstable
element upon which you pass your days. After you go
ashore the walls, windows, lamps, and doorways sway
and swing for a day or two.
Nevertheless, the laws of gravity still remain in full
force and effect. One midnight the deponent hereto
found himself, as nearly as he could tell in the darkness,
describing a parabola from the edge of the upper berth
to the further side of the state-room. When I alighted,
it was upon the edge of a trunk that had slidden to that
place on purpose. The lady who occupied the lower
berth I found located upon the same trunk, having ar
rived there just before me. By the time we were both
fairly awake, the ship was going right on, with the air of
one who was not aware that any thing unusual had hap
pened. It seemed as though something ought to be
said, and I remarked that I supposed that was one of
the old thing's lurches. The remark elicited no reply
from the dim and white-robed figure by that time in the
farthest corner of the lower shelf, and I climbed back to
my niche, longing for some means to tie myself fast.
The ladies — the two of them on board — having nothing

6 CUBAN SKETCHES.
else to do, and having formed a travelling acquaintance,
proceeded to beam upon the captain, and make that sea-
dog amiable, and to require an answer to sundry questions
of him. They used to go forward to his especial domain,
and ask him to enlighten them upon this and that topic, —
questions he had doubtless heard from the same class of
voyaging innocents hundreds of times before. He lent
them his glasses, and told them the names of the light
houses on the Florida coast, and how far it was to so-and-
so, and in four minutes, more or less, they asked him
again, having by that time forgotten. One desired to be
told what the wheel was for, and it was duly explained
to her, and she remains to this day sweetly ignorant
upon every thing connected with that or any other wheel.
The other was anxious to know how the man who turned
the wheel knew where he was going, especially in the
night, though she had doubtless been familiar with the
miracle of the mariner's compass since her school-days.
These two balanced upon their noses a pair of green
spectacles big enough for a horse, and glanced quizzically
across the vast expanse, holding them on with both hands.
After a while they would saunter away, only to return
and propound interrogatories as time grew heavy and
dulness prompted.
There were sometimes fire-drills, occurring always when
no one was thinking of fire.* The ladies grew accustomed
to such things, and hardly gave so much as a passing
glance at the hurrying men. But one day there was a
fire, or the beginning of one, and the bell rang in earnest.
And these two sat complacently sewing on the after-deck,
and when, some time afterward they were told of it, they
tried to look interested, and said "indeed?" But there
* The steamer " City of New York " was afterward burned at sea.

GOING THERE. 7
would have been two very much less complacent ladies
had they known it in time.
For myself, being of the unfortunate gender that is not
permitted to ask questions, I used to wander about the
vessel at all hours, and amuse myself by drawing my own
conclusions. Sometimes at night I stood at the door of
the pilot-house, long after everybody else was asleep. It
was a comfortable place, with its floor of colored woods
and its leathern upholstery. The main feature was the
wheel ; the central point of interest in all the ship as well.
It was of polished mahogany, brass-mounted and shin
ing, and it interested me to reflect that from the moment
the vessel made the first turn of her screw until she
dropped her huge anchor at the end of her voyage, day
and night, in calm and storm, there was always a brawny
hand upon the spokes, always an eye upon the little
floating disc hanging before it. At night it was very
dark and silent there, with only one slanting lance of
light streaming out of the gloom upon the binnacle, and
the single lantern high aloft before the topmast, a sign
to passing wanderers. The great hull plunged forward
into the foam and darkness, swinging her tapering bows
above the surge, her decks forsaken, her saloons dark and
deserted, her passengers asleep, upon a course as uner
ring as the flight of a bird of passage. Forward upon
the bows stood always a silent figure one would hardly
have seen at first, gazing out upon the dim sea.
The lonesomest of all things are the light-houses. I
wondered if ever I could become so tired of the vanity
of all mundane things, so disgusted with my kind, so
glad of quiet and peace, so enamored of melancholy, as
to desire to go and keep a light. They are desolate even
in sunshine. The tall white tower is an isolated monu-

8 CUBAN SKETCHES.
ment, with changeless surroundings of rock and sand and
sea. Some of those on the Florida coast stand in the
sea, and there can come no change to the lifeless mo
notony save when the winds of a stormy coast fling the
sea against them with a force that must make them reel
upon their sure foundations. The night, I suppose, must
be the light-keeper's lively time. He must have a sense
of the responsibility of his position, as he sees his beacon
shine afar, slowly closing a blood-red eye, and suddenly
opening a white one upon leagues of dancing waves, and
knows that his light is noted from the deck of every
phantom wanderer that flits by in the gloom. I am
acquainted with a considerable number of persons for
whose sake I would that I had all the lights on the
Florida coast in my gift. They would take them or
nothing, and I would gladly bestow them.
Finally, the time came for us to cross the Gulf Stream.
It was almost the last thing we did on that voyage. It
reminds me that you cannot go into a company of in
telligent people anywhere, and ask a question about this
celebrated current just for something to say, but that
three or four of them will be ready to tell you all about
it, while the rest look pityingly at the spectacle of ignor
ance exhibited by you in these days of free schools and
cheap " institutes." Everybody knows all about it. But
having been through and over and across it a great many
times, I have really grown unsettled in my opinions with
regard to it. The boundaries of its ink-blue waters are
so well defined that one can see the stem in the sea and
the stern in the stream. It is deep, warm, and of vaster
volume than all the rivers combined. Where does it
have its source, and what mysterious gravitation causes
its ceaseless and mighty flow ? Why do its tepid waters

GOING THERE, 9
refuse to mingle with the others? Whence does it come,
and whither go ? What causes it ? It was explained
when it was first discovered, and has been quite well un
derstood ever since. The explanations have all been
.specially constructed to suit the fact. But, it spite of it
all, it leaves the impression that it is an unsolved mystery.
We know what it does, and the good it does, and what
an illustration it is of the wisdom, goodness, and perpet
ual care of the Creator. I have no theories to advance
upon the subject. I only know it is there, a gigantic
warming apparatus for one-half of the civilized world.
We used sometimes to discuss among ourselves, as we
passed by, what it was that Florida was probably made
for, judging from her coasts. That it was hardly intended
for the use of man was a point conceded, and none of us
possessed an acquaintance with natural history and the
habits of animals accurate enough to precisely say which
of them ought to be happiest there. Possession seems to
be divided at present between the graceful and pensive
pelican and the sportive turtle. Sailors are generally of
opinion that the coast, whereas it was once a good place
for the wrecking industry, is now an admirable one for
light-houses. There was a passenger who seemed to have more sub
tropical experience than the rest of us. He told us of
"hummock" and "pine-barren," which two classes of land
left no room for any other save pure sand. He stated that
the oldest town in the United States was there, though
it seemed not to have grown much for a century or so.
It seemed as though this man was prejudiced, and it
finally transpired that he had once lived in this balmy
region, and been the proprietor of an orange-grove. It
is said to be an enticing and romantic branch of agricul-

IO CUBAN SKETCHES.
ture, but our fellow-passenger did not seem to be im
pressed with that view of it. He said it did not pay.
But it is a historic region. Ponce de Leon set the illus
trious example of not finding what he went there after, a
long time ago, and Billy Bowlegs held his own against
the whole force of the United States for fourteen years.
And now the Yankees go there, partly for health and
partly for material for illustrated articles for magazines.
About this time it began to be remarked that it was
growing warm, with a peculiar warmth unlike that of the
land we had left. The captain said, in answer to the
questions of his two tormentors, that in less than twenty-
four hours we should see Havana. Turtles, said to be
asleep, became frequent alongside, and sometimes the
hideous dorsal fin of a shark cut the calm water in huge
circles. One night, a night as soft and sweet as though
storms had never blown there, they told us that the light
that was at intervals glaring fiercely at us, and then sud
denly looking away as though it turned a living head, was
the last glimpse we should get of any thing pertaining to
the coast of the United States. Cuba lay just beyond
the horizon. We crept into our respective shelves for
the last time, and one of us at least went to sleep with a
vague apprehension of what was yet to come. It was
eight years ago. Numerous voyages have made it an
accustomed thing. The scenes that were then only in
apprehension have long since become old and familiar.
But the sense of homelessness which that night suggested
was never lessened. The recurring desire to make the
last voyage, and know it was the last, has been accom
plished. Amid the pleasant lights of home, these wan
derings over familiar waters are reminiscences only. I do
not want to go any more. To abandon the scenes the

GOING THERE. II
succeeding pages will describe as accurately as it is
within me to describe them, I performed a heroic
act. I have demonstrated, to the end that the characters
of a long-suffering class may be vindicated in me, that
the witty remark of the statesman, that " they seldom
die and never resign," was only a witticism. I determined
to do it, though at the cost of a monumental act of self-
abnegation. I did resign, and the sea shall know me no
more. I am not of the aquatic kind, and am glad our
country is a big one to wander over with a steady footing,
at no greater risks than those attending collisions, mis
placed rails, bad bridges, and other unimportant and
common accidents of that class.

CHAPTER II.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
EVERY man has an idea, more or less vivid, of
lands he has never seen. It is an image stored
in some corner of the imagination, adequate and satisfac
tory for all his personal uses. Whether it be the desolate
hills of Greenland, or the valley of the Amazon, he has
no difficulty in presenting it to himself without so much
as an effort. If he never sees the original, the picture will
remain with him as long as he lives. It was painted
without design, by a process of which he was not even
conscious. No one else has a similar one. He cannot
easily describe it, or sketch a copy, or give it away, and,
finally, does not know he is possessed of such a work of
art. The imaginary landscape comes mysteriously and
stays persistently, the only specimen of a thing that is in
accurate, deceptive, and frequently the opposite of all it
purports to be, and that yet serves its owner a useful
purpose always, and is practically as good as a photo
graph. It would have been better for me if I had never pos
sessed such a picture of the Island of Cuba. But I had
grouped the West Indies under a general head, tropical,
beautiful, and there was an orange tree, a field of sugar
cane, and a group of negroes each with a hoe in his
hand, with a thatched cabin as a centre. It is possible

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 1 3
the scene sometimes glowed with a lurid sky, or trembled
with a cyclone. There was probably a background ; — a
scene of trailing vines, monstrous masses of vegetation,
vast spreads of foliage, hanging moss, brilliant birds, and
vivid bloom. Perhaps, to finish the piece, there was a
serpent, a colony of monkeys, and an alligator. This is
the natural tropical picture, and I still maintain that it is
what Cuba should be and is not. There was never a
place more destructive of a well-drawn geographical im
agining. I had lather have my baseless vision back
again if I could, than keep the genuine one I have got in
its place.
It is true, however, that notwithstanding our precon
ceived ideas of a country, we are always at a loss to know
what to expect when we find ourselves nearing the shores
we have had upon our minds for some days as the object
of a voyage. I had been reading books about Cuba, and
while I could hardly point out the precise pages whereby
I was deceived, I was, nevertheless, much misled by them.
They may have stated, for instance, that the breezes from
these happy shores were laden with the odors of spices
far out at sea. I remember that, because what I did
smell when I came near enough, was not by any means
spicy, though of volume and pungency sufBcient to jus
tify the statement that it could be smelled at sea. I also
looked to see rising out ofthe deep, a land that, whatever
its special features might be, would give the approaching
voyager an impression of greenness and shade, the almost
inevitable features of a winterless land. I hoped for
more from the blue hills I saw upon the horizon, un
til, coming nearer, I knew how bare they were of forest,
how bald the naked ridges seemed, what a sad brownish-
green the slopes had, I did not then know that even

14 CUBAN SKETCHES.
this sickly greenness was not grass, but only a hideous
chaparral. But the palms marked the place as different from all
I had known before. They stood in groups on the hills,
and in lines and avenues on the lower ground, and gave
the whole an especial and romantic character. They
were associated in my mind with stories of regions
strange to me and to all my ancestors. They had dec
orated my pictures of Palestine and Syria and the Nile,
and were in the background of all I ever imagined of
Olivet and Jerusalem. I thought of the oriental tent
pitched under the palm tree as its natural place, and their
plumed heads fringing the scant streams of thirsty lands,
and making lovely and enticing the sterile regions through
which wandered the fathers of the human race. No dis
illusion of actual experience has so far deprived the palm
of its associations in my mind. As it was the first feature
of Cuba to entice me, so it will be the last to leave my
thoughts in my recollections of her. The gray-white
trunks in ranks and rows, the stately and plumed heads
of the veterans of the roadside and the field, will present
theniselves first to me in all my retrospections. Every
country, doubtless, has these emblematic features that
dwell long in the memory of the sojourner. The maguey
of Mexico ; the endless barrens of cactus and mezquite
of Arrzona ; the rocky ledges and sage-covered hills of
the great plains ; and the long green swells of Kansas,
with their vales and tree-fringes lying between.
The first glimpse of the island was a contradiction of
all I expected to see ; a couple of knobs of land, as bald
as a monk's pate each one, called the " Pan of the Matan-
zas," because the twin hills are imagined to resemble in
shape those little brown, crusty, cold biscuits they know

FIRS T IMPRESSIONS. 1 5
as bread in Cuba. By the time, however, you have duly
enquired about them of the captain, as it is every pas
senger's duty to do, you are very near " the finest harbor
in the world," and find various other things to call away
your attention. No one entering the narrow strait of
green water into the harbor of Havana for the first time,
realizes the striking peculiarity of the situation that oc
curs to him very prominently afterward. You are only
ninety miles from the winking light-houses and sandy
shore of Florida, but you have entered dominions as
foreign, as different, as full of strangeness, as though you
had sailed around the world to find them.
A low-lying city of parti-colored architecture, whose
walls are red, blue, green, and yellow, lies before you ; a
city in which there is not a chimney, a cooking-stove, a
hotel-elevator, a four-story house, or a sidewalk three feet
wide, and yet a city of near three hundred thousand
souls. I may as well proceed from this, and remark also
that there are no glass windows, and not a night-latch
in the place, nor a hair mattress or a carpeted roora.
When, after a bustle and strife and competitive swearing
unparalleled, you get your baggage down over the side
by a line, and yourself and your belongings ashore in a
crazy and comfortless boat, you wonder when you are
to emerge from the maze of what you take to be alleys
and by-ways and enter the open street. But you finally
discover that these alleys and by-ways are the streets,
and deemed magnificent avenues.
It is not far from your own country, it is true, but it is
not near enough for anybody to have learned your lan
guage. Nor can you discover any American modes and
fashions. When I went to Cuba, " peg-top " pantaloons
were as things lost and forgotten in the mists of years

i6

CUBAN SKETCHES.

with us, and we had just begun in the important matter
of long-tailed coats. I remember how queer seemed a
whole city-full of people wearing pantaloons that would
have held many pairs of such legs as seemed common,
and coats that displayed in the cut of their skirts a scant
conception by the tailor of the geography of an impor
tant part of the wearer's person.
Strange-looking people I found them at first sight, and
I lived many months in the island before I became accus
tomed to their faces. To the last I could not tell whether
to regard it as a good or bad type of physiognomy, though
I concluded in a short time that they were at least not
the faces of friends and brethren of the Yankee, or of
kindred and bosom friends of mine. Turning from faces
to figures I am equally puzzled. The whites of Cuba are
Spaniards of old Spain, or Cubans, sons of the soil, very
much differing from each other in person and political
belief, yet alike in the general characteristics which come
of blood and race. It is not a great matter, but if any
stranger can finally become accustomed to the long,
brown, skinny hands of the Cuban, with the nails of ex
traordinary length, trimmed to points like birds' claws,
he will succeed better than I ever did in paying no regard
to small things.
Among first impressions, I can mention no more strik
ing item than that disagreeable feature of a human habi
tation, an iron-barred window. You see them on every
hand. They are all so. Jails and lunatic asylums are
seldom visited except from necessity, or a very peculiar
kind of curiosity. They are avoided whenever it is pos
sible to do so, if only from a feeling that one may come
to them soon enough any way. We are at least not
liable to enter them unawares, and imagine we are in a

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 1 7
friend's house or a hotel. But here every window is
barred from top to bottom. It is so in the dwelling, the
mercantile house, the hotel, everywhere. The paneless,
cheerless openings to the sunshine and air seem the
homeliest necessities of tropical life, and only habit after
a while relieves you of the thought, as you awake in the
night and see the bars of your cage between you and the
outer light, " I wonder what I am in for?"
One who is of the most modern of peoples just across
the Gulf Stream, now finds himself in the midst of those
genuine Bourbons, "who never learn, and never forget."
In an hour you may see more ancient things in the com
mon uses of life than you will in Cairo. You will ob
serve that the horses are all little and the carts the big
gest and clumsiest of their kind. You will be compelled
to remark that while the sidewalks are little ledges of
stone upon which two men cannot walk together, every
third man you meet is carrying something, and the fat
local washwoman comes bearing down upon you with a
basket four feet wide upon her head. You will be led to
imagine that there is, by comparison with this, a spruce
and green newness hanging about the oldest town you
ever saw in the United States. You fancy that you see
here a beginning, far advanced, of the process by which
the cities of the ancient world were gradually covered
up by layers and strata of refuse, so that they have to
be dug down to by the searcher after antiquities.
All this you may quietly cogitate upon until you see
your first volante. Then you will realize that you are
not in any of the ancient places, and that this is very
Cuba. For the volante is the sole and only Cuban in
vention. It is a cross between a mule-litter and a wheel
barrow- run backward, and possesses the great advantages

1 8 CUBAN SKETCHES.
of both. It is not patented, or especially protected by
law, or forbidden to be exported. There are no societies,
though there ought to be, for its gradual suppression as
a horse-killer. The remarkable feature of it is attenua
tion. It is a vehicular review, a procession on wheels.
It may be said to be several moments in passing a given
point. In many streets it cannot be turned for want of
room, and timely decrees have been issued by a paternal
government forbidding the attempt. When there is a
purpose in the mind of the driver to turn a certain
corner, he drives past, stops, wheels majestically on a
pivot, and grazes opposite walls with the wheels and his
horse's nose.
If you do not carefully bear in mind that you are still
hanging upon the verge of America, you can easily imag
ine yourself in Seville or Granada. There are number
less houses that to all appearances belong there. There
are huge doorways flanked by pillars and surmounted
by ponderous lintels, and opening upon open, rambling,
paved courts. There are open arches, and balconies, and
an indescribable air of decay about old-fashioned and
crumbling decorations. Besides, it is a profoundly dirty
city. A variety of costumes, which, though they may
have little of the picturesque about them, and attract
only a passing glance, yet serve to give emphasis to the
strangeness. There are stockingless feet thrust into
canvas shoes, remarkable trousers, blue and scarlet caps,
and things suggestive of the Spanish peasant in all his
Catalonian and Biscayan varieties. There are the
rounded shoulders, wide chest, and bandy legs the labor
ing Spaniard is apt to have, and which place him in
strong contrast with the generally storky and attenuated
Cuban. ' On all sides you hear a language very plenti-

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. I9
fully interspersed with lusty carambas, or something a
shade wickeder, and songs that may be like those sung
by the Troubadours, and, if they are, you are glad the
Troubadours are dead. The mules, knee-sprung and
toiling, are decorated with bells and tassels, and, as is
evident, get more thwacks than oats, after the Spanish
fashion. As you wander around with a feeling creeping over
you that you wish you had not come, you encounter odd
bits of ancient and battered wall, with the remains of
bartizan and parapet still visible in decay, overgrown
with ivy and ferns. A long time ago, these were the
defense and pride of the walled city of Havana. There
is a huge and dismantled church now used as a custom
house store-room, but in its day a pretentious structure,
desecrated and rendered unfit for holy uses by having
been used as a stable by the irreverent English during
their occupation of the place. There is another church,
where you may see a small, square stone tablet in the
wall, behind which are said to lie the bones of Colum
bus. There is an unsatisfactory uncertainty about it
now, as well as a church quarrel, for they have found
the tomb and cofifin of the renowned explorer in another
church, upon the island where he died and was buried.
However, it is of no consequence. He was the man,
wherever he lies, who, with the genius and daring to
cross an unknown sea and discover a world, with a
crew of sailors who believed they were constantly in
danger of getting too near the edge and sliding off, yet
died without knowing what he had discovered, or even
that Cuba was an island. Cervantes and Columbus are
the two great men of Spain. There is a statue of one
or the other, or both, in every plaza on the island. Yet

20 CUBAN SKETCHES.
one of them was not a Spaniard, and the final resting-
place of the renowned author of " Don Quixote " no
man knoweth.
It is impossible to avoid the impression, during the
first few days, that the weather will surely change. Per
haps you left the snow falling beautifully in the North,
and a nor'easter howling, and it is difficult to realize
that any thing so cutting and powerful can have no
effect except within limits that seem disffroportionately
small. There is something new, and not agreeable, in
your sense of the untimely heat, and the air that never
felt the purifying touch of frost seems to you not quite
fit for human breathing. The smells assail you, and,
while they are not of Araby, yet seem to have no defi
nite place in any catalogue known to you. In the huge
and bare apartment in the hotel in which you are to
begin to learn to sleep in a Cuban bed, you gaze despair
ingly into trunks that contain nothing you can wear.
Your boots hurt you, and seem to make a noise like the
tramp of a troop of cavalry over a bridge as you pace
the tiled floors. In your total unlikeness and inhability
to all your surroundings, it requires some degree of self-
respect not to begin to regard yourself as a monstrosity.
You have the idea that the natives are thinking you a
fair specimen from the barbarous hordes of the Arctic
Circle. The cries of the street fall upon your ear, and
cause within you a disagreeable apprehension that some
one is being murdered. But it is only one who sells eggs.
In the morning the breakfast hour eludes you, not be
cause it is too early, but because it is too late. Ere it
comes you feel that you are likely to starve. This is at
first. Afterward it becomes, like all other breakfasts with
reference to your habits, quite early enough. When at

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 21
last the hour arrives, very nearly a New York lunch-time,
there is nothing to eat that ever you ate before. The cut-
glass before you contains oil, and the first dish you taste,
and every one that comes after, has been cooked in the
same. There is also, perchance, a spice of the delightful
vegetable that, as is said, every thing Spanish smells of.
There is no butter, and will never be ; no fresh bread, and
none of any kind that can be bitten or broken. There is
no use in trying to change any of these things, for it is
not a country favorable to reforms. " Pies an' cakes,"
and the long array of things that suffer under the easy
and general accusation of being " indigestible " in the
United States, and are long since incorporated in the
phraseology of your country, are here unknown. A few
years' residence in Cuba will give you " a realizing sense "
of how good they are. But, meantime, you may partially
comfort yourself with the idea that people are quite as
bilious here as elsewhere, notwithstanding the depriva
tion. One essential item of daily comfort and necessity will
call for the pilgrim's serious attention ere he is safely
through the first twenty-four hours, — the bed he is to sleep
in. There are those who like it, but I regard it, and have
always, as too thin. It is merely a sheet of linen stretched
as tight as a drum-head between four posts. A couple
of sheets and a very undowny pillow complete the luxu
rious couch. ' But the bed is nothing, as you learn after a
while, — nothing comparatively. It is the mosquito net
that is essential. When, in the stillness of the night you
hear the hum of the gathering hosts, you are disposed to
be quite content with any thing that is inside the net. If
you are inclined to entomology, you may easily learn that
this is no ordinary mosquito, and that, besides other in-

22 CUBAN SKETCHES.
teresting characteristics, he has stripes upon his legs that
you can count.
There are parks in Havana. They mention them often,
and speak of them with pride. There are in these, stat
ues of Columbus and Cervantes, some artful little trees,
a fountain or two, and some dusty walks. They are the
barest and dustiest efforts after pleasure-grounds ever
made. There are hardly ten yards of shade, unless it be
the shadow of a building, and there is no green grass or
any thing that looks or feels cool. It is an interesting
fact that the Spaniard hates trees, and after an indiscrimi
nate slaughter of them in all regions he has ever occupied,
they decline to grow for him when he plants them in a
park. Yet, it is a climate that has hardly a vicissitude.
The whole year is summer-time, and the soil is rich be
yond any other. I do not know why the places of
resort in a land where life might be passed out of doors,
should depend for their attractiveness upon gas-light and
a crowd. The queen of the tropics is essentially a sad
and lonesome city, though as rich, as frivolous, and as
wicked, as was Pompeii.
There are essentials in which all the cities of Cuba are
alike. This will, perhaps, appear in future chapters.
There are other respects in which the city of Havana is
unique. Representatives of every race and clime may
be found there, and the flags of every nation float in her
harbor. The streets are as busy as Babel, and business
has been found so remunerative that her citizens are the
most extravagant, as a class, in the world. But nothing
has changed in the least degree the ancient Spanish char
acter; nothing ever will. Individuality is the strong
characteristic of the Latin, the Chinaman, and the
American Indian.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 23
The bay of Havana almost is, as they are fond of say
ing, the finest in the world. It lies in the figure of a
man's hand, the opening at the wrist, and the fingers ex
tending in all directions. The anchorage is good, and
the water deep and nasty. A canal was begun a long
time ago that, when finished, will allow a current to pass
through the bay, and mitigate or banish the perpetual
scourge of yellow fever. But it. was never finished, and
will never be. In all the magnificent haven there is not
a landing-pier, quay, or dock, or a decent landing. All
vessels, except small schooners under the Spanish flag,
load and unload in the stream. It is not deemed prudent
to permit foreign vessels to come too near. No one but
a Spaniard may engage in the occupation of lightering,
or loading and unloading vessels, and if there were quays,
this occupation and its attendant fees would be lost.
The government stands in this representative foreign
capital in the position of "hands off," and warns all man
kind that she does not propose to take any risks of foreign
contamination. Sunset is the hour for closing business at Moro Castle,
and no matter what storms may be brooding outside,
no vessel may come in until the following day. This is
an ancient regulation of the place, without regard to the
fact that a harbor is, in a certain sense, the property of
the world, not to be closed like a shop when the owner
retires. Parallel with this is the fact that, after nigh
three hundred years' possession, the Spanish government
does not own a custom-house building on the island,
or any others, save the " palaces " and jails, and a
dilapidated barracks, and a hospital or two. Moro Castle
carries the only light-house, so far as I ever heard, upon
a coast indented with innumerable bays and lined with

24 CUBAN SKETCHES.
shoals. The old times, the ancient slowness, the time-
honored inefficiency, are visible everywhere. Sick sol
diers beg in the streets. Ragged battalions of boy
recruits come over from Spain, hatless, shoeless, and
destitute. And yet, military display is a passion, and
the Cubans pay twenty-four millions a year for the
support of an army to keep them on the under side.
But everybody enjoys himself in Havana. Laziness
is natural, universal, and reputable. The avoidance of
heat, worry, work, and perspiration, and good judgment
as to the shadiest side of every v/ay of life, are the essen
tials of tropical happiness. Clothing is airy, and the
body at ease, through the absence of the bundlings and
wraps necessary where the snow flies. The necessity for
manual labor is a disgrace and misfortune combined.
Los negros were designed for that, and the white is ex
pected to see it done, and be the beneficiary. There is
no other city that has so many youth engaged exclu
sively in smoking paper cigars and fondling canes, to
whom life is a dream, and personal adornment the sole
ambition. Foppery is so common that it does not exist,
indolence so natural that it excites no remark, and ambi
tion and endeavor are follies.
How tiresome it grows ! These are not those of whom
the kings of men will ever come. It is a people of smiles,
glances, easy talk, time-killing, dilettante. Except those
who are obliged to work, and they are beneath consider
ation.

CHAPTER in.
IN GENERAL.
THERE are those who, in a general way, seem to
have got all the tropics classed under one head,
as I had. Either Brazil or Central Africa stands for and
represents the whole. This is the result of those pictures,
of domestic manufacture, before referred to. Afterward,
they are apt to take the country they ha:ve visited and
personally inspected, to judge the others by, — as I do. If
I now hear any remarkable stories of forests, heat, birds,
turtles, alligators, snakes, and monkeys, I hear with a
sad doubt, — unexpressed. There is only one thing I un
hesitatingly believe, and that is the story the bronzed
wanderer may tell about the ways of a cyclone. I have
seen that. The wind, I acquiesce in.
I hazard the statement, to begin with, that Cuba is, so
far as the face of the land is concerned, a very common
place region. The commonness and tameness begin just
out of Havana, and extend, as far as my observation does,
throughout the island. The only feature that saves it
from an entire lack of the picturesque, is the palm. For,
as already stated at some length, mere heat is not pictur
esque, nor is rain in vast quantities, and a western corn
field in the full glory of waving blade and plume and
tassel, is a more beautiful thing than a cane-field. You
may wait patiently and long for the train to pass through
25

26 CUBAN SKETCHES.
a tropical forest, but often as you may fancy that now
it is entering the bushy outskirts, and skirting the pre
liminary brush, it never does. You begin to understand,
after a while, that the country which needs it most, has not
even shade. There are hill-sides more or less bare and
rocky, such as you may find even in New Hampshire.
There are dells and depressions, which may contain a
little water and some coarse grass. There are trees, such
as a man from Indiana would describe as " bresh."
There are cultivated fields, in which the growing vegeta
bles do not seem likely ever to become premium turnips
and mammoth beets, and others, in which the corn-stalks
look like mementoes of a Kansas drouth. There are
patches of woodland, in the whole extent of which could
not be found what they would call in Maine a saw-log.
The chaparral is low, tangled, and thorny. Woods, in
Cuba, mean nothing more than an impenetrable thicket.
Nor is it the land of rural wealth and comfort, as we
understand the term, notwithstanding the prolific soil
and plentiful rains. The total want of the appearance of
it is impressive. The farmer lives in a cabin of the
rudest construction, and is himself as rude and poor as
his dwelling. Those who are able to recall the cuts in
the school geographies of twenty years ago, may possibly
remember the representations of certain little thatched
huts, whose roofs looked very much like a last year's hay
rick. In front were depicted some naked little negroes,
and in the background two or three palms. These were
graphic pictures, and the very same may be seen to-day.
They are the dwellings of the Cuban farmer and his
family. White houses, hedges, blooming plants, green
grass, smiling fields, are unknown. Any thing that looks
like home is wanting in the landscape. I should con-

IN GENERAL. ^^
elude that farming in Cuba did not pay. If there is any
money in it, it is not expended upon luxury. There are
a few people around these wretched sitios, and they gave
me the idea of serfs. Their hats are bad, their pataloons
are shabby, and their faces are seamed, worn, hard, and
hopeless. In a land celebrated for its easily acquired
fortunes, the farmer is universally ignorant, invariably
poor. He may not be unhappy, for he is of a class to
whom a condition of semi-wretchedness has been for
generations an accustomed thing. He is used to hard
work and an unchanging condition. The reader will
understand that I am not now speaking of the great
sugar plantations, ivhose existence has helped to produce
this state of things, and whose management can in no
case be called farming.
These pictures of rural life must dwell in the memory
of every one who has seen Cuba. The miserable little
house, with its palm-leaf roof and earthen floor, is unfit for
a cattle shed, and a degree worse than a Nevada " dug
out." There is a piece of broken fence that never was
whole, or oftener, a ragged and briar-covered cactus
hedge. There are no outhouses or conveniences. The
cocks and hens saunter in and out of the open door, and
a lean goat or two stand in profound reverie. Pigs, lean
and hairless, with their broken tethers adorning their
necks, wander here and there in search of what a pig may
fancy. Perhaps a bullock stands tethered by the nose
amid plentiful stones and scant grass, and a sad-looking
cow keeps him company. Naked children play beside
the door, and squalid and half-clad women loaf promis
cuously about the premises. Away in the fallow-ground
the man of the place struggles to make a long scratch on
the ground with his yoke of oxen and his Egyptian plow

28 CUBAN SKETCHES.
made of the crotch of a tree. As he walks beside its one
handle, and urges his lean cattle with strange cries and a
long stick, and creeps to the end of his inadequate furrow
at a snail's pace, you wonder to think that the father and
grandfather of this genius of famine did the same before
him, and his son will do it after him, and probably none
of them ever committed suicide.
You meet this man in the early morning on his way to
sell his produce at the nearest town. It is green corn
stalks, or melons, or, perhaps, two paniers of yellow
oranges, or green grass, or milk in stone jugs stoppered
with an ear of corn, — whatever it may be, it is always car
ried pack- fashion on horses. Wagons are not practicable
on the Cuban roads, and a long and plodding string of
animals, laden until only their tails and noses are visible,
is the commonest of sights on the highway. Horse and
man are stained alike by the deep-red mud of the country.
Horse and man alike are lean in flesh, and intense
ly, ploddingly, laboriously occupied with the work in
hand. They have daily gone the same paths for years,
bearing the same burdens, and seemingly without any
reward. Life is not necessarily easy and indolent where
the plantain grows, as we have so often heard it is.
This peasant, a son of the soil, and the man who, ex
cept the negro, has lived the longest and worked the
hardest on it, has no connection with, or interest in, the
tall white chimneys that here and there appear across
the landscape, and represent the great industry of the
country. For hundreds of acres around them grows the
cane. Hundreds of unpaid toilers feed their fires and
caldrons from January to May. Hundreds of thousands
of dollars are invested in the industry of which these
monumental chimneys are the centres. These planta-

IN GENERAL. 29
tions grow nothing but cane. They do not generally so
much as produce the corn eaten by the oxen and negroes.
Every energy of every man and animal is concentrated
upon the task of producing as many pounds as possible
of the sugar which, for many years, has paid the largest
profit of any known production of the soil, and paid it at
the general cost of the whole country, in its morals, its
education, its general happiness, its healthy growth, and
the manhood and independence of its people. The de
cay of the many, and the enriching of the few, is ever
the direct result of the production of one great staple by
slave labor.
Thus it is, that the man who comes to Cuba for the
first time, does not find the Cuba of his pictures and
dreams. He has not encountered the deep stillness of a
tropical forest. He has been charmed with no landscapes
that regaled his senses with the pleasure of something
new. He has seen no gaudy and screeching birds flying
in fiery flashes from tree to tree ; but instead, only the
sailing buzzard, or an occasional coal-black magpie by the
roadside. He finds that there are more flowers in a sin
gle woodland field in the North, than he has known in
all Cuba. He has seen no visions of comfort, or of the
beauty of thrift and taste. It is summer without the
hay-making; May, lacking the freshness and flowers.
Even the foliage and grass have been a delusion, and he
begins to understand that where leaves and grass are
growing and decaying by a continuous process on the
same spot, they can never be entirely green. Nature, in
the tropics, never permits a clean sod to please the eye.
She needs the space for vines and thorns. She chooses
to glare and effectually does it. She never sleeps and
awakes refreshed. She has no holidays. She never puts

30 CUBAN SKETCHES.
on the fresh and perfumed garments of spring; there is
no spring. She is coarse, and delights in big leaves and
few of them, and piece by piece renews herself, and has
in all her finery, never a garment that is not patched.
Noon lies panting in shadowless heat. Night falls as
suddenly as the curtain when the play is done. Morn
ing flashes in a moment upon a world that is bathed
in a chill and clammy dew. As you sit fanning your
self in a windless time, you wonder if it has always
been so, and life and its functions still gone on. There
is a knowledge, but not a realization, that these airy
habitations will never be closed for stress of weather,
that the gathering of a household in the firelight will
never be seen, that summer means only the monoto
nous splash of endless rain, seas of mud, and limitless
mustiness and green mould ; and that winter is only a
little more wind, boundless dust, and the ripening of
the orange. The pilgrim recalls then, with hope and
longing, his climate of endless vicissitudes and com
pensations, and begins to believe that falling snow is
the loveliest of nature's displays, and biting wind and
cruel frost necessary to happiness. Thus, the Nor
therner was never quite contented in the tropics. It
is hard to blunt the recollections and associations of
youth, or destroy those pictures of life in which there
is winter, but also spring, and cold, and snow, but also
hearths and fires.
Cuba is a hill, rocky, ridged, rough, with the very rich
and the entirely worthless in soil curiously interspersed.
Though there are no elevations of greater dignity than
local ranges of hills, the roads are generally the worst
imaginable. Road-making is not a lost art among the
Spaniards, but, rather, an art not yet acquired. Any

IN GENERAL. 31
thing that a mule can traverse gives general satisfaction
to the community. Ledges and steps of stone extending
for long distances, the strata lying as undisturbed as
nature made them, are daily traversed by hundreds of
people, without an idea that such a via dolorosa could be
improved. Sometimes, not often, there is a bridge, occa
sionally a grade. It is amusing to note how the road
starts out of town good and smooth, and stays so for
about a league, and drops off into mud, stones, hill-side
boulders, and general unevenness, and finally degenerates
into a path.
The soil is divided into two classes, the black and the
red. There is a controversy going on between the pro
prietors of these two kinds as to which is the best. They
are both muddy in summer and dusty in winter, and both
rich enough to produce cane for fifteen or twenty years
without replant or change. So it is likely the contro
versy will go on for some time to come. The great desid
eratum is something rich enough to produce the great
staple from year to year without fertilization, sometimes
almost without cultivation.
But cane is by no means the only thing produced.
There is a vast array of vegetables. The "sweet potato"
here acquires an enormous size and another name, and
there is a varied and extensive family of yams. The
plantain, of all domestic productions, holds the first place
in the Cuban household economy. Nobody tries to live
without platanos fritos for breakfast and dinner, and as
there is never any supper, one may be said to get it at
every meal. There are also corn-fields, — corn-fields that
cause a Westerner first to smile and afterward to pity.
The stalks are as much as three, and sometimes four feet
high, with a melancholy little tassel, and a gloomy knot

32 CUBAN SKETCHES.
of wiry silk, and spindling stem and leaves, with, finally, a
miniature " nubbin " of the yellow flint variety. The cu
riosity of this crop is that it grows all the year, and is fed
green and in the stalk to the gentleman's horse in town
to whom it is brought every day and sold by the armful.
This maloja is the cargo of many a long train of horses,
whose burdens scrape the passengers upon th® side
walks. A sleepy dulness pervades the land, compatible with
the climate and suited to the people. I feel it creeping
over me as I close this chapter, and know that the tale of
it is commonplace and dull. Under the head of " In
General," one might go on like the brook. It is all in
general, as I look back upon it and try to recall individual
features. Something specific must undoubtedly be drag
ged forward and made to stand up, and if it is for the
specific purpose of being admired, I know of none more
willing than the distinguished individual who shall be the
subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CUBAN AT HOME.
HE who shares with the Spaniard in Cuba the felic
ity of being considered white, and who, generally
speaking, is upon the social level of a man who has family,
friends, and certain rights not inalienable, is the Cuban
himself. These two, the Spaniard and he, occupy as
strange relations and expend as much ill-feeling upon each
other as two men or classes can who continue to live to
gether in the same country. The native is as remarkable
in his way as the Spaniard is in his, and deserves a special
biography as a man without a prototype. Theoretically,
as Americans are English, so should the Cuban be a
Spaniard. If he has any admixture of blood not Span
ish, it is not German, French, or Irish, nor even Indian,
but must be traced to sources nearer the equator and the
Guinea coast. We will endeavor to see him as he is, the
Creole, the tropical white man, possibly entitled to be re
garded as the founder of a race.
He appears to you at first a man all hair, eyes, teeth,
and shirt collar. It is not precisely the correct view, but
such is apt to be the impression conveyed to a conserva
tive and doubting mind. After better acquaintance he
gives you the idea of a man who is at least sui generis,
with an unique form of body and a hitherto unclassified
type of mind. After a year or two he begins to seem to
33

34 CUBAN SKETCHES.
you to be a rather clever fellow, with traits that are sel
dom observed to exist in a character otherwise excellent,
but an agreeable man in many respects. To a counte
nance always expressive of a certain refinement, often of
great beauty, and almost never coarse, angular, or hard,
he joins a physique the thinnest and most attenuated
ever found compatible with locomotion and the general
control of a muscular system. His legs are spindles, his
arms much like flattened sticks somewhat enlarged at the
articulations. Of stomach he usually has about as much
as birds of the crane species are remarkable for, and is
seldom disposed to undue enlargement in the region of
the waistband. His shoulders are thin and sharp, and if
he stoops slightly it need not necessarily be regarded as
an indication either of scholarship or disease of the
lungs. His complexion is seldom fair, and generally of a
not unhandsome swarthiness, though sometimes approach
ing a hue that, by the present opinion of prejudiced man
kind, is not exactly a society color. But I have never
seen a Cuban with what we call a " dumb " face, or an
unintelligent eye.
This man is the bom dandy. He wears jewellery like
a woman, and like a woman's. He pinches feet that are
small enough naturally, into agonizing shoes. He wears
collars monstrous in size or ridiculous in smaUness, with
shirts of dazzling colors, and cut so very decolletd that
you may observe the sharp ends of his collar-bones and
the very bottom of his thin throat. At the date of this
writing he goes about the streets with pantaloons that
hang upon his little legs like bags, and flap and yaw in
the breeze. His coat seems to have been made for a
taller man, whereas, a year ago, it had a tendency to creep
upward toward the back of his neck. But the centre-

THE CUBAN AT HOME. 35
piece and glory of his costume is his hat. Where such
fashions in headgear as he delights himself with really
have their origin, I know not. As the climate is warm,
and seemingly for that reason, the hat is narrow, black,
heavy, and shaped like an inverted stove-kettle. This
man sometimes attends a ball in a black dress suit, a white
necktie, and a green shirt. A Cuban town is full of such
figures, and few of them are, by any chance, at work at
any thing. Born in a slave country, the presumptive,
probable or actual heir to a share in some sugar planta
tion, or, if not, living by his wits or upon his relations, the
young Cuban imagines that his destiny is to ornament
the tropics ; to be a thing of beauty, and kill time while
he is thus elegantly occupied. He adorns a pair of the
leanest, skiniest hands, — hands that remind you of those
of a maiden lady in ill health, — with rings set with high-
colored gems. He leaves the nails to grow long like
those of a Chinese nobleman, and trims them to a point.
One can forgive his face, weak as it often is, and moulded
in its effeminate features by the things he thinks about.
The smile at his costume may be, with some difficulty,
suppressed. His dandyism may be endured. But one
never learns quite to admire the Cuban hand. When I
shake hands with him I have ever suppressed a strong
desire to crush the limp and useless thing into a yellow
and distorted mass ; to cause him to go home and band
age it, and have it pain him about a year.
If ever you see a Cuban on his way to the railway sta
tion, you will notice that a little negro is carrying his
travelling-bag. When he reaches his journey's end, he
hires another to carry it out of the car for him. He
would very much dislike to be caught in the street carry
ing a package. He is averse to any burden but a cane.

36 CUBAN SKETCHES.
He does not like to be taken for a person suffering from
any necessity common to impecunious people. Reduced
to want, he lives as long as he can by borrowing, he
pawns a little, and what finally becomes of him one can
hardly tell. As a rule, experience in life subdues his airs,
but gives him no financial skill. When the Guinea-grass
has overgrown his plantation, and the pecuniary diffi
culties that happen to men everywhere beset him, he is,
as a rule, helpless and hopeless. He mopes, and is dis
posed to suicide, and abandoning all gayety, seems to be,
after a fashion, desirous of calling the widest attention
to the misfortunes with which the saints afflict him.
For many years the Cuban has been a skilful contriver
of schemes for the good of his country, ahd has the repu
tation of being excellent at intrigue. But none of his
schemes have had any result, except, perhaps, the im
prisonment or flight of himself and friends. He could
plot exceedingly well, but he could not keep the secret.
The insurrection was begun and almost entirely sustained,
so far as action was concerned, by Cubans in the interior
and of the country districts. The towns of western
Cuba, filled with the people I have described, did little or
nothing for the cause, except personally, and very pri
vately, to wish it success. What was done by those ac
tually engaged, no man has yet, so far as I know, fully
and truly told. There are only a few facts fi;om which
persons who desire information can judge. The Span
iards lost in the contest one hundred and sixty thousand
men, near seven hundred million dollars, and acted upon
the defensive nearly altogether during the nine years in
which they were engaged in the struggle. It was a ques
tion who could endure the longest, and wear the other
out, and, perhaps, there never was a war that lasted so

THE CUBAN AT HOME. 37
long with as little blood actually shed on the field of bat
tle, with as little outlet for impetuous and burning valor
on either side, and with so much uncertainty as to result
after the bushwhacking, scares, and skirmishing had gone
on for so many years.
It was a war of suspicion, of suppression, of words.
The Spaniard seemed, in the waste and middle of it, like
an old man, cowering in his corner, shaking his crutch,
and threatening to rise up and grasp the sword of his
youth, and chastise rebellious sons. He talked of glory
from the beginning. He pretended to be victorious, and
gratified himself with the imagination. The Cuban, on
the other hand, was wrestling with a situation too strong
for him, without a treasury, without arms, with a travel
ling capital and a nomadic legislature, and the president
of his republic in the United States. 'He was unaided
by his kindred in the richest part of the island. He
talked of invading Havana, and, instead, invaded New
York thirty thousand strong. As for his friends, here
and there, they talked ; they were valiant in devising
movements for others to make ; they speculated and
hoped. The young men went away to where it was safer
to be, and where they could avoid service in either army.
There is a good deal of entertainment to be derived from
merely imagining the town Cuban as a soldier. I should
very much like to see some of the young gentlemen of
my acquaintance with muskets on their backs. I think
it would be something like plowing with cats.
The great difference existing between these rival claim
ants and antipodal neighbors, in personal characteristics,
I take to be this : the Spaniard, as an individual, has a
strong and decided character; the Cuban a weak and
vacillating one. The former, in private life, and consid-

3^ CUBAN SKETCHES.
ered as an individual, is the better man, and usually ac
quits himself in that most common and most satisfactory
test of a man, — that he will do as he agrees. He is the
family man of the island. His wife and children he has
a true regard and respect for, and his house is his home.
He does not suspect the honor of his sister or his
mother, and has no suspicions as to his own paternity,
all of which a Cuban may do, and not be regarded as
very eccentric. He is faithful in an unusual degree to
the ties of blood and kindred, and pompous braggart
that he is, venerable and changeless Bourbon, he is true
to his country under all circumstances. Indeed, as stated
in a later chapter, patriotism is his vice, and in her name
he is sanguinary, unjust, and often cruel. But he has a
character, and it is easier to respect a certain conscien
tious badness than to admire a weak, amiable, and vacil
lating goodness.
After all I have said of the average Cuban young man,
and his appearance and physiognomy, the reader who
puts his trust in that science may desire no further his
tory of his mental traits. But he is not unvarying as a
subject of study. As a husband, he is striking ; if there
is a relation of life in which he shines, it is as a married
man. It is often a lurid glare of matrimonial unfaithful
ness from the very wedding day. One of the worst
qualities of the Cuban is that he seems not to believe in
the faithfulness and honor of any woman, while he ought
to know, as the rest of the world knov/s, that there is no
more faithful and loving wife, and no better mother, than
the womsfn of Cuba. I have often seen the unfortunate
American girl, who had chosen a husband from among
the invaders of New York, wandering among the cities of
Cuba in search of a truant husband who had grown tired

THE CUBAN AT HOME. 39
of her and returned to the dusky loves of his youth. In
deed, some of the greatest, of matrimonial follies are com
mitted by my country-women, partly, as I suppose, be
cause they believe these young men when they describe,
in broken English, their homes in Cuba, as the gardener's
son described his to the Lady of Lyons, and partly be-
. cause there is a certain piquancy about marrying a for
eigner. As the Cuban is in respect to his matrimonial affairs,
so is he with many a thing besides. Oily and smooth as
his father, the Spaniard, in making his bargains, he is
very artful in avoiding his obligations afterward. I am
at a loss for words to truly describe the peculiar unre
liability which seems a part of the man's character. He
is trivial, and it may consist in that. He is wanting in
appreciation of manliness for its own sake, and it may
consist in that. But it has seemed to me that the child
ish egotism of pure selfishness was his great underlying
trait. He is flaccid, without fibre, and poor, even to
beggary, in strength of character. I marvel at the fin
ished address, the intelligent face, the polish, the quick
perception, and the air of respect for himself and others,
which exist as the concomitants of this.
The question probably occurs to the reader : ' What
will this man do with his country when he shall some
day acquire control of it ? ' It is a fate in the future.
Often in the history of mankind, the talent lor govern
ment has grown with the necessity for it. I have hinted
that the Cuban was perhaps destined to be, if he be not
already, the founder of a race, if he did not first misce-
genate and hybridize. It is an if, that like so many of
its fellows in this world, deserves to be spelled with a
capital " I." At some time the greater Antilles will

40 CUBAN SKETCHES.
come under the dominion of the African. He thrives
here, and he alone ; the white men's descendants decay.
His tribe increases ; he is healthy, active, strong. These
shining seas are his natural surroundings, and he basks
beneath a blazing sun, where others wither and decay.
There is a limit of adaptation beyond which men cannot
go. I believe the Cuban, as he is, to be as much the out
growth and product of climate as he is of Spanish ances
try. In Cuba the very sheep change their wool and their
color for the hair and the spots of the goat. Where the
banana grows, men do not grow, unless they are black.
There has been courage in danger, and there have been
calm and heroic deaths for " Cuba Libre." Some of
those have fallen who, with any other people or sur
roundings would have " lit a candle that shall never be
put out." I do not know of what stuff martyrs are
made, but some of those who have died hopeless and
unshriven have met their fate with a serenity that has
half redeemed the fame of all their fellows, and rescued
from pity or ridicule the story of the last and longest of
the struggles of the sons of Cuba for the land in which
they were born. But it seems to me at this moment,
that when the political misery of a people is beyond
remedy by themselves, it is also beyond hope and dis
cussion. Many a year will elapse before the Cuban will
make a successful effort for liberty, if ever. They left
their battles to be fought out by a handful of country
men, while the great majority of the ablest among them
were inside the Spanish lines, and were glad they were.
These now claim to have been beaten by superior force
after doing the best they could, and as you hear them
talk, you know that Cuba is as surely as ever the property
of Spain.

THE CUBAN AT HOME. 4I
It is almost useless to remark, after the foregoing,
that society in Cuba is in a peculiar condition. It is, in
deed, in that state in which it might certainly be pre
dicted of it, that it must change, and take upon itself a
settled form. Yet it does not change, and has been in
its present state a very long time. The changeless an
tagonism between two classes leaves them to live to
gether and hate each other from year to year, to follow
the same avocations, to speak the same language, prac
tise the same religion, and walk together upon the same
streets, yet without association, friendship, or kindred
sentiment. The Cuban girl steels her heart against the
young Spaniard, though often gallant and handsome, and
sometimes rich. She may, and does, sometimes marry
him, for women are women, but it is against remon
strance and in defiance of scandal. The Cuban mamma
does not invite him to her house unless it is quite well
understood that he has undergone a change of heart.
The island is full of uniformed, inchoate heroes, but the
feminine fondness for the gilt button does not often
cause the dark-eyed damsel to relent. The Cuban and
the Spanish boy attend the same school, and play to
gether through youth, and when they attain to manhood
each goes his way with his kind. Yet there is a certain
concealment about all these things. Society goes on with
a great deal of real and much pretended gaiety, with this
big worm always at the heart of it. A thousand loves
and hopes are bounded by a line that cannot be gone
over or around, and men and women curb and restrain
the most natural and useful desires and inclinations of
life to comply with a rule no man has made and every
body is guided by, that succeeding generations have
scarcely infringed upon, and that seems to have no limit
set upon its strange and binding force.

42 CUBAN SKETCHES.
The Cuban at home, ought, by all rules, to be a very
unhappy and discontented man, because of the universal
dissatisfaction with his political status. An American
would be. He is not the man he believes he is entitled
and competent to be. There are no lines of ambition
open to him, no avenues of endeavor, save in a commer
cial or industrial way. He may and does write a little
poetry, and, if it be ever so good, it is read and praised
only locally. If he is an artist it is with the same re
sult. He may make all the money he pleases, and is
able to appear in the best possible clothes, silver-plate
his harness, and live in a tile-roofed palace, and he may
be called " Don," and bowed to by his fellows. But he
can never be governor of his jurisdiction, or senator
from his district, or take part in making the laws, good
or bad, he lives under. His influence must be only of a
social kind, and his power over his fellow-men only that
which comes of personal surroundings.
Long years of this kind of life have made of the Cuban
a peculiar kind of aristocrat. If he be a man of brains
and intelligence, he knows that he is so in spite of his
surroundings, and makes the most of it in private life. If
merely a man of wealth, as he often is, he surrounds him
self with all the tinsel state he can, leans back upon him
self, and installs himself a potentate amid his dependants
and surroundings. He is never greeted by acclamations,
or carried in a chair, or called upon to express his views
of public measures in a speech. But he is so accustomed
to the deprivation that he never thinks of it. He com
forts himself within himself, and calms his longings by a
serene contemplation of his own dignity.
It may seem, and justly, that thus far I have found
little to say in praise of the Cuban. I have persona)

THE CUBAN AT HOME. 43
friends whom I might take as examples of something
better than all this, and write of them only. I wish I
could. I write generally of a class, and I believe with
truth and soberness, and as I have described him I be
lieve the Cuban will find himself considered, when at last
his islandic fetters shall be broken and, as the governor
of his own country and the manager of his own political
fortunes, he shall be called upon to mingle with the in
habitants of a world bigger than his own. He has virtues.
He is, in the course of time, destined to be individually
changed by education acquired outside his little island.
His graceful suavity and pleasant temper, his quick intel
ligence, his tolerance of ignorance and foolishness on the
part of others, his unwillingness to be outdone in courtesy,
his fair acceptance of kindly overtures from whomsoever
they may come, render him a pleasant companion at least,
if not very nearly what we mean when we use the expres
sion " a gentleman." I would he were less that, and
more a man. I wish I could remember oftener to have
seen the flush of conscience upon his face, and the quick
anger of honesty in his eye. If he meant his compli
ments, or believed in his own kindness, or would keep his
little promises, any or all of these, I should love him, — a
httle.

CHAPTER V.
THE SPANIARD IN CUBA.
CUBA can boast as motley and parti-colored a popu
lation as ever were gathered together in as small
a country. Spaniards, Negroes, Cubans, and Chinamen
constitute her permanent population. It is hard to tell
whether the white, the black, the white-and-black, or the
genuine and unadulterated yellow, are in the majority.
All these elements of humanity are very different, one
from the other. The Spaniard and Cuban are hardly
upon speaking terms any time these thirty years, and
there are no common traits to unite the Negro and the
Asiatic. But it is an interesting congregation of human
ity. Nearly or quite two-fifths of these people are slaves
absolutely, and of the remainder a large proportion have
declared vehemently, and for a long time, that they are
slaves politically. The only man who is half content with
himself is the Spaniard, and he would be happier if he
were not constantly apprehensive of a struggle to main
tain his rule of the island and his peculiar ideas of govern
ment. Away from Cuba, the differences between the Spaniard
and the Cuban are not very perfectly understood, nor is
there any immediate necessity for studying them. I have
frequently been asked by persons in the United States
questions which led me to infer that if the people of the
44

THE SPANIARD IN CUBA. 45
island were not all Cubans they must necessarily be all
Spaniards, and that at least the terms were interchange
able. But these two, as a matter of fact, imagine them
selves the antipode the one of the other, refuse to confess
that they are relatives, and have been indulging them
selves in a general, mutual, and cordial hatred of each
other for a long time. Living in the same streets and in
adjoining houses, associated necessarily in business, relig
ion, and language, they yet do not commingle as the same
people. They believe they understand each other too.
If the reader will have the goodness to follow me for a
few pages I will endeavor to describe this anomalous re
lationship of the Spaniard in Cuba and the Cuban at
home. It is probably worth a few moments' study merely
as a curiosity of society.
The two look askance at each other, and each, the
Cuban especially, is inclined to gratify himself with a
grimace behind the other's back. Yet they live together,
and take coffee at the same tables in the same caf^, and
meet a hundred times a day. There is a distinct under
standing that the one hates the other, and it is the only
point they have agreed upon entirely. This condition of
things is quite apparent to one who has been on the
island for three weeks, and as time passes, and one lives
longer between the two smoldering hatreds, it begins to
excite surprise that the difference never goes any further.
One wonders within himself why they do not quarrel
personally, and collisions take place every day in the year,
and why they do not, at least upon rare occasions, go
around the corner and fight it out. They never do ; I
remain surprised at this date, with the same surprise that
first came to me, at a condition of things so unlike human
nature, as that mixture exists in other regions and races.

46 CUBAN SKETCHES.
By a Spaniard is meant always a man of Spanish blood
and born in Spain. His son, born in Cuba, is a Cuban,
and usually so in sentiment as well as in fact. The his
tory of the Spaniard has been so well studied that it has
percolated into the channels of universal knowledge. If
you say of one that he is a Spaniard you at once describe
a peculiar man with a character unique, of whom it is apt
to be concluded that he may be a very good kind of a
fellow, but,  . If you are with him you keep an eye on
him for a good while. There is no superfluous confidence
between the Saxon and him. For something like three
hundred years he has been making himself an interna
tional reputation, and has succeeded remarkably. It is
not a story of weakness or cowardice. From the begin
ning he took a leading part in that history of change and
progress on the continent of Europe, which is one of the
most touching in the annals of the human race. He won
vast dominions on this side the sea with a contemptible
handful of adventurers, and held them until a time within
the memory of living men. By heroism and treachery, by
an utter want of conscience and honor, and a display of
the highest virtues of a soldier and explorer, by an un
hesitating use of any means whatever, he conquered
Mexico and Peru, and by the same means, transformed
into causes, he lost them at last. For he has never
changed, in his true self, from what he was in those early
times. But he was never a coward, and has not to this
day lost aught of his dignity, his courage, his conserva
tism, his pride, or his entire inability to compromise with
the people of the colonies he has planted by changing
those forms and traditions of government that were quite
the thing for provinces three hundred years ago, but are
very much out of date for a century past. This chapter

THE SPANIARD IN CUBA. 47
is written with a knowledge, more or less accurate, of the
terms upon which peace was made with the leaders of the
late insurrection, and of the change in the policy of the
government of Cuba, temporarily apparent to everybody.
But it is also written with the knowledge that both
parties are dissatisfied, and neither sincere. The Cuban
still feels that he has not got what he ought to have, and
the Spaniard hates himself for not having been able to
fully keep all that was his. Spain is in honor bound
to carry out the terms of the agreement she made. But,
should the usual thick-headed Spaniard come and take his
place as Captain-General, it will again be found that tra
dition is stronger than treaty, and that the Spaniard is
incapable of change.
Yet, there is another side to the Spanish character, even
in Cuba. That just mentioned is his historic character.
It is the collective, aggregate Spaniard, and does not de
scribe the man as you meet him in the street. " Three of
us make a lunatic," he says of himself, and the use of the
proverb betrays a consciousness that the traits of the in
dividual do not conduce to make him a calm man in
a crowd. Then, he is prone to begin to talk about
" nosotros," and to be carried away by that maniacism of
his about Spain and every thing Spanish. On this point
every Spaniard seems to have been born crazy. The
rulers of Spain, the country itself, can consider certain
the blind devotion of every subject wherever found.
His history is glorious, his country the richest in Europe ;
he has made every thing, done every thing. His literature
is self-glorifying to a degree ridiculous and disgusting.
He believes a Spaniard invented the steam-engine, dis
covered electricity, and made the first steamboat. In
the preface to a volume before me, on the industrial

48 CUBAN SKETCHES.
arts, and intended for use in schools, the author states
that he has been criticized for not stating that' the Span
iards invented printing ; that he did not do so because
there was some doubt upon the question of who did in
vent it, and that he is happy to state, at least, that his
countrymen were the first to use it !
After a few moments' conversation of the stimulating
kind hinted at above, with two or three of his fellow-
countrymen, — and they cannot avoid getting at it, — he
begins to wish to do something. He is ready to begin
the much-talked-of operation of " dyeing the Gulf of
Mexico with his blood." The great provocation, the
universal red rag, is the Yankee, sitting upon the op
posite side of the narrow water, and calmly smiling at
his perils and struggles in Cuba, the predestined heir to
all he may be obliged to abandon on this side the At
lantic, In ordinary times he will speak calmly of the
failings and follies of his race and his system. In ten
minutes thereafter he will be gesticulating and storming.
He gets into conversation with some of his countrymen,
and " nosotros " creep in.
I may as well remark here, and have done with it, that
what this neighbor of ours needs to cure him of all this
folly, is a neat thrashing at the hands of some foreign
party. The man of Spain in Cuba presents a marked contrast
to his descendant, the native-born inhabitant of the
island. He came here for money, and, as a general rule,
he has succeeded in getting it. No man is more capable
of hard work and great frugality, and no man is more
accomplished in the art of keeping all he gets. I once
had a door-servant ox porter o, a Gallego of the Gallicians.
Every day he ate what was brought him from a small

THE SPANIARD IN CUBA. 49
and nasty bodega at the next corner. It was never any
thing but soup. He never had, and never needed, a
knife and fork. He was not only content, and in good
health, but hospitably inclined withal, and, after the cus
tom of his country, asked me to partake of his fare if I
passed near him I have long ceased to take observations
of this luminary of economy, but presume he is still eat
ing soup, and still content. The greater portion of the
Spaniards, working men in Cuba, live like him.
For several centuries Cuba has been the Spaniard's
oyster. It is his, with a government after his own heart,
and custom-house regulations specially framed for his
benefit. The poorest and most ignorant goatherd in all
Spain can come to Cuba and experience one delightful
sensation. He may eat thin soup, and still realize that
the negro is lower than he. He becomes " Don," and is
thus addressed by alarge class not white, and has a re
alizing sense of his dignity and likes it. But it never
keeps him from going to work at any thing he can find
to do. Men who are now well-known as examples of a
combination of wealth with great illiteracy, began by
carrying a baker's basket upon their heads from door to
door. There are always young Spaniards passing through
this stage, and they make the land seem a piece out of
old Spain. This kind is as ignorant, hardy, and adven
turous as ever was follower of Pizarro, though he has
ceased to bear an arquebuse and wear an iron pot on his
head. His feet are clad in canvas shoes with hempen
soles. He claps any thing he happens to have upon his
skull, and his sleeves are rolled high, and his shirt is open.
He is hardy, and if he does not die of fever when he first
arrives, all the vicissitudes of climate affect him not. He
is a roller of hogsheads, a lifter of iron bars, a digger of

50 CUBAN SKETCHES.
drains, and layer of pipes. He becornes anon the captain
of a lighter, a sugar-weigher, a stevedore, a boatman, a
fisherman, — any thing.
But it has often seemed to me that the great ambition-
of this man, beyond which there was to him nothing
more, was to be a bodigero. A bodega is a wine cellar, the
hold of a vessel, or, lastly and most commonly, a corner
grocery, wherein is sold two cents worth of any thing
that belongs in the catalogue of eatables, but which has
become mouldy, ancient, and unsavory. To be the
owner of one of these dusty little depositories of indiges-
tibles is the bright hope of the lower class Spaniard.
So many have engaged in it that the reputation of the
business is a kind of monopoly with them, and the name
bodigero has become descriptive of a class. " Como un
bodigero " — like a man who keeps a bodega — ignorant and
blustering, has become a phrase.
Spanish economy is eminently adapted to the advance
ment of one of this kind in the world. There are no
boarding-houses in Cuba, and none in Spain. The blessed
fact stands alone in social annals, ahd shines afar in a
hungry world. It is a startling statement, but is true, for
there are no boarders. Pass a store or a shop at meal
time and you will observe a long table set forth in the
middle of the sales-room, in the midst of merchandise
or tools, and all the employes of the establishment at din
ner. At bedtime each man finds his cot, places it where
there is most room for it, and goes to bed. In some
corner of the establishment the viands are cooked over a
little charcoal fire, and the store, the warehouse, or the
shop, is home to all in it. The boarding-house business,
common, aristocratic, and medium, is thus rendered im
possible, and such an institution is unknown.

THE SPANIARD IN CUBA. SI
While the laboring Spaniard is the sturdiest, the most
contentedly illiterate and the most faithful of men, his
educated compatriot reads Don Quixote and regards it as
the quintessence of all wit, not at all conscious of the fact
that he is Don Quixote, modernized, and his laboring
brother almost Sancho Panza, bandy legs, broad shoulders,
thick head, content, philosophy, and all. Were he only
taller it would be hard to find a better physical man than
this same Sancho. His pectoral muscles shake as he walks,
and his sturdy legs bear him through thick and thin.
He has lived simply all his life, and is of that fortunate
class who for generations have lived and died untor-
mented by hopes and desires for things grander and
better than their fathers knew. He has eaten and slept
well. He is the man for driving donkeys and climbing
hills, singing rude songs, and relishing hard fare, and tak
ing an honest pleasure in common things. When he is
old, whether bodigero or landed proprietor, he is still the
same, ignorant, happy, healthy, until he begins to talk of
Spain and " nosotros," and then he becomes all that the
better-bred and better-educated Spaniard is famous for,
with all the added ignorance of his class.
The other variety of Spaniard in Cuba may be said,
both at home and here, to belong to the governing
class. He is town-bred, and comes hither as a clerk, or
the incumbent of a petty subordinate office, or as an
officer in the army. It is surprising to note the general
physical difference between the two varieties, the one
from the hills, the other from Madrid. This last is dis
posed to shankiness, and more or less length and nar
rowness. Sometimes, in contemplating the Spaniard in
Cuba, I have been reminded of the two grand subdivisions
of horses: draught and roadster. When this last-mentioned

52 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Spaniard is old he is very wrinkled and generally bald.
He is mincing, fussy, and disposed, without meaning any
thing in particular, to assume an expression of counte
nance that you would imagine indicated the irruption of a
disagreeable odor. He is the possessor of that particular
air of personal dignity which he alone seems to have let
ters-patent for. He has a peculiar gait, and sometimes is
the ideal of a beau ; a kind of elderly dandy, even while
still young. His face is sometimes such a quaint one as
is seen in old portraits. When he talks there is no end
to the gestures with which he accentuates his common
places. He rises, and stands over his victim threaten
ingly ; he lays his folded hands upon his beating heart
and looks upward ; he extends his arm grandly, appealing
to all the centuries and all the pyramids ; he leans for
ward, with bent knees, like one on the alert for a fuga
cious hen, and in this posture places his two hands before
him, palms inward, and waves them violently forward.
It is " No ! a thousand times no ! Go ; leave me alone
in my contest for the truth ! ! " And what can all this
terrible thing be he is talking about, that he seems to
live, a brand snatched from the burning, to relate?
Nothing; the commonest and tamest thing in life. As,
for instance, there were two ladies on the plaza last night,
sisters. One is homely and known to be amiable, the
other beautiful and something of a vixen. The homely
one, he says, he much prefers to the other. Thereupon
he drops into the chair behind him, dull, undisturbed, and
even sleepy, and lights a paper cigar. This is a speci
men of what you may see and hear, if you care to, twenty
times a day.
I trust I do not give the reader the impression that
this is a personally disagreeable man. He is not that.

THE SPANIARD IN CUBA. 53
for he comes of a race among whom courtesy and defer
ence, soft words and an amiable demeanor, are cardinal
virtues. When this man enters the dining-room of a
hotel, where is not one whom he ever saw before, he
salutes the company generally. If he meets you in the
hallway, or upon the stairs, or in any situation where he
must pass you, he says his Buenos dias, as though he had
a personal interest in your welfare. When he comes to
your office, he stops at the door until he is requested to
enter, takes off his hat, seats himself if invited, and not
otherwise, and proceeds to explain his business with an
insinuating sweetness. If you explain to him that you
can't, or won't, he does not argue the case strenuously,
but is very apt to come the following day, with some new
view of the case, or some more persuasiveness. He is, as
a countryman of Quixote, so much of a philosopher as to
be the most agreeable of travelling companions, and he
does not ask you where you came from, and whither you
are, going, and how old you are, and whether you are
married. He is a fluent man, speaking rapidly and cor
rectly the magnificent tongue about the spelling and pro
nunciation of which there has long ceased to be any
dispute. He is as incapable of slang as a man might be
expected to be to whose mother-tongue it is impossible.
But he is quaint in his modes of expression, and often
uses phrases which savor strongly of what we would call
westernism, and which have the flavor of that dry humor
which is peculiarly Spanish. Profane he can be, in plain
words and very explicitly, but what we call " swearing," —
meaning the terse blasphemy of the English-speaking
world, — he has no words for. But, as a compensation,
he can make us ashamed when he will by interspersing
his remarks and spicing his discourse with a lingual filth

54 CUBAN SKETCHES.
of which only he, and his son, ^:he Cuban, are capable.
The vilest of personal vices, the lowest of habits, he u.ses
as by-words. Things that exist never to be mentioned,
are his adjurations. The class who " swear " in English,
have their equivalent class who make human speech seem
hideous in Spanish.
This man possesses all the qualifications that have
made him, in due time, the capitalist of Cuba. He is a
trader, which the Cuban never is. The stores are all his.
The warehouses, containing thousands of hogsheads of
sugar, he built and manages. The banks are under his
control, and railways are owned principally, or, at least,
are managed by him. Generally, he has every thing in
his hands except the sugar plantations, and seems to be
rapidly getting those also under his management. As an
artizan, or dealer, or business proprietor, the Cuban is a
failure, and it is seldom he tries any thing of the kind.
He cannot buy and sell ; he has no talent for making
shoes and shaping coats, and the only mechanical field
open to him seems to be dentistry.
These two classes, the official and the bodigero, are the
masters of Cuba. It is their last possession but one on
this side of the water, and they seem to endeavor to
make the most of it while it lasts. It is their system of
thus making the most of it, that seems to the foreigner
and American the most peculiar of all. It is a system
based, in brief, upon these two or three maxims : (i) That
the provinces of Spain are for Spaniards, and for nobody
else ; (2) That the people who are most interested in these
provinces, the children of the soil, the permanent resi
dents, are, by reason of these facts, unfitted for taking
any part in the government of them. The origin of these
maxims lies somewhere in the obscurity of the sixteenth

THE SPANIARD IN CUBA. 55
4
century. At this date they are entirely Spanish, and the
persistence with which they are insisted upon and believed
in, constitutes fair matter for astonishment to everybody
not ^ Spaniard.
He who has not lived in Cuba can have no idea of the
sensation of having the fact dawn upon him, and day by
day become more plain, that a three-hundred-year-old
system, with a military governor-general, imported dis
trict governors and all their lieutenants, judges, justices
of the peace, and even constables and policemen, all
foreign, all Spaniards, and all acting under edicts and de
crees, not statutes, is the government of an island not a
hundred miles from the Great Republic. All these
things are dear to the Spaniard, and thoughts of them
inflame his ardor when he begins to talk of " nosotros."
The peace has come, and there is, for the present, a much-
talked-of change. But there is no noticeable change in
these respects. The Spaniard is, and will remain, the
governor, and the Cuban the governed. Above all
things avaricious, this man will never relinquish the
means by which he makes the island exist for Spain.
Courteous, and even polished, as he may seem to one
who has no interest in his ideas of government and
power, he appears to every Cuban as the personal repre
sentative of arrogance and injustice. As he believed the
people of Peru to be his slaves by right of conquest, and
drew the line at Spanish birth, so he really believes with
regard to Cuba, and would, if he could, carry the idea out
in its entirety. He never really changes. He is the
same man, even in physiognomy, he was three hundred
years ago. He lacks the prestige and the power now,
and has grown weak at home and abroad. But fatuous
to the last, he pays little heed to the disintegrating ele-

56 CUBAN SKETCHES.
ments that are undermining his power in Cuba. The
crime of treason, to him, may consist in words, and even
thoughts, and the shadow of disloyalty is as much as the
proven crime. He loves a king. " Pan y Palos " is his
epitome of the theory of government. He wonders at
the system, and much more at the fact, of republicanism,
and believes it to be, in the end, impossible.
Sometime, in the slow grinding of the gods, he will
abandon Cuba. When he does, it will not be worth the
keeping. A fearful rate of taxation is strangling every
industry and crippling every vast resource, and there is
no prospect of any change. Of all the millions wrung,
one-half never reaches the treasury, and the half that
does is spent uselessly and extravagantly. His little
wooden wharves are rotting and will never be repaired ;
his rented buildings are falling down, and his very " pal
aces " going to decay. His modes were always primitive,
and latterly they are the primitive-decayed. The trou
ble he has in keeping himself straight is wearing him out.
Inter-official disputes, wranglings, and broils go on end
lessly. A captain-general's tenure of office is about four
months, and every captain-general retires wealthy, or is
greatly lied upon. As the barbarians outside are con
stantly increasing their domestic product of sugar, and
more and more contracting their demands upon Cuba,
so a slow suffocation settles down upon the land, and by
and by the little island will produce plantains and eat
them, and life will, to every free islander, go on very
much as it does in a back-woods settlement.

CHAPTER VI.
LA SESfORITA.
IN my various conversations with those of my country
men who have unfortunately never been to Cuba,
there has always been at least one of the company who,
when the topic seemed quite exhausted, was sure to ask:
"Well, how about the women?" or something to that
effect. I am about to endeavor to briefly answer this
person. The lady of the tropics was one of my own objects of
solicitude upon arrival. I wished to see her for the satis
faction of an honorable curiosity. I have seen her, but
have not satisfied the curiosity. I do not seem to catch
her general ideas. I cannot say that I have ever held a
conversation with her. I have heard her voice, even, at
times, a little too much of it, for it is of an astonishing
timbre to issue from such a throat. Of these things
anon. The first female I saw in Cuba, to particularly observe
her, was such a being as one remembers ever after. I was
not charmed with her. She wore a gown of faded stuff,
and a dingy shawl over her head. I saw, without any
obtrusive endeavor to see, that she wore shoes and no
stockings. Her mouth considerably resembled a crack in
a fallen cocoa-nut, and there was a mole, the size of a
blackberry, beside her nose. She unhesitatingly opened a
57

58 CUBAN SKETCHES.
conversation with me upon the subject of lottery tickets.
She was evidently npt a Cubana, as the greenest of
strangers might perceive, but as Spanish as about forty
years in the back room of a bodega could make her.
The next I saw within speaking distance was seated in
a landeau beneath the gas-lights in the Prado. She was
of a mature beauty, fair-haired, rosy, and vivacious. I
caught the Spanish name, but was addressed by her in
pure and unaccented English. She was an American as
much as I was, and had been the heroine of a much be-
written " diamond wedding " in New York some years
before. I continued to look for the Cuban lady, and was as
sisted in my search by eyes equally as inquisitive as my
own, belonging as they did to one of the sex that is at
present under consideration, and that have ere now dis
covered things that I cannot say I had myself endeavored
to place in a clear light before them. I finally saw my
first Cubana one evening in the parlor of a friend's house.
My hostess informed me that she had reached the mature
age of fourteen years. She was of large size and quite
mature. She is, as I sometimes see her now in the year
1879, rather past the days of her youth, having been
thrown upon the market early and disappointed in love.
Her eyes were big and very black, her hair a coarse and
shining mass, her complexion dark, her hands long, and
such a varied assortment of jewellery I have seldom seen
at one iime outside a shop window. I was never in
formed whether she had it all at that moment upon her
person ; — there was enough.
By and by this young woman laughed. If a peacock
could indulge in merriment it would be such a note of
gladness as hers was. There was that reedy quality in it

LA seNorita. 59
that the voices of tropical birds and women are prone
to have. She-talked, and I thought of how beautiful an
adaptation to nature it would be if her vocation had been
to sell lottery tickets. She was very handsome, without
dispute, but her adornment, her hair, her voice, somehow
caused me think la hij'a del pais, — the veritable Cubana, a
type, though not an exact similitude of all her sisters —
an exuberant production, even for Cuba.
I do not think there is a land in the list of civilized
countries that produces women so generally comely as
the daughter of Cuba is. As a rule, she has a round
figure, not large, but inclined to dumpling-shape. What
ever else she may be, she is never what the Americans
call " scrawny." But her face, while seldom wanting in
intelligence, is hardly ever vivacious. A sameness, a
desert-like monotony of expression, pervades the sex.
Strong traits of individual character are rarely indicated.
If the reader has ever seen a flock of ducklings on their
way to the nearest water, he has a fair idea of this little
woman's gait and general air. Her hair is often a " glory"
to her, and is sometimes of that blue-black shade only
possible with the daughters of southern Europe and their
descendants, though occasionally the Cuban girl varies
the program by being a blonde, and, to be plain, rather fat.
This lady is often a woman at twelve, and the mother
of a large family at nineteen or twenty. So pretty in
her youth, in age she becomes either lean and dried, or
fat and unwieldy. She fades early, and, for want of
strength of character, is apt to lose control of her hus
band, who, nevertheless, still continues to need such con
trol as badly as any man of his times. But whatever
she may grow to seem, her eyes never fade. To the last,
through all vicissitudes, they are big and black.

6o CUBAN SKETCHES
The Spanish race is, in fact, remarkable for the beauty
of that feature. Even the males possess eyes that often,
though not always, set them apart as handsome mfen.
But I have learned that it means nothing, not even great
intelligence. It does not indicate character of any stronger
or nobler kind than any squint-eyed person may possess,
and is far from being an indication of either mental force
or moral courage.
The Cuban woman is the victim of a peculiar educa
tion, acquired in the school, the family, and the church.
She believes, as did her mother before her, that when she
goes out alone, or is necessarily in any male haunts, all
baggage is at the risk of the owner. She is sure that
men pretend to great gallantry, and are fond of paying
outside regard to the fair ones, and are civil and polite,
all as a mere blind. She has no silly belief that a gentle
man would not do so and so. If he catches her alone,
she is a ruined female from that moment. She must al
ways have somebody with her who is not of the danger
ous sex. There is a procession formed when she wishes
to go a few blocks, as follows : First, two or three young
ladies, the more the better. Second, a mulatto or negro
servant, or," if possible, two or three, the more the better.
Sometimes there is only one young lady and one servant.
This is a case of great emergency. Man is a roaring lion,
seeking some unprotected female of his species continu
ally. No little miss ever goes to school alone, and
cannot and must not pass along the street without a
guardian. The Cuban woman is timid and guarded in the pres
ence of every man. A foreigner, speaking the language,
and ignorant of these peculiarities, sometimes ignorantly
endeavors to be civil. He is lucky if, to all he may say,

LA SENORITA. 6 1
he gets any answer at all. She to whom he speaks re
gards him as by nature a designing wretch, whom she is
to avoid, to never see, to ignore entirely. Ancient maid
ens, long since become a perfect guaranty in their own
persons against any imaginable familiarity with them, act
in the same way, and never get over it, and keep a keen
eye upon the younger ones. Until one grows accustomed
to it, it seems one of the most ridiculous of all the follies
of the ancien r^gim.e.
Yet they are justified in much of this by their experi
ence with the males of their race, to whom an honest and
protecting gallantry is quite an unknown sentiment, and
who are accustomed to stare into the faces of women on
the street and consider it a masculine privilege.
One pities the Cuban young man who is in love. He
cannot see her alone, and cannot come regularly to the
house until a fair understanding of his intentions is ar
rived at. And when at last he has attained the felicity
of being daily expected, he must do all his courting in
the presence of the family, and utter his sweetnesses
across the critical ear of his future mother-in-law. Until
they have been to church, they two are never left alone.
The whole family take sly turns in watching them. There
is a regular detail made, I think, from the older servants
of the house, to keep an eye upon them.
But there is human nature everywhere, even in Cuba,
and the two are always getting off to a window-seat or a
distant pair of chairs, though, with equal certainty, some
body sidles off in that direction and mounts guard. The
smitten pair do not walk together in the evening. He
does not accompany her to the theatre or to mass. They
enjoy all the bliss they can under great difficulty, and
with all mankind looking on.

62 CUBAN SKETCHES.
The indirect result of all this espionage, of course no
body in this land of custom has ever observed. There
are a great many small intrigues and innocent endeavors
to circumvent the detectives. There are eloquent glances,
signals, fan-talk, and the sly interchange of notes. Then
the iron-guarded window, instead of being a protection,
becomes a great convenience. It is more than the front
gate is with us. She knows when he will pass by, and
stands inside with a fair hand clasping the bars of her
cage, and waits for him. They stand there with the iron
between them, and talk. Every day it is so, and if
mamma wishes to stop it, she must come and stand in
the window also.
There are other respects in which the young man has
a hard time. He must come every day. He must, and
she holds him to the strict letter of this law. He is
bound to show, by every means in his power, that he
holds all other women in contempt and detestation. He
must not dance with any other, and had better not be
caught holding ofi to any other window bars, in any
other street. He tells all his friends about it, and she
all hers, and the matter is diligently discussed. If he
should fail to come around regularly every day he has to
tell a satisfactory story. I have known her to send her
brother after him. He takes his revenge after mar
riage. When the Cuban lady becomes a wife and mother,
then all her traits develop. She is domestic, faithful,
patient, and her lord's absolute property to an extent
unknown among northern people. She thinks she ought
to obey him, and he agrees with unanimity. She does
not seem to know that she is oppressed, and has never
made an effort toward emancipation. She does not

LA SE^ORITA. 63
know any thing about cooperative kitchens, or the Soro-
sis, or her inalienable right to serve on committees, edit
newspapers, and lecture. There never was a woman's
rights' convention in this happy land, or a Dorcas soci
ety, or even a crusade.
But she has a trait that enables her to make herself very
uncomfortable at times ; she is insanely jealous. When
she suspects nothing and nobody, she still keeps a wary
eye for a possible slip. She wishes her husband to come
and sit by her, and follow her about, and mutely beg her
to smile upon him. When he goes out, she wishes to
know where he is going and when he will return. When
he returns, she asks him where he has been. She does
not like him to dance with other women, and would
blindfold him, if she could, to keep him from looking at
them. Spain, I believe, never attempted to compete for a
prize upon school systems, or to exhibit a model school-
house for a medal. The stranger in Cuba may easily
see why. It is only in countries where the dominant
influence is Protestant, that female education is a matter
of public solicitude, interest, and care, equally with that
of males. The Cuban girl and boy are educated, as a
matter of fact, by the church. The girl is taught em
broidery and behavior as the chief things. There is no
system of public education that can be called a system,
and the only schools that can be considered free, are
usually under the care of priests and nuns. Those who
cannot afford to pay large tuition fees are at liberty
to keep their children at home. The sexes are rigor
ously separated, and mixed schools are unknown. The
little girl learns this above all things, that the other sex
are creatures she must avoid, distrust, and never seem
to have any thing to do with.

64 CUBAN SKETCHES.
This lady grows up the greatest stickler for proprieties
the world ever saw, yet, after, all, like all other women.
Beware of two things : that you never propose an innova
tion, and never joke with her. The first she refuses, no
matter what it is ; the last she does not understand.
She expects all males to talk to her with great earnestness.
A joke, or a play upon words, a pun or a double mean
ing, she has no understanding of, and looks upon any
man who practises them as a bad and an insincere per
son. Her life is taken up with very small things. She
reads little or nothing, and her neighborhood is her big
world. She is one of the most thorough and incurable
of provincials ; stereotyped and ancient in all her views
of life, afraid to violate a single rule of custom, prone to
believe undoubtingly without the thought of enquiry or
investigation, and dying at last as she has lived, she is
comforted immeasurably by the rites of the church and
the thought of a respectable funeral.
This is the Cubana as I have known her, and as she
casually seems. I have only an item to add to a dis
sertation which, to the feminine reader, must seem a
tedious characterization. Women are women, even in
Cuba and Turkey, and I have known dames here who,
but for the standing interference of the captain-gen
eral, were capable of governing the island, including their
husbands, and others who were statesmen-like judges of
the affairs of the neighborhood. Confined to such topics
of conversation as are common between women who do
not talk much with men, the talent for gossip becomes
greatly developed. The voices that lisp in gentle mon
osyllables when there is a male object of dread and
terror about, resound through the house at other times.
The slippered ease, the flimsy and draggled gown, the

LA SENORITA. 65
untidy hair and unwashed faces, the ceaseless rocking
to and fro, the general idleness, have their fitting con
comitant of talk. Yet she is a woman entirely, with
many a grace and charm to counterbalance her insipid
ity. With more tidiness, less leisure, and more the air of
having been shopping, or cooking, or even dusting the
furniture, she would be one whose restrained life and
ridiculous education would not have entirely spoiled as a
very charming woman.

CHAPTER VII.
SPANISH RULE IN CUBA,
THERE are about forty million people on this side
the Atlantic who speak the Castilian tongue.
The list of countries whose laws, language, religion, mode
of thought and domestic habits are essentially Spanish, is
a long one. Both in the old and the new worlds the ex
perience of the Spaniard as a ruler has been long and
varied enough to have changed his state-craft to a very
different thing from what it is, and to have guided him
at last to a change in that .strange colonial policy which
has cost him all his western possessions save Cuba and
one other little island, her neighbor.
Doubtless more elaborate information as to his char
acteristics as a ruler can be gleaned from a single graceful
and elaborate chapter of Prescott, and from the story of
those long years of tyranny, conspiracy, suspicion, and
blood in Mexico and South America, than from a hun
dred such dissertations as this on the Spaniard as the
ruler of Cuba in the year of grace one thousand eight
hundred and eighty-one. He has not changed much in
all the time that has passed since the day when that re
markable goat-herd, Pizarro, died on the staircase, kissing
the cross he had marked on the dusty floor with his own
blood, and of his general character not much more re
mains to be said than that which mankind have long
66

SPANISH RULE IN CUBA. 67
since learned by heart. Nevertheless, from my first ac
quaintance with him, the Spaniard in Cuba appeared to
me as a peculiar person, actuated by remarkable views of
his mission there. As he now appears to me, after con
siderable time passed in rather close association with
him, I purpose to speak of him here, begging the reader
to remember that I describe hina only generally, and that
there are individual exceptions to the general class. But
these exceptions shine as rarely as real diamonds in the
crown of a tragedy queen.
Fresh from the United States, and having all my ideas
of government formed by the institutions and laws of
the only — thus far — successful republic, I was not three
weeks a resident of the island before I had discovered
the cause of the Cuban war. Anybody would do the
same, for if there had been no war, I should have won
dered why there was not. The causes are everywhere,
n every thing. It is a government of the Spaniard, for
the Spaniard, and by the Spaniard. And yet, what I
have stated I discovered so easily, I believe the Span
iard himself does not know. Many an honest bodigero
heaped anathemas upon the heads of the insurgents
because he believed they began a war, merely from a de
sire to rule or ruin, against a government the most be
nign, just, and glorious heaven had ever given to man.
The wonder that at first possessed me at this astonishing
obliquity of the Spanish mind, at this utter disregard of
the lessons of the centuries, has not passed away with
custom, but has rather grown upon me.
The usual Spanish official presents himself to my mind
as a rather attenuated individual in a linen pin-striped
uniform, with a white cap that has a tortoise-shell visor,
with a little straight sword at his side, and a bamboo

68 CUBAN SKETCHES.
cane in his hand. He is most constant around custom
houses, the " palace" — they have a great many palaces
in Cuba, just as every primary school there is called a
" college," — and the hotels. He seems to have little to
do, and not to be paid much for doing it, and to be con
stantly seeking an opportunity for small speculation. By
leaving off the initial " s" of .the word, perhaps it would
be as correctly spelled.
This member of the civil service is supposed to have
his humble situation for life or during good, behavior,
after the manner of the servants of a king. But I am
afraid that, as is often the case with the American official,
eternal vigilance is the price of office. His place, as all
offices in Cuba, is eagerly coveted in Spain. Somebody is
always wishing to get it away from him, and I state it as
a thing often told me by officials themselves, that they
have frequently to pay to their patrons the whole of the
salaries received by them. It is the understanding upon
which political influence is exerted for them. The ac
companying understanding is, of course, that he must
make the situation pay him by his own ingenuity, and he
generally does.
The first essential to the transaction of business in any
government department, is to have an understanding with
the necessary official. Because you do this prudent
thing, it does not follow that you wish to violate any
law. You must see your man, or you cannot do any
business at all. The Spanish civil service is the best
trained in this respect of any in the world. There is
nothing equal to the perfect understanding each pub
lic official has of this branch of business.
If you are going away, or coming back, and wish
your trunks despatched quickly, your plan is to walk

SPANISH RULE IN CUBA. 69
boldly up to the examiner and give him a couple of
dollars, and he will chalk the baggage, and pocket the
money as though he had lent it to you a long time
ago, and was agreeably surprised at ever getting it
again. Wander where you will around the quays and
wharves of any Cuban seaport, and you will see guards
whose business it is to perform the double duty of
smuggling and preventing it at the same time. Places
of this kind are eagerly sought for, and could easily
be filled without any salaries being paid.
The governors of Cuba are all, and always, military
men. Every monarch of all he surveys in a district is a
brigadier. The captain-general has no claims to his
place as a statesman, but only as a soldier, and often he
is neither statesman nor soldier in point of fact. But life,
liberty, and property are as much at his disposition and
will, as they are in Persia at that of his majesty the Shah.
The laws of Spain, as that recognizing the validity of civil
marriages, liberty of worship, and similar liberties, have
never been in force in Cuba, because they lacked the ap
proval of the captain-general. The island is governed
by " decrees," which are curious pieces of law literature.
They read thus, for example :
" Juan Buenavantura and Piedra, Brigadier of the na
tional forces, decorated with the grand cross of San
Hermenegildo and other orders of ' honor, for acts on
the field of battle; Civil and Military Governor of
the District of Colon."
Then comes the decree in long-winded Spanish, tedious
and grand, ending with the name of the distinguished
gentleman who has been set forth at length in the pre
amble. This is a law. The captain-general at Havana,
for his part, promulgates these decrees when he wishes.

70 CUBAN SKETCHES.
on his own authority and by virtue of his office. The
brigadiers, who are really nobodies, notwithstanding the
grand cross of San Hermenegildo, always quote some
reason or authority.
There is a fashion in Cuba, strangely at variance with
the origin and growth of our common law, of permit
ting many of these decrees to fall into desuetude while
.still unrescinded. They seem in many instances to have
been made to be disregarded. People forget all about
them, for there is no such thing apparently as a statute-
book or a code. In a few weeks, that which was solemn
ly proclaimed becomes obsolete. Then, after a long time,
some man who has violated it because everybody else
did, or because he never heard of it, gets himself into
trouble about it.
I do not know what the salary of a brigadier in the
Spanish army is, but as governors they surround them
selves with dignity and honor, and soldiers and aids-de
camp. He always lives in " the Palace," which is usu
ally a tolerably large building. A few scattering and
untidy soldiers are always on guard at the entrance, and
he who is especially on duty drags his piece around after
him, talks, smokes, leans against the walls, and takes off
his coat. I never knew a guard in Cuba to seem to add
much to the grandeur or security of the thing guar
ded. All things in and about the palace are ceremonious.
The herd, who exist for the purpose of being governed,
must stay out. The brigadier holds " audiences " with
officials, and sends for whom he will. There is a deal of
bowing, and standing with the heels together, and dis
tant talk, and polite and insincere solicitude, and walking
backward. It is noticeable to frequent visitors that His

SPANISH RULE IN CUBA. 7I
Excellency holds much converse with his Chief of Police,
and wishes every day to know how things are going on
among his natural enemies, the governed.
The king's saint's day must be observed by holding a
"Court" at the Palace. Every official and all the sham
dignitaries, such as Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber,
Apothecaries to the Queen, etc., and all the Consuls,
dress in " strict etiquette, or uniform," as the invita
tions say, and go and stand in a row in a long
room, while His Excellency passes in review down the
middle and back again. When the king's birthday
comes, the same stupid ceremony is gone through with
again by all concerned, and so on for the whole royal
family. There are no refreshments.
The love of arms, and the delight in military display
and parade, still live in the constitution of the Spaniard.
We know how far the warlike spirit has carried him in
the past. He has been a great and most successful cam
paigner, undaunted by peril, hardship or disaster, and
enduring to the end and victory. But the ability to take
the hard knocks of real war, seems to have departed from
him. A commission and an uniform, a place in the chief
in importance of the bodies of the state, pay, authority,
cheap glory and a tin cross, are things desired above all
others by the ambitious young man in Spain. Yet it is
to be justly suspected that the Spaniards are the most
unmilitary people in Europe at this moment. Cuba is
full of volunteers and regulars. I have seen some of these
latter battallions when they landed in Havana to take
part in campaigns against the insurrectionists. They
came from Spain hatless, shoeless, and wanting even
whole breeches. They were a destitute crowd of undis
ciplined conscripts, young, green, awkward, and in all re-

72 CUBAN SKETCHES.
spects to be pitied. It is well enough to speak of such
being good enough as " food for powder." The purpose
of these, and all other troops, is to defeat the enemy.
These, without any prospect of ever being of any good,
had no chance of dying by bullets. They were the pre
destined food for disease, and long ere this have gone
the way of many battalions.
The military organizations of the " home-guard " va
riety have been in existence many years, uniformed,
armed, and drilled. Yet, if this page should fall under
the eye of a military man, he will be surprised at the in
evitable conclusion of inefficiency to which the most
superficial description of their movements must lead him.
They are the best-trained bodies on the island, and are
the boast of theinselyes and their compatriots, yet they
march through the streets at a gait they could not sus
tain for two miles. Some of their pieces are at half-cock,
some at full-cock, and some, as a glance is sufficient to
demonstrate, would be hard to cock at all. There is not
a bright bayonet or a clean barrel among three hundred
men. Some of them will be seen marching by the left
foot, and some by the right. If you step behind the
column of fours, moving up the street, you will see that
no two muskets have the same slant upon the shoulder,
and look like quills upon the fretful porcupine. At the
command, " Halt," every man brings his piece to an
" order," with an awkward, circular, let-go-and-catch-it-
again bang upon the ground from the right shoulder, and
I have seen the command given for a change of front,
the dressings or alignments, and even the " forward
march," and the movements executed, with the musket
still on the ground. Out of curiosity I have attended
guard-mount many times, and to this day have never

SPANISH RULE IN CUBA. 73
seen an inspection of the arms. I never saw a soldier,
either regular or volunteer, whom you would have recog
nized as one out of his uniform. The indescribable mili
tary bearing that usually marks the trained soldier, is
unusual even among the brigadiers and field-marshals.
Yet these " volunteers" are the organizations which have
ejected at least one captain-general from his place, have
caused such massacres as that of the students at Havana,
and are always spoken of as brave, efficient, distinguished,
gallant, etc. They are often under arms, are always
being marched and counter-marched up and down the
street, assist at all feast-day ceremonies, and are before
the public continually. It is one of those countries
where about every fourth man you meet on the street is
in uniform, where the military element predominates,
and where most that is done is expected to be done by
arms, pomp, military parade, and a brass band.
Somewhere in these pages I suppose I have alluded to
the form of government of Cuba as being inquisitorial.
The mere use of the word may not convey a clear idea
of the actual thing. Every citizen lives under a kind of
espionage. It is a government conducted by the police.
If the law were enforced as it stands no three persons are
allowed to converse together on the street, and this, not
to the end of dispersing the shade-seeking idlers, not a
decree against " loafing," but to prevent the discussion of
politics and treason. Every man who changes his resi
dence from one ward to another must report the change
to the police. If one, upon business or pleasure, finds a
journey necessary, he must carry a pass with him, setting
forth his name, age, occupation, social condition, and resi
dence, or run the risk of arrest as a suspicious character.
All social entertainments are looked after jealously, and

74 CUBAN SKETCHES.
a gentleman cannot give a ball at his residence without
police permission and surveillance. The government
knows, or has a right to know, the contents of telegraphic
messages, and forbids the use of cypher to all except
foreign officials to their governments. ^Persons are
arrested and placed in jail for receiving contraband news
papers from the United States, and the opening of pri
vate letters is a right always existing, even if not often
exercised. As I write this there lies beside me a news
paper in which is printed a " decree " that hereafter per
sons will not be allowed to carry their dead to the ceme
tery in the family or any other coach, but must employ a
hearse from an undertaker ; this, of course, in the interest
of the last-named lugubrious gentlemen, who have doubt
less been complaining that their occupation was departing
from them. It will be seen that the duty of a paternal
government is also to protect industry in special and
local cases.
A man's house is not his " castle " to any great extent
under Spanish rule, either in theory or in practice. The
illustration used by a western jurist, a friend of mine, that
"the winds of heaven may whistle round it, but the
King of England Z2.VMot" is not in point. No warrant of
search is necessary. It is a place where he is permitted
by the government to reside under certain restrictions
and conditions. His family is only his own in a certain
sense, and the governor may order the marriage of his
daughter to the man she wants, and papa does not want,
if only the church will sanction and sanctify it.
Mercantile and other establishments may be opened
from time to time, as trade and industry demand. But
the police department, the proper officials, the governor,
and all hands, including competitors and rival houses.

SPANISH RULE IN CUBA. 75
must first be consulted. In a word, there is nothing in
all mundane affairs, or connected with the interests of
men, that the government may not prevent, order, or
modify. It embodies the only ideas of rule, law, order,
and political happiness the Spaniard knows. He, as a
Spaniard, lives as happily under it as we do under ours,
and so would the Cuban, were he not discriminated
against and treated as one who has no part in it except
to pay taxes, without any of the privileges and "fueros "
which, few as they seem to us, the Spaniard highly
values. I have asked certain Spaniards why, Cuba being a
bilious country, the government did not issue a decree
that the inhabitants should take a general depuratory
once a month. They said, solemnly, they did not know,
and seemed to wonder why indeed. As a joke, it failed,
as usual, to have its intended effect, and, I believe, rather
left the impression that in the United States we have
such regulations.
A very prominent piece of history is the Stamp Act of
the British parliament, talked of ever since 1765, the
cause of the tolling of the colonial bells in token of the
" funeral of liberty," and the calling to order of Patrick
Henry in the Assembly of Virginia. The Stamp Act,
which has been in force in Cuba this century past, or
more, has had no such effect, though a precisely similar
measure. Time immemorial every man who has had any
use for a contract, a deed, an affidavit, has had to pay
extra for his stationery. And " without representation,"
too, but nobody has ever thought of complaining of it.
The greater grievance consists in the fact that no Cuban
may hold any administrative place or office. He may
sometimes be a clerk in governmental employ, no more.
He is told plainly that he has no part in the government
of his country. The doctrine of Spanish statesmen is

^6 CUBAN SKETCHES.
that those most interested in the welfare of a colony are,
by that interest, rendered unfit to govern it. Cuba exists
for the benefit of Spain, and is skilfully managed to that
sole end. The companion doctrine is, that no subsequent
right, no change, can ever impair the supreme right ac
quired by conquest. The Spaniard is an unconverted
feudalist of this century. Cuba is a possession to him,
not a country. He does not pretend any excuse of ne
cessity, but sits squarely down upon his right as lord and
master. He says distinctly that there are no rights, and
nothing but duties, for what socialists call the " people."
Representation in the C6rtez, such as it is, is a Spaniard's
privilege, and the payment of taxes a vassal's duty. He
is arrogant about it, and bears himself in all his words
and ways accordingly. Does the government of Palestine
by the Romans, in the days of Christ, offer any contrast
to this? Was the government of Britain by the Nor
mans essentially different ?
Though the war was a failure, or will prove to have
been a failure, the mother-country has made, or is said to
have made, some concessions to bring it to an end. No
matter, the theory of the government remains the same,
and in a year or two the fact of it will be found to be
unchanged. You cannot find in all the island a Spaniard
so far-seeing, so wise in his generation, so learned in the
common wisdom that experience brings, as to know the
direct and sure result of a colonial policy of the sixteenth
century. He is oblivious to the lesson of his loss of all
his South American and Mexican Empire. He will
lose Cuba ; — with all the patched and inconsistent
concessions he may have lately made to the insurgents,
he will sometime lose it, and it is hardly worth while
longer for him to defend his ancient doctrines by force
either of argument or arms.

CHAPTER VIII.
WAR-TIME AMONG THE NON-COMBATANTS.
THERE was a period of the Cuban war, some three
or four years ago, when you heard every day
something about the " Trocha." This was a line more
or less like the equator in being imaginary, and was
drawn across the island from north to south, duly garri
soned and freely picketed, and beyond which it was said
the rebels should never come.
But they did come. Wherever or whatever the
" Trocha" was, and I confess to some vagueness on the
question myself, they carefully looked for, and found it,
and came over among us non-combatants. There is no
" Trocha" now. After the rebels demonstrated that it
was easy to cross a theory, armed and defended in theory,
it faded from the nomenclature of the country. But
while it existed one was constantly hearing the remark
that such and such things did not exist this side of the
" Trocha," meaning the side upon which the Spaniards,
and I, and all the observant and non-fighting people,
were. If a man was missing, it was said of him by his
bereaved neighbors that he had gone to the " Trocha,"
as the barbarians of the territories say, " gone up the
flume," or we, refined, say poetically, " where the wood
bine twineth." But while this celebrated line of demar
cation existed, whatever sanguinary scenes may have
77

78 CUBAN SKETCHES.
occurred on its other side, there were certain scenes and
incidents, doings and feelings, on this side, which I pur
pose to try to sketch, being my nearest approach to the
" war correspondent " during the nine years' struggle.
' Western Cuba is quite as full of Cubans born and edu
cated as the eastern half of the island is, where the in
surrectionists had it quite their own way for so long.
These of western Cuba are also rebels. I never heard of
a Cuban who was not such. They confess it — among
themselves; the Spaniards know it. But they kept
rather quiet. The government was apt to arrest them
on suspicion, and while it may not have angered them,
it certainly annoyed them, and they usually tried to
avoid any cause of offense.
I have heretofore in these pages given my impressions
of the amiable town youth of the tropics, his manners,
appearance, and clothes, and it cannot be expected by
the reasonable reader that I shall describe him now as
breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the
Spaniard. He hated the latter all the same though,
and was willing to sacrifice all his country relations in the
cause. There are Cubans enough in every town, and scattered
throughout the country, to occasionally do something
terrible, and at least to make the minority fear them. I
do not believe there is another country in a single north
ern state, where two classes, feeling as these do toward
each other, could live together calmly through a single
summer. There was no serious obstacle to hinder any
Cuban who wished from joining his brethren in the
field. With a little vigilance and pains, he could always
have done so. But he preferred joining his brigade in
New York, staying a few months or years, getting his

WAR-TIME AMONG THE NON-COMBATANTS. 79
documentary evidence of United States citizenship, and
coming back again exempt from any and all military
service on either side, and thereafter fighting his battles
with the Spaniard in a consulate of his adopted country,
and quarrelling with him upon every pretext, through
and by the disgusted victim of all parties and all follies,
the American Consul.
I have frequently heard that money, arms, and other
necessary things were liberally supplied by the people of
western Cuba to their struggling brethren in the field.
But I believe even the Spaniards did not give themselves
any great uneasiness about these iniquitous little treasons.
They may have been sent ; I am not denying the fact,
and am merely, after an inward struggle, allowing my
self to have a small and insignificant doubt upon the
subject. There is one fact which is very nearly conclusive as to
the interest in, and sacrifice for the war, felt and made by
the city Cubans : I never heard of a girl having a lover
in the insurrection who dreamed and prayed and waited
for her hero while he fought for his country. It was a
bad sign.
If ever the fight is fought out, if ever Cuba is won for
her own people by force of arms, it will be jay the moun
taineers and men of the chapparal. It will be the victory
of the Guajiros.
Notwithstanding all this, the mere fact of the existence
of a hatred which is universal between Cubans aud Span
iards, brought even these non-combatants into some con
nection with the last great struggle for independence.
The episodes which mark this connection are innumer
able, extending through all the relations of private life.
The murder of the eight school-boys in Havana, for the

8o CUBAN SKETCHES.
alleged offense of breaking the small glass pane in the
monument of a noted Spaniard, is a story that hardly
needs to be recounted here. Incidents very serious in
one view are quite ridiculous in another. These young
victims of fanatical revenge are not the only school-boys
who have been in political difficulty in Cuba,
In a certain college at Havana there was a print of the
then Queen of Spain, Ysabella Segunda, — the notorious
Isabel, mother of King Alfonso, sometimes privately
called by the Cubans " Alfonsito." One day the glass
fixed over her majesty's picture was found broken, and a
zealous inquiry was at once instituted. It was found that
the sacrilege had been perpetrated by one of the two or
three youngsters who had been playing with a ball. It
was also discovered in the course of the examination that
some points of the shattered glass had cut the paper and
torn the effigy of the royal Bourboness. Thereupon a
jury of medical men was called to decide whether the
cuts and scratches, made by the said broken glass, rup
tured by the said boys, were or were not upon vital parts
of her majesty's person as represented in said print. The
intention was to convict and punish with a severity pro
portioned to the danger to the queen from the wounds
inflicted by an attempted assassination in effigy. I for
get if the doctors quarrelled as usual, or if they decided
that the wounds had torn only her costume. At any rate,
the regicides escaped with life. It was a calm and judicial
trial. The gallant volunteers do not seem to have gotten
it into their hands.
I knew of an old lady, the mother of several sons.
Some of these had gone from home, and one or two still
remained with her. From one of the absent ones she re
ceived a letter once a week, which was read to her, she

WAR-TIME AMONG THE NON-COMBATANTS. 8 1
betng quite aged. He stated from time to time that he
was coming home erelong, and his mother was comforted,
not expecting to live long, but still hoping to see her son
again. But he never came, and his mother died. Then,
for the first time, the neighbors dared to speak of the
deception that had kept a pang the less from her last
days. The absent son lay buried in the sand of a lonely
coast, killed by the Spaniards as a member of one of the
numerous Cuban expeditions. His brother had written
all his letters in the very house where his mother re
ceived them, for the mother's sake pure fiction, every
one. From the beginning of the insurrection to November,
1874, about four years, there had been killed by the Span
iards, not in battle, but as civilians, five thousand nine
hundred and seventy-two persons. Of this number the
church has record, as having afforded them her ministra
tions as to those about to die. How many more died
who were left where they fell, and of whose death there is
no record, the reader can guess quite as approximately
as I can. It may be that civil war brings such results
naturally and inevitably. But five thousand people, in a
little island, tried, if they were tried, and shot to death
for suspected disloyalty, or for giving aid and comfort to
rebellion, is a fearful record.
Apropos of trials for treason, inciting insurrection, and
giving aid to rebellion, I am reminded of the story of the
advocate. This man was called by way of pseudonym,
"El Citado" — the called, or cited. A certain mulatto
was tried for inciting the negroes to insurrection, and this
advocate, or fiscal, was acting as prosecuting attorney,
and gave great zeal to his side of the case. As was to be
expected, the mulatto was found guilty and condemned,

82 CUBAN SKETCHES.
wrongfully, as was generally thought. When he was
called to hear his sentence, and was, according to custom,
asked if he had any thing to say, he rose and turned to
his prosecutor, and with the certainty of death to add
solemnity to his words, addressed him thus : " I go to^my
death, and as to my guilt or innocence, I have no 'useless
words to say ; I am already condemned. But you,
Seflor Don Jos6 M  , I do summon and demand to
appear with me and answer before the bar of God ! ! "
The scene and the words turned the attention of all
present toward the advocate. The incident was not
forgotten, and invested the lawyer with a supersti
tious interest. The boys in the street used thereafter
to whisper mysteriously : " There goes El Citado ! "
and in less than a year Don Josd obeyed the sum
mons. So the story lives.
I know of Cubans whose deaths go far toward re
deeming the fame of all their brethren. The little,
long, ungallant, unmilitary war, has been accentuated
by vindictiveness, persecution, and revengeful brutality,
and illuminated by instances of individual heroism.
One, going to his death, loaded with manacles, accused
his guards of cowardice. " It requires eight of you,"
he said, " to keep one man, chained as I am, from get
ting away from you," and he harangued the Spanish
soldiers thus, much to the delight of the populace, un
til his tongue was stopped by bullets. From the be
ginning to the end, if indeed it is the end, " Cuba
Libre" has been a cry as stirring as "Santiago." The
dream of freedom, brighter in the thoughts of men than
dreams or hopes of aught else, has been as much an
incentive to enthusiasm as was ever the anthem of Rouget
de Lisle.

WAR-TIME AMONG THE NON-COMBATANTS. 83
On July 4, 1877, Luis Morejon, an officer in the insur
gent army, was shot by order of a court-martial. He had
been captured after being severely wounded a few days
previously. He had a brother, a man well known to me,
to whom he wrote a last letter, short, unsentimental and
pithy, scf far as it was legible. He said he had no regrets
in dying ; that he had been right in taking arms against
the Spaniards, and that, while obliged to them for their
offer of religious consolation at the hands of a priest, he
had declined it because he did not believe their religion.
This letter was forwarded to its destination, but pre
viously was changed, not by substitution or erasure, but
by mutilation of the characters ; making " i " to seem
" t," and " u " to seem " o," and so on through the whole,
with such care and pains that at first view it was a mere
jumble of meaningless characters and nonsense. Upon
the manliness or decency of killing a man and then mu
tilating his last letter, still sending it, comment is un
necessary. Two Cubans, acquaintances of mine, one Sunday morn
ing discovered themselves to be invested by the police in
their office. As was afterward known, they were en
tirely ignorant and innocent of any offense against the
government. But knowing, as they must have known,
that there was some mistake in the proceedings, and no
cause for arrest, they acted as though they had been dis
covered in the perpetration of a capital crime. One of
them bestirred himself to get out of town, and going to
a friend's house, was taken by a negro and secreted in a
cave. The other was actually arrested, but gave his pa
role that he would not escape, and was not guarded. In
^bout three minutes thereafter he was also gone, and
having found means in a friend's house to disguise

84 CUBAN SKETCHES.
himself as an old negro, finally reached the same place of
refuge with his companion. A week or more passed.
Diligent search was made for them without any result,
and they were fed and guarded by the negro, whose
knees they embraced, whose hands they wrung, and
whose freedom they promised to buy for him, begging
he would not betray them'.
Finally, the adventurous skipper of a little schooner
agreed to carry them to the United States for a certain
sum, if they were placed on board of him during the night,
and they were taken off a stormy coast, at great risk of
swamping the boat, and put on board, ragged, forlorn,
scared, and willing to do any thing, pay any thing.
But the same night the vessel was searched by the
police, and one of them found and brought on shore. He
then insisted that his companion was on board, and must
also be brought. But a further search failed to reveal
him, and the vessel sailed. The captured one within an
hour had told the story of the cave, who the friend was
who had assisted him to disguise himself, and all who had
aided and assisted him in any way, including the men
who had risked their lives in getting him on board.
In a month the affair had blown over, being a mistake,
and the man whom the police really wanted having
reached New York about the time they began to want
him. The fugitive came back from the United States,
and both recovered their usual sleek demeanor. But the
boatmen were never paid ; the slave whose hands they
kissed with tears and pleadings is still a slave, and they
do not know him at all.
Yet the man of these two who desired to tell, even
before he was asked, the doings of his friends in his be
half, and implicate them with him, and who was even

WAR-TIME AMONG THE NON-COMBATANTS. 85
very anxious that his partner should not escape, and who,
when he was free again, repudiated every promise made
while in distress to poor men, even to a slave, was the
brother of him who was shot on the fourth of July, and
the same who received the mutilated last letter.
Of such incidents the history of this strange little war
is full. As I write these lines I know that peace is said
to have been won and the insurrection crushed. There
are fifteen hundred soldiers in the town, fresh from the
field, without tents or rations, and billeted upon the inhab
itants. To one battalion of them alone the government
owes a million dollars back pay. There will never be writ
ten any history of what has passed. The struggle has had
no interest from a military point, and its operations have
not been stategic. It is a war that has been fought out
without bayonets and without artillery. Whoever may
have won or lost, there was no question about the bal
ance of power, or the re-partition of territory. That it
was a just and legitimate struggle for independence there
is no question, and this kind of contest is usually a war
of hate as well. I do not know the terms of peace, — only
what it is said they are. A year or two, or ten, will pass,
and then reprisals, prescriptions, and revenges will begin
again. " Nosotros " will come forward refreshed. The
great model of the longing Cuban heart, the Republic of
the United States of America, will still, God grant, sit
secure across the narrow water, and by her example urge
the islander to another effort to make for himself a little
government like her. The people of the wood and
mountain, the hope of Cuba, who have fought once, may
fight again. Calm consideration of the past may be use
ful in preventing a repetition of the experiment on a day's
notice, without concert, supplies, plans, or experience.

86 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Yet this, with such a beginning, lasted nine years, cost
seven hundred millions, and killed one hundred and
sixty thousand Spaniards. The Cuban may find means
to do better next time. Ten years hence there will still
be men who have lived in the woods, who have ambushed
convoys and burned sugar-houses, who have cloven skulls
with the machete at Las Tunas and Palo Seco, and who
may succeed in another trial.
That these are mere speculations I shall not deny.
The difference between ourselves and the Cubans is
naturally and unchangeably such that we cannot judge
him. Time often brings changes which all the strenuous
efforts of armed force failed to bring. I only add one
reflection : the Cuban can win his own island if he will,
and can hold it until it becomes a black republic or a
government of some kind in which the negro shall have
turned master. The grist is in the mills of the gods al
ready, and he who invented that apt simile has also said
that they grind slowly, and exceedingly small, and every
grain.

CHAPTER IX,
CUBAN TOILERS,
IT would be the repetition of a very trite axiom,
to say that the negro in every country is a pe
culiar character with a strange history. Except the
old story of the Jews, his is the most pathetic in the an
nals of mankind. Wherever he has been carried, he has
remained in all essentials the same. He retains, with his
color, all the African nature, and, at the same time, trav
esties all the ways of the superior race. To him, in our
own country, may be traced a school of song which is the
only distinctive American music, — sweet, melancholy,
sentimental, and, at the same time, grotesque. To him
is due the dialect, the modified English pronunciation, of
the cultivated people of the Southern States, and in
Cuba he speaks the Spanish with the same elimination of
harsh sounds, and the same leaving off all unnecessary
syllables, with the quaint forms of expression which he
would invent upon the basis of any living language.
The negro is very tropical. Though we may lose sight
of the fact in the North, it is his great characteristic. If
he had lived in Labrador for ten generations, he would
still be found to be as black as ever, and with the same love
for a degree of natural heat which enables him to dis
pense with a shirt. In Cuba, he lies sleeping in the full
blaze of a sun that would cook beef. On our western
87

88 CUBAN SKETCHES.
plains, as a soldier, he shivers around a scanty camp-fire
of buffalo-chips and sage-brush, cheered by the idea of
heat where there is nothing but smoke. Clumsy and
shuffiing in gait, he can dance the legs off of any other
man, and conspicuously inadequate in the matter of
calves, and often naturally malformed in the shape of his
feet, he has yet done more hard work, and been kept more
constantly at it, and has received less for it, than any
other in the history of the human race.
Cuba is a strange combination of misery and happiness
to the African. It is a natural place of residence for him.
He grows strong physically, and is a man robust and
splendidly developed. He eats well and sleeps well, and,
under favorable circumstances, is prolific beyond exam
ple. With the slightest excuse for being so, he is happy.
The climate and every thing about it agrees with him.
He finds his natural surroundings in these thick and tan
gled woods, and among palms, plantains, and cane. If
you should discover a troop of monkeys, or a flock of
paroquets, clustered among the bare and sighing branches
of a Canadian forest, you would behold a no more really
incongruous picture than when you see a black man amid
northern frost and snow.
There is this difference between our country negro and
his brother in Cuba. The first is, often without knowing
it, unhappy all his life because he is cold ; the latter,
treated infinitely worse than a mule, a mere human ani
mal in common appreciation of those who own him, is
comparatively happy, without knowing it, and without
knowing a moment of peace.
I am not able to state what proportion, in point of
numbers, the negro bears to the whole population of the
island. I should judge from general impressions that

CUBAN TOILERS. 89
Cuba was nearly one-half black. In the towns large
numbers are free, and all are less subject to perpetual and
grinding drudgery than in the country. There is a pecu
liarity of the Latins in their association with the negro.
They are the most exacting taskmasters and relentless
slave-drivers in the world, and yet, there does not exist
among them that class feeling, or, in . other words, that
hatred of the negro because he is a negro, so common
among very good people in the United States. I have
never heard here the equivalent of that frequent expres
sion of the old times among my high-toned ancestors, " a
miserable free nigger," except from an American or Eng
lishman who had attained the dignity of superintending
an engine on some plantation, or of a mariner's gin-mill
in town. A negro once free is presumed to have the right
to be so. His children may go to school if they like, and
all occupations are open to him, so far as I know. There
is no law against his riding in a cab if he has got the
requisite twenty cents, and musicians who have studied in
Paris sit beside him in the orchestra and fiddle operas.
The special amusements of the free negro are left to him
in peace, and his special occupations he pursues in com
pany with all other laborers. There are some things he
doesn't do, for while adult white men are sometimes
boot-blacks, the negro never is. He is often a skilful
stevedore or stower of ships' cargoes, and while a large
number of white men follow the same occupation, I have
never heard of any persistent effort to drive him off.
I do not mean to say there is no social distinction
against him. He lives and has his pleasures apart, but is
not shunned, hated, driven from the enjoyment of public
resorts and occupations, because he is black. Nor is the
man who chooses to associate with him, as many do more

90 CUBAN SKETCHES
or less, abandoned, shunned, and forsaken on that ac
count. Miscegenation is going on so continually that the
character of the island is rapidly changing in point of
population. It is the inestimable privilege of every white
man who chooses to incur the responsibility of a colony,
to have a family of mulatto children, almost regardless
of his other and more proper family relations. Very
many have only the tan-colored family with a black
mother, and seem content. I have seen men walking
among the brilliant crowds of the Plaza with black
women. A father may be seen taking his mulatto family
for an airing, and acting very much as any father would.
There is many a family in Cuba, of social position and
wealth, whose members have a certain look about the
eyes and lips, to say nothing of the complexion, that is
not Spanish.
In a hundred years the probabilities are that Cuba will
be a black country. The negro is physically strong and
prolific, and happy enough to crowd out the pure white
element, which decays in a country never intended for
white men. The process is going on much more rapidly
than many a social revolution is of which people speak
every day, and are sure of.
To return to the present life of the negro in Cuba, noth
ing about him attracts the notice of the stranger so quickly
as his amusements. I write the word in the plural, though
he has really only one, — dancing. The peculiar negro
dance seems to solace him amid all his sorrows. Any Sun
day evening you may see him at it, and if you do not see
him you may hear him. I think if there is any faculty
which the negro has to perfection it is that of musical
time. I do not say tune, though, in many instances, he is
also a musician. His music in Cuba — that which you

CUBAN TOILERS. 9I
hear, and thereby know he is having a good time — is only
a drum, and one that he made himself. The man who
does the drumming does not do it for hire. There is no
piper to pay after the fun is over, for he seems to enjoy
himself more than any other man in the crowd. He
holds the drum between his legs, and beats it with his
open hands. He rides it, as it were, and at a furious gait.
He writhes and wriggles with the exquisite pleasure it
gives him, and the perspiration trickles from all the prom
inences of his body. In the meantime, a buxom wench
and a bare-footed laddie are dancing a kind of African
can-can in the little open space left free for them by the
crowd. She, it would seem, is coy ; he is amorous. Many
times they wriggle and shuffle round the footpath, and,
finally, it ends as it began, and pair number two stand
up. There is no skill in it, and no beauty. The pleasure,
which is evidently very great, is derived from the act of
moving the body in time with the melancholy and mo
notonous notes of the drum. But the country-dances of
the whites distinctively are the same thing. They are
willing to dance all night, in couples, in any country vil
lage, to a tune of only five notes repeated over and over
upon a battered guitar.
Sometimes I have heard the Cuban negro sing. It
was ever a lugubrious performance, and had the semi-
religious or solemn refrains which are characteristic of
plantation melodies and revival hymns. Like our own
fellow-citizen, this one is always either .singing or " talk
ing to himself." You hear the same animated discus
sions, too, among knots of them gathered on the shady
side of a building ; dogmatic assertion by one, dogged
and contemptuous denial by the other ; solemn and
weighty arguments, in turn scouted and ridiculed. " Can

92 CUBAN SKETCHES.
the Ethiopian change his skin," or, we may add, his
docile, wordy, gandiloquent, merry, unsubstantial char
acter ?
But this is the man who, on the plantation, is driven
every night to the square barracks that are his quarters,
and locked in, like pigs to herd together, he and his fel
lows, until morning and toil come again. He is one of a
" gang," and the emblem of authority under which he
works is a long whip. Among his familiar things are
stocks, manacles, and the whipping-post. Mules and
oxen are often treated with some consideration ; slaves
never. The annals of every sugar plantation are writ
ten in red. The overseer is professional, as a drover or
butcher is, only he drives men and women. I have seen
and grown used to the chain-gang. I have read of the
French galleys. But it seems to me there is no being
so hopeless, no mortal who drags out so cruel and cheer
less an existence as the Cuban slave. This is a state
ment that every interested man will deny, but never
explain how it is that a situation which tells its own
story has so deceived your eyes and ears. Perhaps the
howls of whipped slaves, that you have heard, are happy
cries. Perhaps as thankless and utterly unrewarded toil
as a mule's is, from early infancy to old age, is a happy
lot. The man who tells you so, being interested, as
nearly every man in Cuba is, possibly believes it, but it
does not seem probable. By and by they begin to
speak profoundly of the incapacity of " the nigger " for
any thing better, and so excuse what has already been
denied. I do not like to write of the institution as I
have seen it about me every day. They may talk of
" free Cuba " as they will ; slavery is as dear to the heart
of the Creole as it is to the Spaniard, and as dear to

CUBAN TOILERS. 93
John Bull and the Yankee as to either. The horrors are
unmitigated to this day. There are tales to tell, and I
could tell them, as could any man who has resided on the
island. I have seen the bleeding backs myself, and in
the streets of Cuban towns the wretches who wore upon
their necks the pronged iron collars which made it seem
as though they must sleep standing. Negro women
have described to me the days when they were laid upon
the ground with their bodies in a shallow excavation,
and thus whipped, to prevent the destruction of two
lives. Some of the young heroes and statesmen whom I
have described in a previous chapter are supported by
the labor of women whom they own, and whose wages
they promptly collect. Though the law declares that
every slave who has attained the age of sixty years is
free, and every child born is free, there is no planta
tion-master who would not smile at your suggestion
that he did not own every " hand " on his place. The
old man who has worked all his life for others may de
cline to be turned adrift when he is old, and leave his
master to say thereafter that he likes his doom. The
decrees alluded to are, and were, and always will be, a
blind and pretence that everybody understands.
I mentioned, in a former chapter, the fact that there
was a great deal of rocking-chair and not much thrift in
the Cuban woman's life. But the inquisitive reader asks :
Who, then, orders the household ? I answer, the ser
vants. There are usually enough of them to do it. This
is the town, and not the plantation. Five of them here
are as one anywhere else in the world. They literally
" run " the establishment. They nurse the babies, attend
to the marketing, order the table, dust the furniture, and
make the beds. They all eat, too, and all have friends.

94 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Perhaps it is cheap, but it does not seem so, and people
chng to the system, " the institution," when they have
it, as the greatest of blessings and chiefest among ten
thousand missionary charities.
On account of this great charity, however, viewed in
another light, the debauchery of this island is nearly com
plete. Were it a theme for ears polite, I might devote
a whole chapter to " The Quadroon in Social Ethics."
But nobody seems to realize in it a social and moral
curse. We did not when we had it, and refused to listen
to any such maudlin-sentimental view.
The great day of the negro in Cuba is the sixth of January
of every year, — " All King's Day." This, by an immemo
rial custom, they have all to themselves. They parade the
streets clad in the barbaric and hideous finery of Africa.
They dance to the monotonous thumpings of the African
drum, and with savage gestures and contortions. They
dance and beg from door to door, and it is " nigger's
day " without any admixture. It is quaint and strange
the first time, to the extent of causing one to rub his eyes
and wonder where he is. But afterward it is an unmiti
gated bore to all but the interested parties. There is no
spectacle like it in any other civilized region. The slave-
trade was active twenty-five years ago, and many of thc
Africans yet speak the language of their tribe. On this
day they are simply recalling the. songs and scenes of
Guinea. I have frequently heard people say : " Now
look at those niggers ; if they were let alone, they'd go
straight back to barbarism." I have heard ten people
make the same wise remark in one day, meaning thereby
that slavery and the slave-trade were Christianizing and
humanizing agencies. And they never thought of the
fact that these people were, most of them, barbarians in

CUBAN TOILERS. 95
their youth, and were beating their drums, and dancing
their dances, and clad in their barbaric finery, for only
one day in the year. All the rest of the time they are
as civilized as slaves ever have any inducement to be.
But I suppose on this day they ought to put on clean
frocks, and sit down quietly, and read nice books, and
converse, and sing hymns, and deliver addresses, and
give tea-parties. Then they would show that they were
human. A great contrast to all this, is the negro's fellow-toiler,
John Chinaman. He is also, to all intents, a slave.
Neither can he change his character in any country. He
is our antipode. He never can learn to drink whiskey,
never wants to fight all mankind in the open street for
love of the species, never acquires the way of spending
in one glorious night all he has earned in a month. He
has here, as in California, three great characteristics : he
is always sober, always at work, and is the most devoted
and inveterate gambler alive.
I may have occasion hereafter to allude to the China
man as a plantation-slave, and any thing further I shall
say here concerning him, has reference to him as having
passed safely through the snares set to lengthen his term
of service, escaped the chain-gang, and as being finally
at work for himself.
He has not yet, in Cuba, succeeded in becoming a
washwoman. The man is not yet come who is capable
of taking that business out of the hands of the coal-
black negress, who can take a shirt in a moderately
crumpled condition from the hands of its owner, wear it
herself until it is in a fit condition to command her high
skill at the tub, and afterward make it whiter and
smoother, and tear the sleeves out of it quicker, and gen-

9^ CUBAN SKETCHES.
eraily make it go to the old linen faster than any other
being in any other land. Her performances in this line
have the shine of genius.
The Chinaman in Cuba has three specialties : he cooks,
he peddles sweetmeats, and he keeps a fruit-store. In
this first department he may be considered as fairly es
tablished, and it is a wonder to see how he can attain the
peculiar Cuban style of street " dulces," and even do it
better. At first he was a failure in the business, because
he had not the lung-power to bawl his wares through the
streets, and did not sell any thing for lack of viva voce.
But he conquered the difficulty, and now you meet him
everywhere with a long red box upon his head, which he
beats constantly with a small stick. You are hardly ever
out of hearing of this wooden tinkling, and it has become
the, trade-mark of the dulce business. It is of no use any
longer for anybody to howl and cry up and down the by
ways of mankind that he is selling guava jelly, and grated
cocoa-nut, and " milk-cream " of the very best. It is a
country of custom, and the custom is to wait for him
who passes by smiting a box.
But it is John's fruit-store that is the queerest of mer
cantile establishments. His genius specially assists him
in this avocation, and he gains money thereby. His
" store " is generally the smallest, not the largest, he can
find, and he and his numerous friends and acquaintances
keep it always full. You cannot tell who is the head of
the house, though there is such a head. You may exam
ine it carefully, and not be able to tell where it is the
proprietor sleeps and eats. It is dirty and bad-smelling
and close. But when the master sallies forth into the
street he is as clean as though he had just emerged from
a clean business and a model establishment. He is al-

CUBAN TOILERS. 97
ways neat, and his house is always dirty. It is among
the contradictions of his character.
The choice of a small house in place of a large one,
shows that the Chinese necessity of crowding a dense
population into a small space, as is the case in Chinese
seaboard cities, has become an inherited habit that clings
to him wherever he goes. The same necessity makes him
an economist of the first class, and enables him to work
for less wages and make more money than any other man.
All his national habits cling to him. When he first ar
rived in Cuba, a miserable stranger in an inhospitable
land, bound besides to a term of slavery, his pig-tail was
cut off, and he was called by a new name, after some one
of the saints, as Jos6, or Crispin, or Diego. After some
manner he was made to renounce his paganism, and fit
himself for a residence upon holier soil than China, and
altogether may be said to have been fumigated thor
oughly. Yet, if you enter the back room of his store,
you will find there enthroned in a red shrine the deity he
still believes in, with every appurtenance of his peculiar
worship. It is all wrong, and the height of unconverted
and unregenerate paganism in a country devoted to the
true church. Yet where, either in our own land or Cuba,
can you find another man who keeps his God so near his
business, and is religious enough to make his shop a
temple. During all his residence in Cuba, which in most cases
is perpetual, John Chinaman sees the' slant-eyed beauties
of his own race only in his dreams. She has not been al
lowed to accompany him hither. No man can tell
whether he longs, or how much, for a sight of one of the
little queerly-dressed, short-footed, moon-faced beauties
of his own country. No one knows any thing about his

98 CUBAN SKETCHES.
emotions, or if he has any. He never complains, never
cries, seldom sings. But he is human, and womanless,
and therefore either very happy or quite miserable, ac
cording to his youthful experiences.
But not quite always. There are cases where he has
managed to kindle a flame in the dusky bosom, and
where such is the case, it is commonly believed she has
a good and easy time of it. I know two or three such
families, and affairs seem to go on with them in much the
regular way. I have seen ]6hn, pater, giving his eldest-
born a turn at spanking with a barrel-stave, for naughty
and disrespectful language to his said papa. That was
regular. This morning I saw a natty and clean young
Chinaman passing along the street with an equally good-
looking girl. She was young and vivacious, and they
evidently belonged together. But the girl's eyes and
color showed that she was the daughter of a Chinaman
herself, and a quite plausible argument in favor of the
mixture of the Asiatic and the negro. I know a China
man who has toiled for years to buy out of her original
condition of servitude his very dark-complexioned wife.
He has succeeded in doing so,, and meantime they have
reared quite a family. But all the time she has been in
the habit of irrigating her voluptuous system with aguar
diente, and has raised the deuce with her long-suffering
husband, and has even, 't is said, on sundry occasions,
conciliated him with a good-sized club. This was not
regular. I once heard some Chinese laborers singing. It was in
a lonely place, and while I do not know what possessed
them to so forget themselves, I presume they thought no
one was nigh to listen. It was peculiar music ; five fal
setto voices pitched at a high key, and the little tune

CUBAN TOILERS. 99
ranging through only four or five notes of an octave. It
was doleful, melancholy, croaky, froggish, and yet at the
end of a stanza there was sometimes a little weak laugh
ter. They were having a tremendously hilarious time for
Chinamen. Before that time I had never heard John
either sing or laugh. I have never heard him since.
I differ with some observers in believing that the Chi
naman has no emotions. He only conceals them. They
are named in his language, and there is even Chinese
poetry. The peculiar thing about him here and every
where is his changelessness. He will serve civilized peo
ple who use knives and forks, and will lay a dining-table
as though born to the manner, and will cook the most ap
petizing dishes after the fashion of those whom he serves.
If, after a long time, he changes his garments for those
commonly worn, you will never surprise him with a red
neck-tie, or a striped vest, or a green shirt, or any thing
loud or barbaric. As in his 'management of the kitchen
or the dining-table, he seems to have a rare faculty of
understanding the proper white-man's rule. But all this
is not John as he actually is. Some day you will find
this same man among his countrymen, dressed in his
tunic and wide trousers, with slippers on his feet made of
straw, and a shining coil wound about his skull, eating
strange dishes made of unknown things, and conveying
soup to his mouth with two small sticks. You may con
vert him, and he will still offer the worship of fire to his
hideous deity in his joss-house. Accustom him to airy-
apartments, and clean floors, and all the ways of beauty
and comfort as long as you will, and as soon as oppor
tunity offers he will go off and enjoy himself amid the
reek and slime of a little hole so full of his own fellow-
countrymen that no more can enter.

lOO CUBAN SKETCHES.
Whenever, in the time to come, the Chinaman shall
have gained over a district of the New World to himself,
— and he will do it,v — he will make that district like Can
ton or Macao, in no way modified save by climate and
resources. There will be no horses there, and few ani
mals of any kind. It will be full of fanciful little houses,
and there will be red signs, and dragons and griffins on
the gables, and swallow-tailed flags, and very narrow
streets, and wicker fences, and gardens that will smile
with dwarfed trees and strange roses. There will be
ditches there, and bare-legged, silent, and incessant toil
ers beside them. There will be jog-trotting bearers of
burdens threading the highways, and unintelligible jargon
spoken, and a steady looking at the ground by every
body. There will be no anniversaries, no Sundays, no
Fourths of July, no fuss about any thing which has any
of the nonsense of glory, or pride, or mere feeling. There
will be no discussions about the government, and all that
the community will desire will be to be let alone, and if
it should be so left alone, the colony will increase and
multiply, and spread by a steady and contiguous growth.
There will be peace there, brooding over all, year after
year, undisturbed and serene. There will be no labor
unions, no strikes, no tramps, and by way of a public edi
fice only a jail.
And through all his residence there, the colonist will still
think of the flowery kingdom, and still intend to go back,
and never become a citizen of the country which sur
rounds his temporary home. When he dies, his friends
will get the flesh off his bones as quickly as possible, and
double him up and send him back in a sack.
There are governments which would be richer and more
prosperous and populous than they are, if a community

CUBAN TOILERS. lOI
such as this were settled within their borders. While the
conditions of life are almost changeless with the Chinaman,
yet very industrial virtue dwells with him. There will
come a time, even in Cuba, when the question of what
shall be done with him must arise. Even the dance-lov
ing negro will join in the cry. The strangest of modern
social spectacles is now offered to the moralist, the social
economist, and the humanitarian. It is that of a peace
ful man who will not drink, will not fight, wants no holi
days, works all the time, and with skill, and for low wages,
takes no part in politics, is in no sense dangerous, and
yet for these virtues is hated, mobbed, and must be pro
hibited and driven away.
But there is a consolation which John will carry back
with him when he goes: he will not have been converted.
He came, and will have gone, a heathen. It is to be
feared that his personal experiences among Christians will
not have had the effect of softening his heart toward their
faith. Henceforth, seeing that we have had him right
where we could preach to him and influence him by ex
ample besides, and have failed to change him, we shall
have a good excuse for not subscribing any more to for
eign missions. I believe that in Cuba Jesuit acuteness
perceives that it is no use, and the church has fallen back
upon the conclusion that he is an animal, and shrives all
the numerous faithful who treat him as such.

CHAPTER X.
THE CUBAN TOWN.
THERE is little hope of giving in words a correct
picture of the tropical town. Neither the railway
villages of the Western border, nor the adobe towns of
Mexico, nor any other nondescript collection of human
habitations were ever accurately presented to the imagi
nation of one who had never seen them, and whose ideas
of a town had been formed by different types. The sen
sations of a place cannot easily be conveyed to others,
and mental impressions are seldom transmissible. The
Cuban town is a harder piece than any of them, and as I
begin the attempt to describe it I perceive the difficulty
of placing it before the reader.
Imagine a town built by modern and enlightened
people, who live in America, who are subject, as one
would imagine, to modern influences, and who have yet
made these fortuitous clusters of dwellings without any
attention or forethought, and afterward have concluded
to let them stand as they are. At least such seems to
have been the plan. They are a general mixture of irreg
ularities, though the streets may run at something like
right angles, and have names and grades.
With the exception of Havana as seen from the sea,
the Cuban town from a little distance looks something
like a brickyard. There is not enough white in its

THE CUBAN TOWN. IO3
composition to add any cheerfulness to the view. The
houses being mainly of one story, the place has a square
look, as though it were made up of drab-colored deal-
boxes. As you come nearer you are surprised at the
shabby look of the place. I presume it would look an
cient and littered if it had been built all at once and by
contract only last year. There are no cottages in the
suburbs, no door-yards, no roses and sod, no white fences,
no homes of a tidy and prosperous middle class. Pigs,
goats, and chickens act as members of the community in
these outlying regions, without any accompanying obli
gation to act as decent citizens. They pass in and out
of the open doors with an air of independence and leis
ure that is charming, and as those should who have
always lived there. There are hordes of children, most
of them naked as when they were born, and who have
been so during all the intervening time. There is a
general disposition of the walls to peel in patches and
spots, and appear as though recovering from a recent
eruptive epidemic. Advancing age seems to have over
taken every thing, and yet it seems to have been so always.
The hand of woman has never been busy there, for there
is no pretence, of adornment or even of cleanness, and a
general mouldiness overspreads all.
At every corner, or oftener, there is a little bodega, very
dingy, with its sunken floor, its dilapidated old counter,
its strings of onions and beggarly show of salt cod, and
its row of dusty black bottles of aguardiente. Then
comes the shoemaker's, where are made the natural and
especial Cuban shoes, constructed so as to be crushed
down at the heel, run over at the side, thrust upon the
bare and stockingless feet, and worn as long as they can
be made to hang upon the great toe by dint of persistent

I04 CUBAN SKETCHES.
scraping at every step. Then comes the "Tienda," — the
store, — neither a country nor a city establishment, but a
thing of its own kind. All these places have, not num
bers, but names : The Pearl, The Industry, etc. Here and
there upon the broken wall grows a cactus, with its im
penetrable armor of thorns ; here and there some scrubby
and neglected green thing, that owes its existence to the
fact that the goats do not like the taste of it.
Loungers are everywhere where there is any shade, and
the gamin has a whole year of sunshine and every day a
holiday in these blessed retreats. Thus happy, besides
being comfortably off in the way of having no clothes to
speak of, he improves each shining hour with playing at
marbles, stoning goats, training puppies, and the general
system of inane and objectless running and whooping,
which is a fashion of the small boy in all lands.
These are the suburbs of the tropical town. As you
pass on the scene grows grander. Presently there is a
continuous sidewalk as much as a foot or fourteen inches
wide. The houses seem more generally to have had the
eruption cured. There is not so much of absolute indif
ference to piles of garbage. The colors begin, as, first, a
house of a bright yellow color, paired with one that was
once darkly and deeply blue. Then yellow again, a fav
orite color, then green, and so on. Through the pane-
less and iron-barred windows you begin to see pictures of
family life. A family picture is invariably this : two long
rows of rocking-chairs, exactly opposite each other, with
a rug of carpeting between the rows, the whole piece of
right-line domestic happiness being laid perpendicularly
to one of the open windows. The men being then
placed in one of the rows of chairs, and the women
in the other, the sociability begins. This is not the

THE CUBAN TOWN. I05
casual arrangement of one house, but of all. Any in
novation would be discountenanced. They do not
wish to mix the sexes in Cuba, and for a man to
cross that rug and seat himself between two ladies, —
it is not possible !
Presently you come to the streets proper, long lines
of compactly-built, low, square houses. The stores and
shops are here, where the beauty and style of the
place may be seen, accompanied by the requisite old
woman or mulatto girl. But they are queer-looking
stores until you grow accustomed to them. These es
tablishments in any other country are built with the
end upon the street, and you are invited to " step
back " when you wish to examine an article. Here,
however, shops stand sidewise to the street, and a
meagre display of wares is made, in rather a small
room. The adornments are as cheap as the display is
small. There is something of the Bazaar about the
place, for the Spaniard has a good deal of the Moor
in his composition, and I have heard the regret ex
pressed that he had not more. So strong is the dis
position to follow one style of architecture, that any
one of the shops and stores might be used as a dwell
ing, and vice versa.
There is another feature of the mercantile establish
ment that particularly seems strange to the foreigner.
They are all called by some specific name, and numbers
seem to be of no value except for dwellings. "My
Destiny " on one side of the street, and " My Star "
on the other, seem to leave you little choice. "The
Looking-Glass " is a caprice in naming that is mere
sound, and in rows stand " The White Deer," " The
Golden Lion," "The Peari of Cuba," "The Golden

Io6 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Cup," "Norma," "The Novelties," "Things Precious,"
" Things Delicate," " Sea Foam," and so on ad in
finitum. It requires a continuous residence for a considerable
time, to become accustomed to the scenes and sounds of
the street They are such as have no place this side the
Atlantic, and belong rather to Tangiers and other ancient
localities. A grotesque population passes to and fro all
day, and the air is full of strange cries from hoarse and
screeching throats. Every second man of the population
seems to have taken to peddling for a livelihood. They
are selling every thing, though nobody ever seems to
wish to buy. There are horse-loads of green cornstalks,
and the animals stagger by with nothing of them visible
but their noses and tails, urged and guided by words ut
tered in a tone which is like the last cry of despair. The
charcoal-vender has also his long procession of animals,
each one with his nose tied to his predecessor's tail, and
jostling the fodder man with the only and universal fuel
of the country. There is the man with the pig slung
across his shoulders. The animal is half-grown, lean, and
quite hairless, and is proclaimed through the streets by
the combined voices of himself and his owner. There is
one who drives before him a flock of panting turkeys,
who manages to make them go where he will, and when
he stands still, they all by one consent sit down in the
middle of the street. Here comes one, vociferating, who
has a motherly goat tied to the tail of his horse, and he
declares that she is capable of nourishing a family. But
the two kids who follow behind, brokenly pleading, do
not by their appearance indicate that state of things. If
it be early morning, you will encounter the milk-man,
driving a herd of milch-kine through tbe streets, and

THE CUBAN TOWN, I07
drawing the fluid into a glass tumbler at the front door
of his customers' residence. It is a good way ; the fam
ily are getting the unwatered article, which can be after
ward diluted to suit themselves.
There is a wandering genius who is called Barratilla-
dor, Barato, means cheap ; barratillo, a cheap little
thing {illo, ito, ico being the diminutives, or littles of
the Spanish) ; and barratillador, " a seller of cheap little
things." This is a lesson in Spanish which may serve to
illustrate the capacity of the language, and for which no
extra charge is made. However, he has two huge red
boxes, with glass ends, hung upon each side of a long-
suffering horse. It is noticeable that it is invariably
a horse ; a mule would not stand it. This animal he
leads from door to door, and as he goes he puts his hand
beside his mouth, and makes the very echoes to know
the immense variety and cheapness of his needles, pins,
buttons, tape, etc. Sometimes he has an assistant, a sten
torian forerunner, to go ahead and assist him to bawl.
All these hundreds of venders seem to believe that their
sales and profits depend entirely upon the noise they can
succeed in making with the living voice. The town is
full of hideous noises that are heard again in dreams,
they are so hoarse, discordant, unearthly, grotesque, with
strange accents and sing-song intonations.
Most numerous of all the wandering venders are the
lottery-ticket sellers. They are also the hoarsest. All
day, and far into the night, you hear the cry of " catorce
mil echo cientos vient e y tres" or some other number of all
the thousands. Every one of the host who is not selling
something else, is undoubtedly a vender of lottery-tickets.
The Royal Havana Lottery has been in existence and
active operation for longer than any of the present gen-

Io8 CUBAN SKETCHES,
eration can remember, and pays a large revenue to the
government. It absorbs all the earnings of the poorer
classes, and is one of the curses of the island in an eco
nomical and pecuniary, to say nothing of a moral, sense.
There are immense sums of money squandered in it every
month, and large numbers of persons have spent in
monthly dribblings no one knows how much money, who
never own a house, or two coats, and have never drawn a
cent in all their lives.
Through such narrow, perspiring streets, the anxious
throng passes all day long, while overhead hangs the
fierce and relentless sun, and the very stones are warm.
The scene is picturesque enough. There is a certain
oriental flavor about it all, and an old-world changeless
ness. But it grows monotonous. It is sad to reflect that
no driving blast will ever cause a change in the vestments
of the coatless and stockingless crowd ; no eddying
smoke hang over the house-tops, or frost congeal the
familiar public perfumes. It is a continual and mo
notonous fervor. The smells go up forever, and feast-
days are the only epochs.
If there is any thing that, more than another, should
indicate the actual grade and standing of a people, it
must be the houses they live in. This is the theory, but
scarcely true in fact. The dwelling-house indicates only
the pecuniary condition of a people, and the exigencies
of a climate. I have already mentioned the miserable
habitation of the country Cuban. Its opposite is the
Cuban town-house. Usually it has only one story, and
in its plan displays the remains of a semi-oriental taste
and fashion, with some dim ideas of modern convenience.
Outside it is severely box-shaped, with a front door that
you invariably enter from the street, by simply stepping

THE CUBAN TOWN. IO9
across the threshold. It is a rule that the floor must be
level with, or lower than, the sidewalk. It is a house not
architecturally pretty, and when ornamented at all, it is
usually in the way of lurid outside color. It is always a
hollow square, and the square, paved court in the centre,
called \h^ patio, is invariable. Round this square are al
ways ranged the rooms of the house and offices of the
family. The Cuban will tell you that his house is so
constructed on account of the climate. But if so, it is
difficult to see why the same plan should be followed
alike in Madrid and in northern Mexico. The idea origi
nally was, in all structures of this kind, the safe-keeping
of the animals and goods of the household ; the square
was the nightly fold of the goats and donkeys. So it is
yet in rural Spain, and in portions of Mexico, and even
sometimes in Cuba. The plan is simply adhered to be
cause this is a man who does not change any thing once
established. This house has huge openings, extending from floor to
ceiling, considered to be doors and windows. The last
are iron-barred, without sash or glass. There is one great
door, through which a column of infantry might march,
and through which the family carriage has its entrances
and exits, horses and all. Every thing that goes and
comes must pass by way of this stately portal. By it
enter the marketing, the charcoal, the baggage, and the
horse-feed ; the doctor, the visitor, the young man who
is in love with Dolores, and the tax-collector. Out of it,
and into the street, go the stable and kitchen refuse, the
beggar with his alms, the visitor with his hat in his hand,
the bride to church, and the coffin to burial. It has a key
like a gridiron, that no man would think of carrying to
the lodge with him, but which must be carefully taken

no CUBAN SKETCHES.
charge of when the door is locked, and the family out.
There is no back entrance, and it is the key of the castle.
I once saw a blooming girl from the country in town
with all the family on a feast-day. She it was who car
ried the key of the house. You might have seen it across
the street under her pretty tulle bodice, for it was hung
round her neck by a string, backward, and lay fairly be
tween her shoulder blades.
Within, the establishment is arranged for the country
and the climate. In the hall stands the family volante
aforesaid, together with the horses, and you can hear the
latter from your chamber, quarrelling over the question
of an equitable division of the provender. The animals
pass several times a day across the space where the din
ing-table stands at meal times. On one side of the hall
is the parlor, the room of state, often paved with marble,
cool, airy, spacious, and, as it would seem to my country
women, somewhat unfurnished. There are no stuffed
sofas or chairs, no fleecy rugs, no mats and thick carpets
and table-covers, nothing that is soft and warm. All is
cane-seat, wood, and cold stone, as bare and hard as pos
sible. There is no fire-place or furnace-grate of course.
Such a suggestion would be intolerable. But conse
quently there is no family " circle," as we aptly express
it, though there may be a family parade in the two rows
of chairs,
I wish to whisper a word in the reader's ear ; if you
are to eat in a Cuban house, never visit the kitchen. Not
that the cookery is not clean in its processes, but because
there is usually so close a connection between the kitchen
and some other indispensable household offices, that an
inference of some connection between the two is almost
unavoidable, I cannot say why it is so, unless it be that

THE CUBAN TOWN. Ill
there is not that refinement in the association of ideas
that there might be. Sometimes there is between the
two only a partition open at the end, like two rooms in
a stage scene.
Now that I have mentioned the kitchen, a thing no
man has any business to meddle with, I may as well de
scribe it. It looks something like a forge. There is a
flat slab of stone, some five feet long, placed table-wise
in a corner. In this there are several square openings,
with a grate at the bottom of each. In each of these is
kindled a charcoal fire, and pot, kettle, and frying-pan sit
comfortably over their several coals and holes, while the
ashes fall through the grates to the floor. I have said
there were no chimneys in Cuba ; the smoke from this
unique range, if there be any, bloweth where it listeth.
Cuba is, by repute, a fever-haunted region. It is hot,
damp, mouldy, bilious. Of course drainage is carefully
looked after? Well, it is not ; drainage, on the contrary,
looks after itself, as it usually does in the warm climates.
Nobody flies in the face of Providence by attempting to
turn aside the natural currents of foul water. In the
midst of the court-yard, in every house, there is a cess
pool. It will be observed that it is in the centre of the
house, surrounded by walls, and fairly located, so that if
there is any disease bred from it all can have a fair
chance, and no favors shown. Every thing liquid goes
into this well ; all the sink and rain-water pipes, and the
drainage from the stable. It is covered, and has a waste-
gutter leading under the floor and into the street. You
often see a green and slimy stream trickling over the side
walk. No one need know the direction and final dis
tribution of its pestilence, — it runs over like a full basin,
and evaporates in the sunshine.

112 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Quite as unique as the house itself, is the life that goes
on within it. Here is leisure and time-killing. There is
a certain word, one of the most expressive of the Eng
lish tongue, that in one syllable tells most there is of the
secret of domestic well-being. It is "thrift." It seems to
mean a happy, skilful industry, an unhurried looking
after the ravelled edges which is not labor, but only oc
cupation. If there is any such thing practised in the
Cuban house, it is not usually by the mistress of it.
There is a languid rocking to and fro in the ranked rock
ing-chairs, slippered and untidy. There is a time-killing
that consists in doing absolutely nothing. The occasional
diversion is piety, especially during what may be termed
the religious busy season, about Good-Friday week,
Christmas, and the season of Lent, going to mass at six
o'clock in the morning and again in the evening. The
busy throngs that patter about our streets on errands of
extravagance are never seen here. The Cuban lady has
a long code of social proprieties, and never to be seen
upon the street is one of the binding rules.
The place of universal resort in the Cuban city is the
Plaza de Armas. There is no town so miserable and
abandoned as not to have this open square in the centre
of it. It is a place of foliage, lamplight, and flowers, and
in the tropical evening presents one of the most brilliant
social spectacles to be found in any land. All who have
any claims to beauty and wealth are there, together with
many who have not. It is a scene of shoulders, arms,
trains, jewels, and cascarilla.
There are the most elaborate piles of back hair the
world ever saw. There are all the colors except
black in a grand display of ball-costume out of doors,
and the crowd marches round and round the little

THE CUBAN TOWN. II3
square ceaselessly. The young men are apart and
the young ladies are apart, and only look at each
other. There is no laughter, no gaiety, no young
people's fun and social enjoyment, no family parties with
brisk conversation. It is a social walk-around. You can
hear the scraping made by the trains of gowns, and it
sounds like falling rain. There is the patter of foot-falls
and a general rustle, but not the sound of voices. A fine
dust rises like the dust of a ball-room, the band plays,
the small boys in the outskirts yelp and chatter, the
loungers, seated in hired chairs, suck their canes and stare.
So it goes on for two or three hours, until ten o'clock,
when the crowd vanishes like magic, and there is nothing
left but bits of lace, the shreds of torn garments, the fine
dust, the few loafers who are sorry it is over, and the
people who are counting the receipts of peanut stands.
If mass and the plaza constitute the amusements of
the women, there is another equally quiet and harmless
for the men. It is the cafe, and this seems to be, more
than his house, the Cuban's place of rest and enjoyment.
There is an assortment of marble tables, and a cheap
glitter of mirrors and cut-glass. Here the family-man,
the bachelor, the man of business, and the man about
town, sit and drink black coffee, smoke endless paper
cigars, twiddle their legs, and talk endlessly and rapidly.
There are many animated discussions about every thing
but actual politics, and even these are touched upon
sotto voce. Principally the discussions are about things
that three old ladies would be ashamed to display much
interest in. I may give the reader an idea that this caf6
is a kind of gin-palace, but though there is plenty of gin,
the place is h'ardly indoors at all. It is merely an in
terior, and part of it is usually under the sky. It is the

114 CUBAN SKETCHES.
club-room, lodge, and corner grocery all in one. There
seems to be a necessity for men to have some such resort
in all countries. We are a band of brothers, and must
herd. It keeps us from interfering in affairs of which
the ladies have rightfully the exclusive charge. By the
sign of the caf^, I know that these children of the sun are
our brethren.
But the Cuban does sleep at home. I do him no more
than justice by the statement, though his house is often
the establishment he keeps up for the benefit of others
whom he has placed himself in the position of having to
take care of. I have, however, sometimes heard of ec
centric Cubans who took all their meals at home. It is
an unexplained occasional freak of tropical humanity.
These are some of the features of tropical life in the
town. There is, as in all countries, a certain inner life
the stranger and foreigner never sees, — the life of the
feelings, domestic affections, and family intercourse.
Over all I have attempted to describe, there hangs, a
certain intense and inscrutable provincialism, which
makes the people the most content, complacent, and
self-satisfied in the world, happy in a life that is perfect,
homes that need no new beauties, and a little island they
fully believe to be a continent. The only thing of discon
tent to most of them is the government. The people are,
and will always be, strangers to the Saxon, and he to
them. Not one of them was ever happy in a life away
from these peculiar scenes. The North American may,
some day, change the outside of Cuba to his peculiar
ideas, but he will never change the people, or the life of
the Cuban town.

CHAPTER XI.
V
RURAL CUBA.
YEARS hence, when these rocky hills and long and
level fields of deep red earth shall have become
to me the dimly-remembered scenes so many others are,
the words " Rural Cuba" will bring up a picture very dif
ferent from that I once imagined, and be recalled all the
more easily for that reason. It was from rural Cuba that
I expected so much, and regretfully confess that I re
ceived so little, for I thought that nature would assert
herself, and lend a charm the hand of man could not
destroy. Let us look at a country village, or small town. It
is no matter whether it be Bolondron, or Jibaro, Limonar,
or the famed Madruga. Any one of them is a fair
example. There are squalid towns in all lands, and even
Stratford-on-Avon, and Lecompton, Kansas, have been
in their time denounced by the wandering vagabonds
who did not happen to like them. But the villages of
Cuba are painfully alike. They are all of a kind, all con
structed upon the same model, and all " run" remarkably
" even." The ancient, tumble-down, muddy, crockery-
strewn, shabby, and dilapidated congregations of shan
ties that lie sleeping in the sunshine and mouldering
patiently in the rain here and there all over the island,
are so nearly alike that it is safe to give the subject a
general consideration. "5

ii6

CUBAN SKETCHES.

There were never such in any other land. Tartary,
Switzerland, the banks of the Missouri, mountain regions,
plains-countries, and the remote and uncivilized parts of
the earth, have their peculiar hamlets. These of Cuba are
like none of them. There are features possessed by the
villages of the lower Rio Grande that might possibly indi
cate that those and these were made by people of the same
race. Otherwise there is no likeness to them in the earth.
I have said they were shabby, and have added some other
descriptive phrases. But they have not risen like an ex
halation in a day and a night, as our shabby and slab-built
" cities " do at the terminus of pome western railway
line. The shadow of antiquity is upon them, and their
rambling streets have been trodden by the slip-shod feet
of many generations.
The Cuban village has been there some hundred or
more years. Bayamo, Baracoa, and others were actually
founded by the followers of Diego Velasquez somewhere
about 1500, and the rest came stumbling along after. It
would excite the surprise and pity of the whole population
if anybody were to speak of founding a city now. The
preposterousness of the idea would send the projector to
a lunatic asylum, if there were any lunatic asylums. A
Cuban Rip Van Winkle would have no difficulty in rec
ognizing his native place if he should unfortunately
awake arid come back again. There is about them all a
certain quality of changelessness. I have passed through
some of them at intervals of two or three years, and
while I beg pardon of their oldest inhabitant for mention
ing so trifling and unimportant an interval, it seemed to
me that the same untidy women were standing at the
doors in the same gowns. The same old men, with the
same shirt worn outside of their pantaloons, were, I

RURAL CUBA. HJ
fancied, still crying the same lottery tickets. The same
forlorn row of mosquito-bitten horses, with the same old
pack-saddles on their raw backs, were still standing with
closed eye and hanging lip, asleep under the same shed,
in front of the same old whitewashed, weather-beaten
grocery. I know they were the same goats, the same
cocks and hens, the same pigs ; and the same incompar
able, indescribable sense of loneliness hung over all ; the
same as ever, the same for always. The mystery of drowsi
ness, idleness, poverty, and content, pervaded the air and
possessed the people, and they were all unchanged.
A peculiar feature of a Cuban village is a certain sticki
ness. It is a sweetish mixture, largely composed of
spilled molasses and the drainage of sugar-hogsheads, with
rain-water. The whole country has a faint odor as of a
molasses-cask. The natural article of mud is red, brilliant
brick color. Of the dust likewise. It rains and is muddy
seven months out of the twelve, and is dry and dusty the
remaining five months, so that the red color prevails most
of the time. It gets smeared in streaks and patches, or a
brilliant body-color, over every thing, and gives a distinc
tive character to the region. There seems to be no good
reason for whitewashing, which always seems to have
been done some years previously, unless it be to show by
more striking contrast the gory streaks incarnadine. The
mud is not of the kind that comes off when it dries. It
will wash, and every hairless and vagrant pig who has
slipped his tether and regaled himself with a bath, and
then has neatly dried himself against a warehouse or a rail
way station, leaves there his indelible mark. Every old
gray horse's tail is of a fine red that glistens in the sun,
and his master's linen garments have a thick and polished
coating of it.

Il8 CUBAN SKETCHES.
All the houses of the place, inside and outside, and
even the furniture, are stained and dried in this universal
pigment. The sifting dust and tenacious mud of an age
have produced a color that does not show dirt, and en
ables the people to avoid overmuch scrubbing and broom
ing. All the houses stand flat on the earth. They are
not high, but they are endless sidewise and illimitable
endwise. There is much door, and a great deal of win
dow and shed-in-front, unless they are very small to com
ply with the humble tastes of the proprietor, in which
case they remind one of the decayed out-buildings of a
farm-house in Virginia. I have never seen a building in
process of erection in one of these villages, and never met
a person who had. They were made and finished long
ago, and now they do not seem any more to be even re
paired. This is the railway hamlet, the one the traveller often-
est sees, and that may be observed by anybody. It is,
however, not a town made by the railway, as ours often
are, but one the line happened to be built through. I
must ask the reader to exercise his imagination upon the
genuine inland country place, away from everywhere,
where the steam-whistle is never heard. The age, the
dulness, the infinite peace which broods over one of
these, are nearlj' indescribable, and where these things
come and abide I have observed that the inhabitants are
happy. The roads that lead to them are, like the roads
of Spain, impracticable for any thing greatly wider than
a mule. Ambition has never entered here. The world
is bounded by the sound of the church-bells. There is
nothing more exciting in all their annals than the com
mon accidents of every-day life. The thousand anxieties
of the world poison no lives ; there is no discontent.

RURAL CUBA. II9
Even the climate is changeless, and cold and the driving
blast can never make the straggling street more quiet
than it is. The happy varlet whose lines have been cast
here, is rich with a single pair of trousers and a speckled
shirt, and an aristocrat when he goes abroad in his coat.
Recall all the villages you ever visited, all the post-offices
and cross-roads, all the mountain hamlets, and you will
still lack something that only climate can make. This
is of the tropics. Over all, the palm lifts its head, and
the plaintain, like a huge cereal, shakes its wide, torn
leaves in the idle wind. It is blood-warm. The fierce
sunshine glares upon the scene every day, and the dew
soaks it every night, and happy, half-clad, basking lazi
ness abides foreve'r.
I wonder is there a common kinship among all the
tribes of toil and ignorance all over the world? For this
villager's house, his life, his surroundings, remind me of
something I have read of villages far enough away, — in
Western Asia, perhaps, or in Japan. This Cuban has all
he wants, and understands what he does want. Upon his
floor of earth, the pigs, poultry, and dogs have as much
place as he himself has. They pass in and out with a
loafing, hands-in-the-pocket air. His table, when he has
a table, is well supplied. He lives well, though a liking
for his dishes is a matter of education. He has a great
affection for the small-fry of domestic animals, and the
cock crows with impunity from the door-sill to celebrate
the laying of an egg in the cupboard by the hen. He
has no stable, no haystack, no crib. He does not need
any of these things. The dense chaparral begins where
his native village ends. Every one whom he knows, he
has known always, and none of his acquaintances are
aristocratic. When he dies, and the priest-fettered soul

I20 CUBAN SKETCHES.
goes to find out the truth of all his unquestioned articles
of faith, he is carried to the little desolate Campo Santo
at the village-end, and perhaps talked of more and re
membered longer than many a statesman is after he is
dead. There is another Guajiro, who is, even more than this
villager, a rural specimen. His house is such as you see
standing alone upon its hill-side, all over Cuba. It is the
poorest of human habitations ; four posts, with a roof of
palm husks, and its wattled sides are a delusive refuge
against a windy rain. It is only a local habitation, a
place to go. Sometimes it is so poor in its surroundings
that there is not even a goat. This man's days are spent
in burning charcoal, or in raising a few vegetables for the
nearest town, or he is a milkman, or a peddler of eggs.
Whatever it is, he seems to toil all his life and gain noth
ing. You hear him pass by in the early morning, vocif
erating his unearthly ejaculations and horse-talk to his
string of laden beasts. I have often wondered why he
did not stop work, and defy fortune to do any worse for
him than she had done. But he too seems happy enough,
and the sum of his life is doubtless the same to him
that the sum of ours is to us.
Yet all this is not the rural Cuba that most people care
to see and write about. There is another view of the
picture. There have been many magazine articles writ
ten, all more or less rose-colored, about life on the sugar-
plantation. It is nearly all that a great majority of visi
tors see or care for, and all that any one they know cares
for. To speak truth, to all the world Cuba is sugar. It
is the great industry, and all other business clusters
around it, and lives by it. Let us leave the discussion
of the man who is poor because he is not a planter, and
turn to him who is wealthy because he is.

RURAL CUBA. 121
There are few small plantations except comparatively
as regards the very large ones. A business that yields
such returns, in a country that has been discovered to be
especially adapted to it in season and soil, has absorbed
all the energy, interest, ambition, and capital. Thou
sands of fertile acres lie around the tall white chimneys
of the boiling-house, green and dense with a waving wil
derness of cane. As far as the eye can reach there is
nothing but cane. It is not the beautiful picture of
plenty the northern cornfield is, but it is as green as
emerald, and thick as a brake, and represents a fortune
in the value of the great staple whose uncrystallized
juice is as plentiful as water in each thick and jointed
stalk. On the sugar plantation the point of interest is the
Batey, the square in which stand all the buildings,
machinery, and residences of the place. There was a
time when all the cane was crushed in what is now
spoken of contemptuously as a " bull-mill," — upright
wooden rollers, with oxen at the sweep, between which
the cane was passed stalk by stalk. Their striking pecu
liarity consisted in the facility with which they were
wont to break down, and the infernal noise they made.
Then came a time when planters began to use steam in
a small way, and mills with horizontal rollers came into
use. I do not believe there now exists a bull-mill in all
Cuba. Still, for a long time after steam and powerful
rollers came into use, all sugars were made by boiling in
what is called the " Jamaica train," — three or tour huge
kettles in a row, set in masonry, with a roaring fire be
neath, where the green juice foamed and bubbled, and
was dipped and strained, and passed from kettle to ket
tle, and skimmed and stirred until it had attained the

122 CUBAN SKETCHES.
granulating consistency. But now the more enterprising
planter has arrived at the labor-saving and scientific
stage, and while the " Jamaica train" still foams and
splashes and boils over on the smaller estates, with old-
fashioned and conservative owners, very many have set
up and are using an elaborate and nickel-plated machine,
called a " vacuum-pan." In these the juice is boiled by
steam in a cleanly, quiet, and economical manner, run off
into vats to cool, and finally passed through wire screens,
and the sparkling, square-grained product is forthwith
emptied into hogsheads to be carried to market.
I am not in the least tempted to display my practical
knowledge of the processes of sugar-making by the inser
tion of a dozen or two technical words, and the giving
of dimensions, capacities, densities, and degrees Fahren
heit. There are rows oi steam-boilers, about like those
of a good-sized flouring mill as nearly as they may be
described, and they are kept foaming and raging by
means of bagazo. Bagazo is the crushed cane, dried in
the sun, and an admirable fuel. There are endless pipes,
and cocks, and shut-offs, and the set of " vacuum-pans,"
shining with bright metal and covered with varnished
wood. These last stand so quietly that you would think
they were cold, whereas they are foaming inside. There
are handsome and costly engines to drive water and air,
and do a hundred things. There are the ponderous
rolls, which take in the cane fed to them by an endless
apron, endwise, crosswise, or in bulk, as fast as it pleases
to come, fat and juicy as it goes in, — a mere mass of
rags as it comes out. The groaning and whining they
make as they ponderously turn, is one of the character
istic sounds of the plantation. There are the whirling
centrifugal machines, that in three minutes make the

RURAL CUBA. 1 23
Ugly brown mush that enters them to grow fair and
glistening and palatable. There are molasses-vats, juice-
tanks, and, in fine, the costly machinery of a manufactur
ing establishment. A sugar-plantation is a factory, and
perfectly capable as I am of doing it, I must decline to
describe further the processes of a factory.
Sugar-making at night, in the old-fashioned Jamaica-
train way, is a scene of fire and toil, flashes and shadows,
only equalled by a midnight scene in some huge foundry,
or by the pyrotechnics of a rolling-mill. There is the
fierce glow of great fires, and clouds of steam, and crowds
of bare-legged negroes and Chinamen, moving to and fro,
and stirring up the process with long poles and demoniac
movements. There are cries, yells, screams, and a scene
that might serve for a representation of that old-fash
ioned hell our fathers died hoping to escape on the slen
der chance of not having been foreordained thereto.
Every toiler is an imp of darkness, rendered all the more
fearful by the glimpses one may catch of the whites of
his eyes, and to complete the fearful picture, there are
continual shrieks for " mas candela I " — more fire.
Yet all this has rural surroundings. Vast green fields
of cane lie leagues around on every hand. It is often
miles to the nearest village. It is a species of concen
trated manufacture without any of the signs or surround
ings of traffic.
On some plantations are still to be found the huge and
shed-like buildings called purging-houses. Here, in
frames made for their reception, stood large numbers of
funnel-shaped sheet-iron vessels, small end downward.
These being filled with crude sugar, three or four inches
of clay were plastered over the top of the funnel. The
water from the clay, together with the crudities in the

124 CUBAN SKETCHES.
sugar, drained out at the smaller end. Wet clay was
applied several times, and, in the end, the core of sugar
was turned out, hard and white in proportion to the
number of times it had been clayed. When I first saw
these cores, it reminded me of the glistening white pyra
mids that I knew as a child in my mother's store-room;
and I understood for the first time how and why they
were made so.
Much has been said and written of the great scale upon
which farming operations are sometimes carried on in the
West. The most extensive of these do not equal the
operations of a sugar-estate in magnitude. Some of them
" work " from five hundred to seven hundred " hands,"
and employ four hnndred head of oxen, besides mules
and horses. They make their own coal-gas, and their own
lime and bricks, keep smiths, carpenters, and engineers,
build aqueducts and railways, and spend two hundred
thousand dollars a year in running expenses. They
often produce one million five hundred thousand pounds
of sugar, with molasses as drainage, worth, at the nearest
seaport, five cents per pound. These figures do not pre
tend to absolute exactness, but are not extravagant. It
is rather a small estate whose expenses are only fifty
thousand a year, and I have known of administrators, —
managers for the owners, — who pilfered a hundred
thousand or so in two or three years, and nobody
hurt. The magnificent machinery of a first-class estate
often costs a quarter of a million to place it there.
The appearance of a plantation, agriculturally consid
ered, is peculiar. There are no fences except the boun
dary, and these are of cactus, or else a kind of quick
set of trees that in the woods grow to a considerable
size. The huge squares of cane are separated by open

RURAL CUBA. 125
roads called guarda rayos. These radiate like spokes
from the " Batey." The green expanse of cane is
sprinkled here and there with palms, and there seems
to exist a kind of superstition with regard to cutting
down these trees, though each one kills the cane for
a circle of twenty feet around it. There is also a
huge and useless giant called the ceiba — the lonesomest
tree that grows, — desolately lifting its braced and co
lumnar trunk and horizontal spread of scant foliage,
high and huge against the sky, in the brief, gray trop
ical twilight.
There is doubtless such a thing as " the pleasures of
melancholy," else the poets had not sung it. But to get
enough of it, and grow tired of sweets, one needs but to
come to Cuba and live on a plantation. They whose
lives are spent in climes of ferocious change and contrast
can have no idea of how monotonous the white sunshine
of Cuba may become, glittering eternally upon the same
unchanging scene. When at last the glare fades and the
red ball sinks in the horizon, night falls at once. Morn
ing comes again as suddenly, to begin another changeless
day. There is nothing to attract the eye in the level
scene that knows no winter. The hills that were blue or
brown yesterday are blue or brown to-day. The cluster
ing palms and solitary ceibas are the same from month to
month. The scene that at first may have attracted by its
novelty, becomes very tame as the days pass. There are
no October days, no brave and blustering Januarys, no
delicious Mays, to make you glad you are still alive.
Through all the years' you hear the clang of the planta
tion bell, and see the mustering of slaves, and watch the
shadows lengthen, and perspire and fan, and eternal war
fare wage against lassitude and mosquitoes. You want

126 CUBAN SKETCHES.
to go away somewhere ; you long for cold, and dread it,
and often, with the selfishness common to a sinful nature,
wish you could have the felicity of meeting some old in
habitant who would tell you of a frost once upon a time
that killed all the cane. You would give all your interest
in the sticky product you see and smell so much of for a
branch of apple-bloom. And, when at last you get back
to your seaport town, you wish you had stayed in the
country. You long for freezes and thaws, hard colds
and an overcoat, your native land and mother-tongue,
and are fortunate if at last you do not get the disease
you have not had since you were away at school, and
grow sick with the remediless nostalgia.

CHAPTER XII,

TROPICAL WjEATHER,

THE weather that stirs the blood and arouses in men
a feeling of jubilant antagonism ; the gray skies
from which shall fall in the watches of the night a stain
less garment for all the hills ; the sullen mist through
whose curtain struggles the faint and yellow sunshine ;
that ice-clad realm of beauty where all creation is trans
formed and glitters with white brilliants, and the keen
air tingles, and the low sun of the south tinges and
brightens, but does not warm ; those roaring northers that
roll the cloud-masses across the sky and threaten unutter
able things; that bitter and biting cold, still, cruel, and
calm, that sears like red iron where it touches, — none of
these things have the residents of the tropics to give con
trast to the seasons of a changing year, which in all its
moods must still be tepid.
The above sentence would, but for its length, be hard
to exclude from any collection of extracts from the Eng
lish classics, and I should not be surprised myself to see
it in the school readers in a few months. It is the most
elegant thing I have ever done by myself, and was writ
ten to illustrate the pleasures of retrospect. That is the
way one thinks of the northern climate when he is lan
guishing by the month in Cuba. He is sure it was like
that, and even better, and he wonders he did not appreci
ate it when he was there. 127

128 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Yet everywhere Nature has her ceaseless changes and
her countless moods. In other lands she is sparkling and
cruel, grumbling and threatening even while she smiles,
and looking black even when she means no harm. In Cuba
she is a tearful dame, and illustrates all her emotions
by copious floods. I believe there are, generally speak
ing, only two changes of weather possible. One is rain,
the other a " norther." It is sometimes said to be cold,
and people go about with what are considered to be over
coats, and wrapped to the eyes. But it is a foolish thing
to one who knows what cold is, for the mercury at such
times seldom falls to seventy. It is also sometimes said
to be warm, and that is when the south wind careers over
the narrow land, and the mercury is at ninety-eight, and,
so far as known, ever living thing has a headache and a
feeling of tiredness and lassitude. Wet days do not ex
cite remark. They are by far too common a phenome
non. Two-thirds of the population were probably born
on rainy nights. Every change brings rain. The " tem
poral," a, hurricane that bends down to the earth every
living thing with its steady pressure, is also a rain. Th(
"norther" begins with rain. Wet, a long drizzle or a
steady pour, comes between every course.
There is nothing more prosy and uninspiring than the
tropical morning. I write this advisedly, knowing that
Aurora and her dews and blushes were never in any other
land called stupid,^ and that all the poets are against me.
Five o'clock shows to the man who has risen to catch the
train, either a pallid and ghostly gibbous moon, with a
damp chill in the air which causes one to long for the
sun, or else a deep blackness in which all the stars hang
like burnt-out lamps, or a fog hanging in gray and heavy
folds over land and sea. There is no blush, no faint and

TROPICAL WEATHER. 1 29
rosy light stealing up out of the east, and transforming
nature for that fleeting and beautiful moment when it is
neither night nor day. After the chill and darkness, al
most before you know it, suddenly and without warning,
it is broad day. It is a flash, and every star is gone as
though it had been turned off, and his blazing majesty is
risen and perceptibly warm. You cannot feel that some
thing which is like the fleeting of ethereal presences be
fore a warning messenger. There is no noiseless passing
of a winged and shadowy army westward before the
growing light. Nothing sparkles ; there is no rejoicing.
It was night ; it is day. Cuba never produced a poet
that I ever heard of whose lines will live. She never
will ; there is no poetry in her climate.
There have been those who described with such natu
ralness a tropical noon, that, the reader could imagine
himself there, thirsty, drowsy, perspiring. That must
have been the Brazils. Animals, birds, and men are but
little quieter at high noon in Cuba than at any other time
of the day ; there is only a little dulness in the street.
The steady glare begins in the morning and ends at
night, and no part of the day may be considered noisy.
The laborer digs away at whatever he is engaged upon,
and does not stop for nooning unless it rains. The siesta
is a fiction, only indulged in by people who cannot stay
awake and have nothing else to do. The few ugly and
tuneless birds there are, are as busily engaged in quarrel
ling, screaming, and flying from bush to bush, as they are
at any time of the day. Nobody minds it because it is a
tropical noon. There is not even lunch.
There is a charm in the Cuban evening. It is rest.
The sun sinks as suddenly as he rose, and there is no
gloaming, no lingering gorgeousness in the west. But

13° CUBAN SKETCHES.
there is shade. The fogs and chills have not yet risen.
The stars tremble and flash in the fathomless sky, and
sometimes the Southern Cross hangs pale above the
horizon, while the Pole Star gleams faint and far in the
north. Mars flashes blue and crimson, and Venus in her
seasons blazes like a white torch. There are seven si.s-
ters in the Pleiades, as there were when they were named,
and Aldebaran glows like a beacon. Perhaps, as you sit
pensive on a broken pier, the moon comes up out of the
sea; the same moon you have always known, with the
same smutch on her face that was ever there, but bigger
and whiter, with a certain glow behind her, and a radiant
path before her across the water, in which are mingled
that rich black-and-gold never described and never imi
tated. The sky above, in which are set all these brill
iants, is blue-black as the deep sea is. The world seems
a vast mass of shadow, with here and there a twinkling
light, a ghostly streak of wall, a dead-black clump of
trees, a pale road winding long and far, and Parthenons
and palaces where in the light of day are but the stucco
fronts of common dwellings.
Yet nature is weeping as usual. The dew is like rain
as far as dampness is concerned, and the drops gather
and trickle upon any inclined surface. A peculiar mois
ture penetrates your clothes and affects your throat,
and chills you. To stay indoors at night and out of
the sunshine during the day, is the health recipe of Cuba.
People are not tempted to sleep under the sky by any
heat, as they do in other countries. The fair moon is a
deceiver. Nobody stays in the moonlight, and the born
Cuban would as soon think of taking poison. She spoils
fish, and is baleful even to the beasts of the field, who
are said to lie down under shade at night, as naturally as

TROPICAL WEATHER. I3I
they do at noon. (I wish to remark here that I do not
believe it myself.) Scattered through the country is a
liberal sprinkling of persons with mouths, arms, legs, dis
torted and awry, and who are, besides, imbecile or lunatic.
The moon did it while they incautiously slept in her
beams. Go out in the rain if you must, and the wetter
you get the better, if at all. Let the lightning strike
where it will you can't help it any way. Sleep in a
house without sides or ends if necessary. Eat bananas
and drink gin. But stay out from under pale Cynthia.
How often, on an evening of perfect witchery and calm
loveliness, have I heard the fond feminine voice sharply
calling, " Child ! come right in out of the moon
shine ! " Balconies that were made for witching hours,
high above the street, calm retreats for courtship and
contemplation, are deserted on the fairest nights of the
year. There is, perhaps, no charm that darkness can bring,
more enticing than a January midnight in Cuba, unless it
be the midwinter moonlight of the far north on a boundless
field of snow. I have sailed in these bays when each dip
of the oars was a flash, and a line of pale fire trailed behind
the rudder, and the water was like pale green oil. The
hull of each vessel lying at anchor was a black and silent
mass, and the tapering spars stood clear and gigantic
against the sky. Headlands and coasts could be im
agined rather than seen, and it seemed as though the
sounds of the oars in the row-locks might be heard for
miles in the silence. In the middle watches of the night
a peculiar and melancholy softness broods over these
tepid waters, and you could imagine that tempest and
storm had never stirred them.
But they do. There is other weather than that I have

132 CUBAN SKETCHES.
described, and a great deal of it. Comparatively, it does
not rain in any other country. Sometimes it begins on
Sunday, and rains until the next Sunday. The tireless
drip makes dryness an impossibility. Wherever they
may be stored, your belongings are damp. Your shoes
that stand a-row by the wall, become covered with a
green mould. Your bed becomes damp, and every gar
ment you have is limp and half dry. Nails rust off in
the wall, and scissors and knives look as though they had
been fished up from a wreck. Books mildew on the
shelves, and all the conveniences of life are attacked by
a malady of discoloration and general decay. Walls are
wet, and all creation sodden and mildewed. Then the
trailing cactus upon the wall, creeping in and out of the
fissures and looking like a long dead snake for half the
year, changes its dead brown to green, and actually
blooms, and creeps a yard. Then the green-and-brown
landscape washes itself of dust, and smiles like honest
grass, which it is not. All the time the sun is creeping
higher and higher in the north, and what was your shady
side of the street is no longer so. Against sun or rain,
or both, each man carries an umbrella, which proves
an inadequate protection from either. The prevailing
color of the country soil is displayed upon the linen
breeches of every countryman who comes to town, and
upon his horse's tail as well, and he and all his personal
belongings present the appearance of having been pro
fusely but inartistically daubed with red paint. There
is no comfort in it all, but people grow accustomed to
it. The end of these months of humidity is usually, though
not invariably, one of those storms for which the West
Indies are celebrated. I believe I am using the appro-

TROPICAL WEATHER. 133
Jiriate term for something that blows for twenty-four
hours, and which you can lean your back against as
you could against a post, though I have never heard a
sailor say " storm " in my life. I have one such in my
personal experience — a rather mild one — and know many
such by tradition. One morning in October I awoke rather
earlier than usual, and became aware that something was
happening. The floor was strewn with glass, as I dis
covered by contact with bare feet, and water in undesir
able quantity was coming from somewhere, it seemed to
me from everywhere. I tried to make a light and failed,
and discovered that there was also wind. Outside in the
darkness there was a continuous roar that could hardly
be called a noise, steady and ceaseless. Creeping around
in the immediate neighborhood of a moist bed, amid
broken glass and much wet, I essayed to find and put on
my boots. This essential part of my costume I found it
necessary to forego. I never could put on a wet boot
when I really desired to do so as quickly as possible.
But I found a pair of Chinese slippers made of straw,
and conveniently constructed with nothing but soles,
and these I utilized. Many a time in my life I have
been intimate with wet garments, but I always liked to
begin in the morning with them dry. But, having man
aged with the slippers, I felt that disgust with my im
mediate belongings and surroundings, that I crept blindly
down-stairs into the desolate hall of a big and lonely
house. It was wet too. I believed it was three o'clock
in the morning, and as I found under the staircase some
bales of hay, only a little moist, I deposited myself upon
them. I remember vividly recalling, as I lay there, the
old times when a bed of leaves on the lee side of a fallen
tree made me a monarch with nothing to desire. I

134 CUBAN SKETCHES.
could at intervals hear something creak and crack, and
sounds like breaking crockery in the street outside. The
big front doors seemed to be having water thrown
against them with a hose, and I fancied they were bend
ing inward. Nevertheless, I went to sleep there, with
that feeling of content a man sometimes has under cir
cumstances where comfort is out of the question.
When day came the wind had changed, and now came
from the opposite direction from the first, and the front
doors were opened. No man ever painted so desolate a
sky of smoky blackness, with its whiter clouds flying like
hurrying squadrons, and the rain, broken into fine mist by
the strong wind, driving horizontally across the scene
and seeming not to fall, but only to be driven in a steady
course. No man could describe the desolate town, swept
clean for once, and untenanted by a living thing. But
that which occupied me most was the want of a cup of
coffee, and the undecided question of breakfast. With
my headgear made fast by a chin-tied handkerchief, and
a huge pair of boots that never were mine, I sallied forth,
resolved to get the most out of my first hurricane. At the
first corner I became aware of the force of the wind, for I
could not cross the street, and was drifted diagonally to
the opposite corner. When at last I reached the wharf I
beheld one of those scenes which ought to, but which
never do, inspire the mind with a feeling of sadness. The
fishing vessels were piled up in a corner of the bay, as
nearly as I could' judge about three deep. A good-sized
schooner had intruded her nose into terrestrial affairs, and
was obstructing the front street with her bowsprit. An
other was industriously sawing herself into two equal
parts across the sea-wall. Large vessels had dragged all
their anchors and imbedded themselves in convenient

TROPICAL WEATHER. 135
mud. The sea-spray was flying over the housetops.
Lamp-posts were leaning, trees had the appearance of
umbrellas blown wrong side out, and every thing had an
air of being irretrievably ruined.
Yet there was no flurry about it all. The bent attitude
of creation seemed to be a permanent position. The
wind did not come by dashes and rages, but was a steady
pressure. It was cold, or seemed so, and the desolateness
of all things was grotesque.
I found, huddled in a dry corner of/ a miserable little
fruit-store, an old negress with a brazier of coals. I sat
me down upon a bench there, and the crone and I became
friends. It is best not to put on airs even in fair weather.
Yesterday I would have smiled at the idea that this poor
old Guinea woman had any thing I wanted. I remarked
that it was a bad day. She echoed the sentiment by
rolling up her eyes and ejaculating, "Ave Maria Puris-
sima ! " I asked her how she got her living, and she
answer simply " agui" — here. As I was leading up to
a subject that lay very near my heart, I asked her if she
thought she would make any money to-day, and she
answered by the peculiar gesture which means " quien
sabe ? " — who knows ? I questioned her as to whether
she would like to do so, and she smiled, showing every
yellow tooth. I told heV I would give her a dollar for
a cup of coffee, and she rose up with a grunt of assent
and an air which seemed to say that the dollar was
nothing, and began giving orders to a boy in an inner
room. By and by the coffee was made, and drunk without
sugar, and I think I shall remember it as long as I live,
partly because it was so bad, partly because of the good
it did me.

136 CUBAN SKETCHES.
From such observations as I was able to make, I became
convinced that there was little or nothing in all that town
to eat ; yet my inclinations led me in the course of the
forenoon to drift, as best I might, toward my boarding-
house. I passed by the Plaza, and the trees there were
down excepting two or three. The tiles from the build
ings were falling here and there at intervals. As they
weigh four or five pounds each, I thought of the possible
contingency of one of them alighting edgewise upon my
hat. I had my sustenance at that time in the family of a
kind lady who was the only Cuban I have ever known
who, for love or money, would receive a boarder. It was
a private residence, and as I crept along I questioned
within myself whether I could effect an entrance, as the
wind was then blowing against the front door, and once
opened it would require more force than the household
could muster to close it again. However, I knocked, and
as no one seemed to hear, I pounded. Then I heard, dim
and far, the muster of the forces. There was a calling for
Francisco and Pastor and Pepe and Juan, and soon there
was considerable noise inside of props being removed and
barriers taken away, and the drawing of bolts. Presently
the wicket was opened a crack, and I sidled in. There
were five men holding the door, and it was all they could
do, with the aid of a thick pole, to get it together again.
I was hailed with acclamations, and at the same time
informed that the baker had not come, neither the
butcher, nor the usual fish. I said cheerfully that I
was very sorry, and thought of button soup as a last re
sort. An hour after there was heard another knocking at the
door, and it was again opened. The untimely visitor

TROPICAL WEATHER. 137
was an ancient African, and he took the liberty of riding
into the house, astride of an unhappy-looking and drag
gled little horse. But in his hand he held aloft four
chickens. " Are they alive ? " was questioned on all
sides, and he said they were. But they were not. I sav/
the corpses as they passed by, and they were dead
enough for all our purposes, — drowned, every one of
them. We wanted them dead, and I ate a small piece
of one of them a half-hour afterward — say about half ol
it. The lady's son, a gentleman living a short distance
in the country, had sent them to us, and thereby averted
possible cannibalism.
The rest of that day I spent in monkish quietness,
watching the wind veer, and all the changes and casual
ties of a day of turmoil, through crevices and cracks in
windows. There was not a dry tile in the house. Every
body walked about with hands in pockets and yawning,
and everybody's feet, clothes, and spirits were damp
alike. A big tree that had stood in the yard at my place of
business for perhaps a half century before I was born,
fell during the day, narrowly escaping the roof that cov
ered my office chair. One cannot be too careful where
he sits. It was a warning to me.
During the day there were invalids borne from tumb
ling houses through the storm, and children born almost
in the street. There were flying missiles, and inunda
tions, and hasty changes of residence. All the features
of a temporal that did its best for fifteen hours were
present. Yet, so far as I know, not a life was lost. In
the previous one of 1870 there were three hundred people
lost out of the same town. For my part, I did not get
any raiment dry for a week, and my couch retained its

138 CUBAN SKETCHES.
humidity so long that I grew accustomed to the clammy
sensation. If I do not some time have a rheumatism by
way of recuerdo, I shall continue to believe that after all
a temporal is merely a piquant variation of the monotony
of Cuban weather.

CHAPTER XIIL
DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS.
THERE are certain institutions known under the
general and indefinite name of " Domestic." They
indicate very truly the life of a people, and show the
modes of thought by which a community may be said to
govern itself regardless of the government. The school,
the newspaper, the theatre, and the courts of justice,
though they may seem rather incongruous as the sub
jects of a chapter, have grouped themselves in my mind
as the things from which, above all others, the public
morals and general character of the people of Cuba
might be judged. I do not believe in the ballad theory,
or that a nation's songs indicate its genius, for the Span
iard has been a singer of gentle ballads from time im
memorial without its having affected sensibly his real
status, and " Shoo Fly," can hardly be regarded, as the
sign of a nation's frivolousness, any more than " Sweet
By and By " can be of universal religious sentiment.
The school, the theatre, and the court of justice are
the three modern indices of a certain grade of civilization,
though they by no means go together, or accompany
each other in the march of progress. But while you may
be deceived by all other indications of national character
you may hardly be by these.
Schools in Cuba possess a striking feature to begin
139

I40 CUBAN SKETCHES.
with, — striking, at least, as compared with our own sys
tem of public education. The sexes are always separ
ated. Very small boys and girls are studiously kept
apart. The children of a family must attend two
schools unless they are all of one sex. It is the sys
tem which may be considered inseparable from the race,
and nobody has, as yet, been bold enough to intimate
tha'„ t'lere is any useless trouble or expense about it.
Thc Spanish mind is firmly fixed in the idea that when
the male and female of the human species are thrown
together, there is sure to be mischief of some kind con
cocted. It is probably true.
The schools are all managed by the Church ; this of
course. It is to obtain this management that a constant
struggle is going on in the United States. It is one of
the fixed ideas of the hierarchy. Take away the direct
influence of the priesthood from the youthful mind, and
the grand opportunity is lost. Mix the church — the
confessional, the lives of the saints, and all the general
religious doctrines- — daily with all that is taught upon
other and very different themes, and the mind of the
pupil unconsciously imbibes the idea that it is all true
alike, and belongs together. Geography, — -Maria ; math
ematics, — the quarterly confession ; natural history, — the
credo and ritual; history, — the lives of the saints ; and so
on through the course. This is the education of the
Cuban boy, when he gets any, for there is no system of
public schools, and probably will never be any.
There are generally several pedagogic priests about
every boys' school. The education of the girl is con
ducted under the direction of some order or sisterhood
of maiden ladies, who are distinguished by the wearing
of rosaries and serge gowns. None of the questions

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. I4I
regarding the education of youth which have been ex
tensively agitated in nearly every other country, are
matters of thought or discussion in either Spain or Cuba.
The question is settled. Things are as they should be.
Education is a boon for the benefit of the sons and
daughters of those who can pay for it. That it is a
means of preventing crime is not believed, and the idea
is scouted as an absurdity. The girls principally learn
needlework and embroidery, and it is notorious that the
bright and pretty Cuban miss often ends by not even
knowing that.
I have already had something to say of the Cuban
young man. I have not observed any pale students.
The oratorical and essay-writing future statesman is un
known. The ambitious youth here desires clothes, tight
boots, an extraordinary hat, a cane, a big watch-chain,
and a package of cigarettes. Of course statesmen are
growing up on all hands, and it is sincerely to be hoped
that when they come round to it, they will distinguish
themselves in the better management of their island.
I would that one or two of that peculiar class who have
their field of usefulness in the Great Republic, and of whom
it iJ so frequently remarked in the county newspaper,
" He is an accomplished educator," could examine, for a
candid opinion theron, for example, the school-readers
used generally in Cuba. He would find a cross on the
title page, the Virgin and child at the heads of lessons,
and cherubim and seraphim for tail-pieces all the way
through. He would not find any choice .selections from
Cervantes or L6pe de Vega, neither from Castelar, but
instead thereof dawdling little moral essays from the pen
of some pensive priest. Here and there, by way of re
demption from perfect stupidity, he might encounter a

142 CUBAN SKETCHES.
versified fable about the ant and the butterfly, or the fox
and the lion. Then again, a catalogue of the virtues of
a good child, principal among which is reverence for
Holy Church. Then a sorrowful story of the orphans of
the man who was killed fighting against his, country, and
how Maria and all the saints regarded his act of treason,
— fighting against his country, meaning to join the Cuban
cause, and go bushwhacking back of Cienfuegos.
Noticing casually the system of education in Cuba, I
have wondered what, besides mischief, might have been
the themes of study in the ancient and famed universi
ties of Salamanca and Cordova. Pursuing the theme, it
has sometimes seemed to me that Church and State had
undoubtedly combined to force a flimsy and inadequate
system upon Cuba, the main purposes of which should be
political and religious. If such is the case the plan is a
manifest failure ; they have never made of a Cuban
schoolboy a Spaniard, or a very religious man.
I am forced to call the daily issues of the press in
Cuba ;2^wjpapers, but I do it with a perfect conscious
ness of the ridiculousness of the misnomer, and only be
cause it is the custom. There is not such a thing on
the island as a daily, weekly, or monthly journal, that in
dependently prints news. I have known a murder to oc
cur in the Plaza, under circumstances strange and atro
cious enough to make a valuable stick-ful at least. There
was not so much as a hint of it in the morning's Auro
ra. I have known of an old gentleman taking strych
nine in large doses because he was desirous of avoiding
the payment of taxes, and ridiculously fail to die after
making himselt the talk of the town. There was no men
tion of it, in any newspaper, A man one morning sent
for his lawyer, and then and there, beginning as was

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. 143
proper, with the lawyer, killed everybody in the house in
cluding himself. But the papers never so much as men
tioned the quintuple tragedy. I have known a whole
series of grim assassinations in the public streets, — four
or five in as many nights, — but did not le.am a word of it
from the public journals. Accidents and casualties pass
unnoticed also, the pretext being the avoidance of public
alarm. This is something like what they do publish : — " War
Notices. " First Lieutenant Pedro de los guardias de los
Reyes," — this being said lieutenant's resounding name,
— "with thirty men, in pursuit of a party of rebels,
in the zone of Remedias, captured two women, one man
without arms, a negro, a machete, a mare, and one shoe.
" A band of rebels being in the eastern district of
Pinos del Rio, the gallant, estimable, and highly appreci
ated Sefior Lieutenant Colonel of the Regiment of Cova-
donga went in pursuit of them, and it is probable has
driven them away."
Or this, by way of variety :
" Don Francisco Botija Verde, having absconded with
out the knowledge of this court, is required within nine
days from the date of this note to present himself, in
which case full justice will be done him, or otherwise to
know himself condemned."
Or this:
" The Most Excellent Sefior Don Juan Nepomuceno
Burriel* y Linch.
" Field Marshal of the Royal Armies, formerly Gover
nor and Commandant-General of this jurisdiction, who
* The Governor Burriel of the famous "'Virginius" massacre at Santiago
de Cuba.

144 CUBAN SKETCHES.
died in Madrid at half-past twelve o'clock on the morning
of December 24, 1877. " R. I. P.
" Many of his affectionate friends, with the Cur6 of the
parish church of St. Peter of Versailles, have arranged
funeral honors for the ease of his soul, which will take
place in the said temple at 8 o'clock on the morning of
Monday, February 4th, and they affectionately pray the
assistance at ceremonies so religious, of the many friends
of the general."
But what may an editor do when deprived of the priv
ilege of writing political leaders ? He does daily what
would be regarded as a burlesque in any other region. I
take up this morning's little flimsy sheet, ugly, useless,
poor, and dirty. The leader is headed " Los Pajaros" —
"The Birds," — and the gentle editor discourses for an
hour and a half about the little creatures who strangely
flutter in all parts of the world, and cheer men's hearts.
It is not badly written either; it is quite interesting.
I turn back over the files — for of course I have always
kept a file of these four-page journals, — and find for suc
cessive days these subjects : Virtue, Sociability, The
Domestic Hearth, The Mechanic Arts, Temperance, and
so on for days and days, until, I was about to say, you
can't rest. But you can, and even go to sleep, so I
forego the slang.
This is the Cuban newspaper. In the Havana journals,
there are, necessarily, scissorings, notices of last night's
opera, and commercial quotations. The whole is skilfully
done, to the extent that no man could do it who had not
had a very long practice in a land where actual liberty of
the press is as nearly unknown as snow is. The most
enlightened of Spaniards would consider liberty of the

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. ' I4S
press to mean only the liberty to publish a newspaper at
all. There is a tradition that, in the days of Captain-Gen
eral Dulce, at the beginning of the insurrectionary war,
liberty was given to whomsoever would, to publish a
newspaper. There were dozens set a-going in a week.
Every man who had money enough to set up a press
did it, and proceeded to say to the public what he
thought of every man whom he did not personally like,
to print scurrilities and indecent jokes, and generally to
follow the instincts of that kind of freedom which means
license. The scandal grew very warm within a brief
period, and those who did not themselves stop, had to be
stopped. Of course the illustrious Dulce, being a Span
iard, did not understand that in the course of a few
weeks the evil would find its own remedy. But it illus
trated the Cuban and Spanish idea of the liberty of the
press. There is a Censor, and the existence and supposed
necessity of this official explain every thing. The gov
ernment is managing editor. Therefore all newspapers
are of the same political complexion, all have the same
general ideas, and all agree in praising or blaming the
same things. Of course there are editors of my ac
quaintance in the United States who seem not to need
any official to look over the proof-sheets. They are all
the time in dread of public opinion, and hasten to dis
cover and place themselves upon the side that is going
to win. But this is a government whose soul and
strength lie in inquisition. It has always been so, un
der whatsoever form of Spanish monarchy it was con
ducted. It prefers to take care of every thing ; to pre
vent, suppress, and to guide by its own hands absolutely.

146 CUBAN SKETCHES.
This fatherly care and solicitous looking after things,
which is considered very parental, is especially exhibited
in the theatre. All plays, old and new, must have the
approval of the governor of the town before they can be
placed upon the boards for a given evening. The whole
program for any evening is subject to his approval.
Once announced, the play must be played. Every even
ing there is a " president " of the performance, who sits
in a prominent box, and when an actress is encored she
must not appear a second time until the clamors of
the public have induced the president to ring his hand
bell. If a song or scene is desired again by the people,
the president is the judge, acting for the government,
as to whether it shall be given or not, and the hand-bell
is called into requisition if it is considered good for
them All the ladies and gentlemen who are in the
boxes and parquette, and all the hoodlums who are in
the galleries, are children, who do not know what is best
for them. Their tastes and desires, and morals and be
havior, are constantly looked after by a paternal govern
ment. The theatre in Cuba is a queer place anyway. The
" Tacon " in Havana is the third in size in the world,
and some of those in the smaller towns are handsome
and costly structures. But in the matter of amusements
they offer the public they are still unique. The Span
iard, who acts more than any other man off the stage,
acts less than any other man upon it. He loses his
vivacity, and becomes awkward and stereotyped. As a
tragedian he is almost a failure. The zarzuela, not the
legitimate drama, nor yet opera, but consisting of both,
— the original melo-drama, in fact, is the almost universal
play, and seeming to require no special talent, almost

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. I47
anybody can do it. Any Spanish woman who can sing a
little, can take the part of " La Marsellesa " or " Mar
ina," and any comic actor can put in the part generally
spelled on the bills " Sanmartin."
The most prominent figure on the stage is a huge
white, bonnet-shaped hood, with the open side toward the
actors, and placed at the footlights. Nearly all the dia
logue is spoken within a few feet of this hood, for in it
are the prompter's head and shoulders,— two heads and
four shoulders in fact, — a man for the male parts, and a
woman for the female characters. These two, sitting
cosily together, read the whole dialogue in a running
monotone, sometimes quite as loud as the voices of the
actors, who do not seem to think it necessary to learn
their parts before going on the stage.
Like the French, the Spaniard must have something
distinctly and broadly nasty as an after-piece. Often the
dialogue is such as to cause a suspicion that his Excel
lency either had not read it when he gave permission to
play the piece, or else had proved unfaithful to his
solemn charge of the morals of the people. The can
can, genuine, and not any pretence of it, is a favorite
among theatre-goers. Any vulgar dance, outside of all
the decencies of the regular ballet, is hailed with delight
and applause. The nearest approach to a riot I ever
saw in a theatre, occurred one night on the refusal of
the governor to allow a nasty little one-act drama,
called " Polichinela," — Punch, — to be played.
Nowhere is there a better illustration of the ways of
society than in the theatre. The Cuban lady will not
sit in what we call the orchestra chairs, — the whole semi
circular space in front of the stage, — because it is a
place frequented by men. It is not the fashion, and she

148 CUBAN SKETCHES.
won't do it, though accompanied by her husband and
though ladies born in Spain go there frequently. All
balcony seats are square boxes rising one above the
other, furnished with chairs, and sold as boxes are with
us. Our Creole must sit in these, and as there is a
gallery passing outside of each tier of boxes, all the
world may pass by and look at her. This is the thing to
do, and everybody does it. The house is regularly
emptied between every act, and the whole throng adjourn
to the galleries to smoke, saunter from box to box, and
leisurely survey the blooming array of false hair, arms,
and shoulders, and other lavishly displayed female
charms. It is a tropical crowd, and there is a certain
shade of the gaslight which shows every chalky dab
of cascarilla in every face. Those that are covered
with it look like corpses, while some have only a patch
on each cheek, giving them a grotesque look like the face
of the clown in a pantomime. There are those, how
ever, who are beautiful, notwithstanding this powder of
egg-shells. It is at the theatre the Cuban woman blooms. Her
dress is of all colors, and crimson, white, scarlet, and blue,
make the homely square boxes seem like parterres of
flowers. She wears no bonnet or hat, and it will be a
pity when, among other Americanisms, she acquires the
fashion. She expects, and wishes, to be gazed at, and
never seems conscious of it. She cannot talk, and, as
upon other occasions, says " si-i" with a. sweet rising
inflection, and smiles just wide enough to display an ex
ceptionally regular mouthful of teeth.
From the gayeties of the theatre to the solemnities
of a court of justice may seem a long step, but as re
marked at the beginning of it, I am devoting a chap-

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. 149
ter to the themes which indicate the social and intel
lectual condition of all classes. To begin with, it is
very hard, for an American, to understand that the
tribunal that is actually a court in Cuba possesses any
of the lawful attributes of such a thing. There is no
jury, there are no witnesses being examined and cross-
examined, and worried and harried in open court. In
criminal cases there is no prisoner, he being all the
time in his cell, as ignorant of what is going on as if
he had no interest in the case. There is no Habeas
Corpus, no action for false imprisonment, no process by
which the accused can compel the attendance of wit
nesses, no writ of error.
The Fiscal is a prosecuting attorney. He concocts a
charge, or " process," against any individual whatever.
This being done, the person is thereupon arrested, and
without preliminary examination put in a safe place.
He may stay there a month, without knowing what he
is charged with, and be finally discharged from custody
and never know. After the process, or accusation,
comes the examination of witnesses for the government.
Their statements are all ex parte, znd obtained in private,
and all their declarations taken together form the bundle
of papers called the sumario. This is handed to the
Alcalde, or judge, for his investigation. There is no
notice to take testimony, and no cross-examination.
The process seems to be generally kept as quiet as
possible. After the witnesses for the government, those
for the accused are examined, if there be any, but not
unless the government wishes, for the theory is that a
witness is a witness if he knows any thing whatever
about it, and the sumario is supposed to present the
whole case. Of course, if the prisoner has money, he

150 CUBAN SKETCHES.
has his lawyer attending the sessions of the Alcalde and
the Fiscal, called a court.
After due consideration, requiring sometimes two or
three years, the prisoner is either turned out and re
quested to go his ways, or is called for sentence. There
is some formality about the last, but as the case is al
ready determined there is not much use of it. All this
time the prisoner has been required to prove himself in
nocent. His accusation raises the presumption of guilt.
The maxim of the civil code, as the Spaniard practises
it, being precisely the reverse of the maxim of common
law, — that every man is innocent until proven guilty.
This is, in brief, and in its general features, the Spanish
criminal court. It is easy to see that in most cases the
government can convict when it wishes to do so. It is
meant that it should, and the native of the old country
is not shocked at all when you call his attention to the
fact. He believes the government ought to have the
advantage, and tells you that while many a man has
gone free who ought to have been garroted, there was
never a man executed who was innocent. But if the
reader has ever perused the pages of Prescott's conquest
of Peru, he may remember the process, all legal and
technical and correct, by which the Inca was brought
to his death in the camp of Pizarro. The whole modus
operandi remains unchanged to this day.
During all my residence in Cuba, watching as vigilantly
as I might the drift of events, I have never known a man
who had money to suffer capitally, though they some
times remain a long time in confinement. There has
always been a terrible drag in their cases, but they finally
went free. But I have seen the swift punishment of ne
groes. Chinamen, and the general scum. The consciences

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. 151
of the officials are duly awakened when they can afford
to make an example of somebody. When a negro who
has killed an overseer one morning is led out and shot
the next, when you may go out in the street and take the
census of the chain-gang and find in one division of it
sixty Chinamen, eighteen negroes, and no white men, and
when you know at the same time half a dozen men who
have testified absolutely to the intentional and premedi
tated killing of people before the Fiscal, and know that
the subjects of this uncontradicted testimony went free,
and when this kind of thing passes under your observa
tion for years, and nobody ever denies it, and everybody
considers it a matter of course, it begins to seem as
though there were a peculiar fatality in color and accom
panying poverty.
I have mentioned the chain-gang. It is the Spanish
penitentiary, and the lineal descendant of the galleys.
The prisoners are used in the making of roads, and in
general public slavery. They are usually chained in
couples, otherwise the prisoner usually carries his leg-
. chain over his shoulder, or slung to his waist, and has his
ulcerated and iron-eaten ankle wrapped in rags. They
go clanking along the streets, and it seems as though you
were never out of hearing of the horrible tinkling. Pun
ishment for crime is undoubtedly necessary, but a system
which parades its chained, beaten, half-starved, ragged,
and squalid penitents in gangs upon the streets does not
seem the best system. But it is better than the galleys.
Since the beginning of the Cuban war, the course of
criminal justice has drifted almost entirely into the mili
tary courts. These are institutions entirely to the liking
of the rulers of the island, who are soldiers. Civilians do
not understand them. Their course of justice is of the

152 CUBAN SKETCHES.
" drum-head " order, so swift that there is no time for
question or appeal. It is a good way to be rid of bad
men. Death and the chain-gang end all. Its sessions are
secret, and its members not in any way responsible to the
rest of mankind. For years all offences criminal have had
their adjudication between two rows of colonels, captains,
and lieutenants sitting at a table behind closed doors.
Yet these do sometimes bring forth strange verdicts in
trying the offences of their own class. There was a cer
tain church that, as is not unusual, had its own especially
well-beloved image of the Blessed Virgin. But what is
much more unusual, this virgin had upon her wooden
finger a diamond of good size and brilliancy, and genu-
ine. Every morning the sacristan used to pass by and
reverently inspect her ring-finger. The priests too, as
they passed to and fro, had a fashion of glancing that
way. One morning the ring was gone. Theft and sacrilege
had been committed during the night, and church and
police both went vigorously to work to discover the
thief. The ring was found in the hands of a pawn-bro
ker, who declared it had been sold to him by a certain sol
dier. It was a case for a military court, and the defender
of his country was called upon — after having been con
victed — to make his declaration as a matter of form, and
this is the story he told.
His family was very poor, away off in the hills of
Asturias. His parents were ill, and had written him
often to come to them, or at least to send money.
Being a soldier, he could do neither, and in the want
of all human help, he had been three nights in the
church praying to the Virgin. The third night he had
prayed long, and was utterly alone, he and the Virgin,

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS. 153
and was sad of heart. Every worshipper had retired,
and each candle burned low in , its socket. Still he
prayed, and begged the Queen of Heaven to help him.
He saw her glass eyes move and fix themselves upon
him in infinite pity, and being thus encouraged he prayed
harder than ever. And then she took the precious ring
from her finger, stepped down from her canopy, and gave
it to him as he knelt. He went away rejoicing, and sold
it, and sent the money to his family. It was a miracle.
He was happy in his faith, and the court might do as it
liked with him.
Then arose the quandary of the quorum. It would
never do to discredit a miracle, though some of the court
might in their secret hearts doubt the story in its affect-.
ing entirety. Besides, they had the ring again. They
called for the soldier, solemnly directed him never again to
take a ring under such circumstances, and bade him go.
It is a generally accepted miracle by everybody but
the pawnbroker, who is affected by the fact that he lost
his money.
So much, as an illustration of the wisdom sometimes
concentrated beneath half a dozen military hats. To
make the parallel complete, I will briefly narrate an ex
ample of the ways of justice in a quiet action for debt in
a civil court.
A mail known to me bought of a certain tailor about five
hundred dollars' worth of mourning clothes, and failed to
pay the bill. Continually failing to do so until the pro
cess had become monotonous, the man of the scissors
finally cited him. Defendant went into court, and made
the following showing : That, at the time the said tailor's
action was brought, he, the said defendant, was about
completing the purchase of a valuable property, and the

154 CUBAN SKETCHES.
transaction would have resulted in his great pecuniary
benefit. But the terms of the sale contemplated a de
ferred payment by the said defendant, and the party
selling, hearing of the action of the tailor against this
defendant, had declined to negotiate further, fearing that
if he could not pay his tailor, there was small chance of
his making good his agreement in the much greater sum
of a payment on real estate. Therefore, this defendant
and man of mourning says he is not only justified in
not paying the said tailor and plaintiff for the said
clothes, but is entitled to damages against him for spoil
ing a profitable transaction. Result : the tailor lost his
five hundred dollars, and was mulcted in damages to said
defendant two thousand dollars.
Since this case came to my knowledge, I have dis
tinctly understood that there is no such maxim in Span
ish law as that " a man can not take advantage of his own
wrong." Such are some of the incidents of the course of
justice in the island of Cuba. I only add that all the in
telligent natives with whom I have conversed with regard
to the case last mentioned, seem to regard the finding of
the court as very reasonable, just, and wise.

CHAPTER XIV.
MUNICIPAL CONVENIENCES.
THERE was once a philosophic Chinese who, on
arriving in Cuba from his native land, and sur-
veying_ his future residence, was heard to say that it
seemed a peculiarity of the country that every town con
tained two principal buildings, one of which, the church,
was always open and always empty, and the other, the
jail, always closed and always full.
I used sometimes to visit the jail, unaccompanied, of
course, by the police. There was generally somebody
there I had business with, and who had the privilege of
speaking through a substantial wicker-work of iron that
guarded his retirement from intrusion by outsiders.
While within the picturesque enclosure, I sometimes
fell into conversation with persons with whom I had no
business whatever, and sometimes they told me strange
stories, which would lack interest to my readers, but by
them I learned more than I wished of the workings of
the Spanish judicial system. One item easily discovered
was, that the Cuban legal fraternity, conjointly with
alcaldes and fiscals, have a way of wearing a man out by
uncertainty and confinement, and forcing him finally to
buy what he despairs of getting any other way. It is
admirably done, and there is nobody to help it, and no
remedy. 155

156 CUBAN SKETCHES.
The cdrcel, or jail, existing in every town, serves all the '
purposes of our state penitentiary. It is the home of
the chain-gang. From one point of view the system ex
cels our own. The prisoners serve out their sentences
in building bridges, making roads, and in cleaning tire
streets, and each large town has all work of this kind
done at the mere cost of the tow-linen clothes the pris
oners wear, and the thin soup they eat. As mechanical
and manufacturing enterprises are not attempted, there
is little doubt of the system paying. Their labor is en
tirely expended for the public good, and the work is
slowly done under the direction of engineers, and lasts
long. I have seen as many as three hundred people in the
jail of a Cuban city of forty thousand population. They
needed to have a large one. The building with its appurte
nances usually covers the space of about a square, and is
surrounded by a high wall. It contains cells whose di
mensions are of the smallest, and halls, passages, and
court-yards. A large class of prisoners are not confined,
and are at liberty to gossip with visitors through the iron
bars. Others may walk the court-yard as much as they
please, but it does not mean they shall any the sooner
get out. Still others are debarred from every thing but
air, and have little enough of that.
As the government of the Spaniards is entirely inquisi
torial, much depends upon the police. Yet, I was a long
time in finding out with any certainty who the police
were. The Serena was the first member of the force
whose acquaintance I made. He is usually a superannu
ated and under-class Spaniard, illy fitted to chase an able-
bodied thief, and whose only uniform is a glazed hat. I
heard him first under my window, startled by the first

MUNICIPAL CONVENIENCES. 1$?
nasal notes of his shaky song of sereno-o-o-o-o. Las diez y
media, y sereno-o-o-o-o I The strange tune he sang to
these simple and pathetic words every half-hour, the
long-drav/n, final " o," and the ancient savor of the cus
tom, caused me at last to go and make his acquaintance.
I found him standing at the corner, armed with a
blanket, a lance, and a lantern. I suppose the mountain
villages of Spain have had for three centuries watchmen
who looked and sang like these. I could not imagine a
man more poorly equipped to frustrate the designs of
the evil-doers of the night. Is a house-breaker going to
wait and be covered with a pole six feet long, and too
big to use with one hand, especially when he can tell
by the twinkle of his lantern just where that particular
Serena is, and dodge him ?
This policeman goes on duty at six o'clock, and stays
at his post until six in the morning. Sometimes he has
a stool to sit upon, furnished at his own expense. At
half-past ten the cry is vigorous and prolonged all over
the town. At eleven likewise. At twelve you hear a
few, and at one, hardly any. I presume this man knows
the softest door-steps anywhere in four blocks, and gets a
good five hours' rest every night. The same fate of never
being where he is needed attends him, as it does our
own guardian of the peace.
Another policeman is a military man, an imitation of
the French Gen d' arme, and called a Guardia civil. He is
universal and ubiquitous on all railway trains, at every
depot, at the theatre and the bull-fight, and in couples
on the streets. You meet him, mounted, in the country
road, and he has a right to ask you for your pass, which
he rarely does unless you look as though you had just
come out of the chaparral. It is his business to officially

1 58 CUBAN SKETCHES.
go through all passenger cars. In the first-class he takes
off his hat and walks through with a deprecatory air,
hardly giving you a glance. In the second-class he keeps
his hat on and scowls, and in the third-class he stares sav
agely at the crowd, and singles out one or more individ
uals as special objects of suspicion and distrust.
It would seem that by thus using every vigilance the
government ought to keep itself very well informed as to
the character of persons who enter its dominions. On
the contrary it does not. All this pass-carrying and for
mal permission by the government to reside within its
jurisdiction ; all the petty laws for every thing, is non
sense prompted by traditional and inherent jealousy.
The authorities of the island do not know the character
and designs of either natives or strangers. It is perhaps
a little easier to catch a thief or follow a conspiracy in
any other country.
Among municipal conveniences, the railways of Cuba
deserve special mention. It is a very good railway con
sidered as an iron track, and very shabby in all other re
spects. A first-class passenger car is of that class, age,
and general appearance that one of our western railways
would not hitch it to the rear end of a cattle train. It is
only about one half the length of an American first-class
coach, is flat in the roof, has uneasy cane seats, seems
made without springs, and is generally rattling, ragged,
blistered, and dirty. They are, however, all built in the
United States, by special plan and contract.
But the first-class car is a thing of magnificence as com
pared with the second and third-class, as may be per
ceived the moment of entering, say the third-class. In
this, there are only benches without backs, and no up
holstering of any kind, or any pretence of ornamentation.

MUNICIPAL CONVENIENCES. 159
It is purposely made as bad as possible : a great deal
worse than a " caboose " on one of our freight trains.
You cannot check any baggage in Cuba. They charge
you so much, — as much as they please, — write a receipt
for the trunk and money in duplicate, give you one and
paste the other on the trunk, and occupy ten minutes in
the process.
They do not take up the " tickets " on the train. When
you wish to enter, you are required to form one of a pro
cession, take your valise in one hand, your indispensable
umbrella under your arm, and any other impedimenta
between your teeth, so as to have a hand free to show
your ticket as you pass through a door with all the rest.
When you are seated in the car, the conductor looks at
the pasteboard, punches it of course, and hands it back
to you. When you arrive at your destination, you do as
aforesaid with your belongings, and give the man who
stands at the gangway your ticket: then you go and
hunt up a man to haul away your baggage, make a
special contract with him, deliver to him your little in
convenient square receipt, make him agree to bring it to
you at once, and receive it in about one to three days
afterward. Every time the train stops, there is a vigorous ringing
of a hand-bell to start it again. A Chinaman rushes up
and down the platform swinging the sounding brass with
great vigor, and everybody who has left the car to take a
penales, climbs on again. There are no patent safety
platforms, no air-brakes, nor any thing that is modern.
The lean old Chinese Mercury divides his time between
twisting up a creaking brake, and again untwisting it, and
ringing his bell, — what time he is not occupied in lighting
a little smoking kerosene lamp placed in a box, if it be

l6o CUBAN SKETCHES.
dark, and which is always getting itself jolted out or
blown out.
The freight carried by these roads consists of empty
sugar hogsheads one way and full sugar hogsheads the
other. This is putting it as briefly as possible, and very
nearly expresses the nature of the business. The rail
ways of Cuba are said to pay.
If I were to describe the passengers on one of these
trains, I should very likely repeat something already trite
to the reader. It is the same Panama-hatted crowd,
linen-clad and thin-legged, one sees everywhere in Cuba.
A warlike cock with his legs hanging down through holes
in a kind of sling, or chicken-hammock, may be ob
served as an article of baggage. If you see a man with
a roasted jutea tied up in a handkerchief, with the rat
like claws visible to class it by, it will not be a matter of
surprise or remark. I do not know whether a jutea is
a rat, or rabbit, or cat. It looks very much like a brother
of him of Norway, during life, and with its hair on it.
But as it is the only game quadruped common on the
island, and is considered a delicacy roasted and tied up
in a cotton handkerchief and brought from the country,
let us forego condemnation merely because of a hair and
a claw. From a discussion of the railway, nothing is easier than
a digression to the mail service and the post-office. It is
not to be expected that these should as yet have at
tained to full efficiency and usefulness in Cuba. They
are things that rather exist under protest among all
Spaniards. In the mother country roads for wheeled
vehicles may almost be called an innovation, and wher
ever the Spaniard has wandered over the face of the
earth, he has still carefully preserved to himself the char-

MUNICIPAL CONVENIENCES. l6l
acter and habits of the old land, and of a man who does
not much care for the ways and -doings, news and
thoughts, of the rest of mankind. The full mails which
come from the United States to the comparatively few
natives of that cold land who are scattered abroad
through Cuba, and the packages of letters and papers to
the various Consulates, are sources of great trouble to
the post-office people. Besides, they are generally di
rected in English — a language that a respectable Span
iard seldom learns to speak or read. The mails which
come to a city of forty thousand population in Cuba
daily, are about equal to those which are distributed in a
town of five thousand in the United States. As you
cannot tell within a day or two when your trunk will be
delivered to you from the depot, so you cannot prophesy
with certainty when you may receive the letter that was
sent to you. If on the same day a mail has arrived from
both Spain and the United States, the task of distribu
tion is too great, and letter-seeking parties must wait
until the morrow. Maijana is the most convenient word
in the language. " There has always come a to-morrow,
wet or dry," says the proverb.
To illustrate the slowness of a system which with us
requires limited mail trains and every means of despatch,
it is only necessary to state that the post-office em
ployees find time to write out and post on the wall a list
of all persons not holding boxes, for whom letters have
come. It is surprising, too, how often letters directed to
Trinidad, go to Cienfuegos, or those to Smith and Jones,
find their way to Brown and Robinson. A letter directed
plainly to any point in the United States, except perhaps
New York, is almost certain to go to England or France.
These annoyances, arising, no doubt, from the natural

1 62 CUBAN SKETCHES.
contrariety of inanimate things, happen so often that
everybody has grown accustomed to it.
I have never heard of anybody being arrested or tried
for robbing the mails, yet nobody has any confidence in
the probability of a letter containing any valuable thing
going fifty miles safely. There are no detectives and
mail agents in Cuba, travelling incognito, with a weather
eye on the mail-bags. It is wise and far-seeing state
craft not to have them, for it is likely they would rob the
mails themselves. If the reader shrewdly imagines that
I have been having my letters miscarried, the reader is
very right.
There are two express companies, to my knowledge in
the island. One of them is the " National and Foreign,"
and the other is the " Bombalier." There are probably
one or more in every sizable town. I know these two
wealthy and far-extended corporations one from the
other, when I see them coming, by the fact that one has
a crazier wagon, if any thing, and a leaner old crate of a
horse, than the other, which is saying a good deal. Each
of these two uncommon carriers is the owner of two or
three dilapidated boxes the size of a trunk. Into these
they put certain small packages intrusted to their care,
lock them up, and pay the railway company so much for
carrying said box to its destination, and there delivering
it to a man who also has a sleepy horse and an ancient
vehicle, and who opens the box, takes out the packages,
and delivers them to the parties interested.
I once saw a friend making a small package to deliver
to one of these companies. He was industriously put
ting a square thing into a round box, and I enquired the
cause of it He said : " Well, you see, I don't want them
to know what it contains." I asked him why, and he

MUNICIPAL CONVENIENCES. 1 63
smiled a knowing smile. I then said that perhaps it
would be better for him to go and carry the thing in his
pocket, and he answered he could not very well, as he
had nobody to leave in the store. This choice between
the mail, the express, and going one's self, is often made
in Cuba. Any man who had a thousand dollars to trans
mit from Matanzas to Havana, would undoubtedly carry
it, and make the journey on purpose.
It may seem that this chapter upon municipal conven
iences presents the arrangements for intercommunica
tion in Cuba in rather a bad light, and that such a condi
tion of things could not be long endured in a civilized
country. So it may seem to an American, for the con
trast between such things here and the indecorous and
undignified haste seen everywhere in the United States
is very great. But there is no complaint whatever. Things
are thought to be about as they ought to be, and there
is even serene content. It is not a hurrying country. It
requires three weeks to mend a shoe, two months to
make a coat, a year to build a house, and a century to
produce any change of any kind. Everybody falls into
that way of thinking and doing. The Yankee frets and
worries for three months, and then subsides into calm
endurance of what cannot be cured. There is nothing
certain but final dissolution, and nothing carried into
effect at the time stated but the sentence of a court-
martial.

CHAPTER XV.
PASSIONS AND AMUSEMENTS.
THERE is no country lacking in its peculiar amuse
ments, pastimes, and passions. Sometimes they
may be specially worthy of attention as indicating the
national character. Often, they are less characteristic.
Among the older races they do not so often take the
forms of mere whimsies and fashions like base-ball and
polo, where they are as ancient as the circus, the horse
race, or the bull-fight, they are entitled to a certain re
spect, because they indicate national character.
Gaming runs in the Spanish blood. As a man, he
must gamble as he must eat. As the more respectable
class of Spain are averse to emigration, and large num
bers of men in Cuba are unrestrained by associations that
generally influence them at home, the second-class cafd in a
Cuban town is a scene worthy of study every night in the
year. The place is full of tables and there is a crowd at each.
The game is dominoes, a childish thing enough for grown
men to occupy themselves with, but a game of chance,
and therefore a passion. They are hard-featured people,
sun-browned and hard-handed, tangled-haired and un
couth as animals. They gesticulate and dispute, and say
naughty Spanish words, the worst they can think of.
The rattle of the pieces, the absorbed attention, the in-
164

PASSIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 1 65
terested countenances, the hard faces wrought into in
tense thought, the flaring lights, altogether make up a
strange scene. It would seem that some of these men do
nothing all their lives but play at dominoes. If they win
it is but little, and they lose again. The game is small,
just big enough to be " interesting." Yet they are ani
mated by undying hope. If one loses a currency dollar,
he makes an oration about it, and explains it, and the
man who wins pockets the money with a grin. There is
nothing fashionable about the crowd ; there is no back
room and no mystery. It is like a gathering of fisher
men on some lone and sea-beaten coast, and yet is in the
midst of a prosperous town. They do not get drunk.
You are surprised to hear, in a company that seems made
up of excited cut-throats, so many calls for coffee.
It is not thought in this country that gambling is any
offense, much less a vice that is likely to lead to ruin.
Only the celebrated game of inonte is prohibited by law.
There is no game of chance that is wicked, or, because it
is a game of chance, that is incompatible with exemplary
piety and all the virtues. The Spaniard believes, and says,
that what he gains by luck is his by the gift of God.
Gaming for money by means of dominoes is not, how
ever, the supremest enjoyment. There is need of some
thing bloody, combined with chance. There is a pastime
that, in a Cuban sense, is a national passion. Nor is it
disreputable either, nor indulged in by a hard crowd,
nor attended by the police. It is the gentleman's Sun
day game of cock-fighting.
A cock-pit and its scenes', looked upon for the first
time, make an impression. It is not the " main" of the
United States, but a building, sometimes of fancy archi
tecture and goodly size, to which hundreds resort, — Dons

l66 CUBAN SKETCHES.
and Cabatlleros, fishermen and peddlers. If you go there
on off-days, you will find an extensive yard full of coops,
in which are all varieties, sizes, and colors of the game-
chicken. They are carefully tended, awaiting the day
when near neighbors who have crowed at each other for
'weeks, may get together and fight it out.
I regret that I cannot profess myself an expert with
regard to the game-cock. In my life I have never ac
quired the name applied to any particular variety, or
heard discussed the valor and virtues of any especial
breed. There doubtless are such breeds and varieties,
but I am inclined to believe the Cuban is with his cocks
as he is with his horses, — disposed to let nature take its
course, and accept contentedly such as the gods pro
vide. But I never knew until I came to Cuba how strange a
bird the barn-yard fowl might be made to look. Our
trotting-horse can be transformed into a creature of
which you may scarcely guess whether the quality of
speed dwells in the horse or in the fixings. But the
Cuban fighting-fowl is a still greater curiosity. Imagine
a bird that has his tail trimmed to a triangular hatchet-
shape, and whose comb has been curtailed in his infancy
so that his antagonist may not have the belligerent right
of pecking it. Down the middle of his back there has
been trimmed a swath about two inches wide, with the
special purpose of making him handsome to look upon.
His rear view presents a circular spot two inches in
diameter, and of a brilliant red color. I cannot truly
testify as to the purpose of this remarkable tonsure, but
I have to inform the reader that the male chicken, de
nuded of his plumage, is a cardinal red. I used myself
to imagine he would be white.

PASSIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 1 67
There are preliminaries to all battles, but more of them
in a cock-pit than anywhere else. The ring is a circular
space of some twelve feet in diameter, and here the
arrangements which are sure to end in a fight are made.
First, the fowls are weighed carefully. After a deal of
talk, or, more correctly, of vociferations and gesticulation
and yelling, of rising up in seats, and frantic declarations
by everybody of a burning desire to bet their undermost
dollar, the fight begins. The umpire puts on each bird a
pair of " gaffs," with cutting edges, and long enough to
stab a man with. Then ensues the usual rooster-tactics :
pretence of great indifference, futile pecking at imaginary
corn, leisure and unconcern. But they are sure to fight,
and when they get within striking distance there is a
simultaneous attack. Armed with the steel gaffs, the
contest usually lasts about ten seconds, and the bird who
strikes first is almost certainly the victor. Often both
birds are killed, in which case the money is won by the
party whose bird is the longest in dying. '
Without the gaffs, the battle may last half an hour.
Eyes are pecked out, necks pierced, wings broken. It is
small game, but as cruel as any combat of animals can
be, and disgustingly bloody. The excitement is im
mense. Ounces change hands rapidly ; men scream and
cheer, or say bad words, and throw down their money
angrily. There is another amusement that is, in the mind of the
reader, perhaps the first association called up by the
name of Spain. It is in its decline after a career of cen
turies, though still one of the chief amusements, not only
of Spain, but of Cuba. It is astonishing that a refined
and highly civilized people should find rapturous enjoy
ment in the bull-fight, though cruelty and the delights

1 68 CUBAN SKETCHES.
of torture are amusements with a certain class in all
countries. But in Spain and her colonies the most fero
cious and cruel of amusements is permitted by the
Church, licensed by the government, and enjoyed by all.
Fathers take their children, gentlemen invite their friends,
and all the hard seats of the amphitheatre, called the
Plaza de Toros, are taken. Only the Cuban women re
fuse to go, and this more because it has ceased to be
fashionable to do so than for any good reason.
The bull-fight has been described a thousand times.
But the stranger to its fascinations needs to see it once.
He must carry away with him a picture of the circular
seats, crowded with human faces, tier upon tier ; the
waving hands and hats, and the universal mouth open
with one continual cry. He must needs remember the
procession of picadors, banderilleros, and matadors, as it
enters and files before the president's box, as the gladi
ators once did. He will remember how he has seen the
picturesque costumes in pictures, and will note that they
are now, alas ! tawdry and faded imitations of the rich
cloaks and laced jackets of the ancient bull-fighters. He
will never forget the moment of hushed suspense while
the door stands open, or the cry that greets the thick-
necked little bull as he dashes into the arena with an
angry snort, and looks about him, ready and anxious
to begin the cruel battle which always ends with his
death. He has not long to wait. A nimble-footed banderillero
glides from behind a barrier and flings his cloak in the
bull's very face. As he turns to chase his first tormentor,
a second appears, and a third, and in a few moments his
nostrils are distended, and his enemies have goaded him
to the highest pitch of fury.

PASSIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. l6g
Then come the picadors, or lancers, mounted upon
horses which are lame, blind, old, weak, and almost past
any fear of bulls or death, or any desire for life or prov
ender. The picador uses as a lance a pole with an awl
inserted in the end, — something to catch and hold, not
to kill. The charge of a vigorous and angry bull upon a
blind or blindfolded horse is something sickening. The
picador receives him upon the point of the la.nce, usually
inserted in the shoulder. In the majority of cases he
pays no attention whatever to it, and gores the horse.
In such a case the spectator may be treated to the sight
of a charger staggering around the arena with his entrails
dangling from his belly, and is at liberty to call it pleas
ure if he so regards it. The crowd cheers lustily when
the bull makes successful plunges into the bowels of a
horse, which he often does in two or three instances in
succession, and in as many seconds.
There are a few notes of a bugle, and the picadors re
tire to give place to the first tormentors, the banderilleros.
These appear again armed with sticks, in the ends of
which are barbed points, and which are adorned with
colored paper. The bull makes a charge, and with a quick
and dexterous movement, sometimes astonishing in its
boldness and celerity, two of these are inserted in his
neck, near the shoulder. Presently he receives two more,
and his rage and anguish are terrible. I have seen two
such instruments of torture inserted in a bull's neck, high
up over the shoulder, which were no longer than a com
mon awl, and by a man who must necessarily place him
self in front of the raging animal to do it.
When a bull is disposed to avoid fighting, the barbed
slicks are rockets which ignite when they are inserted in
the flesh, and burn him to agony and fury. This pleases

170 . CUBAN SKETCHES.
the public, and is considered fair enough treatment for a
bull who is not disposed to fight desperately.
Finally comes the scene for which the public has waited
impatiently ; the skilful and mortal thrust that ends all.
The matador appears and flings his tasseled cap into the
ring, and bows to the president and people. He carries
only a straight sword and a red cloak, and advances tow
ard his antagonist as one certain of victory. He exas
perates the animal by flinging his red scarf toward him,
dares him, tantalizes him, and, finally, as he lowers his
head and charges, thrusts the blade to the hilt obliquely
downward between the shoulder-blade and the spine.
There is a gush of blood from the nostrils. The big ani
mal looks at his puny antagonist with glazing eyes, calmly
lies down as if to rest, and dies like Caesar. The three
little mules, gaily caparisoned, come prancing and kick
ing in ; he is ignominiously dragged out by the head, the
door is again flung open, and in rushes another, scorning
the very ground, to undergo the same torture and die the
same cruel death, to please a crowd which, with its shouts
of " bravo toro ! ! " " bien pegado hombre ! I ! " reminds the
unaccustomed stranger of all he has ever heard or read
ot the brave days of Nero, and sunny afternoons in the
crowded Coliseum.
This is the famed bull-fight which has for so long de
lighted the land of cavaliers and crusaders, as nearly as I
can describe its incidents. They say it has decayed, and
tell of the times when the matador went to his business
in his coach, and Ysabella the fair applauded his feats of
agility and daring. I do not believe the arena ever differed
much from its present state. It is like the circus, un
changing forever. Bulls are bulls, and could not well be
more active, angry, and courageous than I have seen them.

PASSIONS AND AMUSEMENTS. 171
There is a general indifference to animal suffering prev
alent among all people of Spanish origin. The little
Cuban horses, lame, sore-backed, weak, and altogether
sadly maltreated, are lashed to frantic exertions every
hour of the day, and beaten mercilessly for mere amuse
ment. Kids and pigs are left an indefinite time with all
their feet tied together by a thong. Fowls are carried
many miles to market swinging head downward under a
horse's belly. Oxen are yoked together by the head, and
through all the hard labor they are used for cannot do
more than wink, and the flies cluster in their eyes in
swarms. A dog rushing through the streets with a tin
utensil tied to his loins is a delight to the whole popula-
tion. Any animal struggling in a paroxysm of rage or
terror gathers an amused and enjoying crowd. Maniacs,
who are generally allowed to wander at will through the
streets, are tormented by men and boys, and with impu
nity and gusto. Shouts of derisive laughter-greet those
pitiable scenes which occasionally occur in every commu
nity, and which, in other lands, incite to help, pity, and
tears. Desesperado is a Spanish word in its present form, and
means, as with us, a man desperate, unrestrained by the
fear of consequences, or by a sense of right. There are
enough such to give the word a wide use. The model
desperado is an angry Spaniard of the lower class. He
has a sneaking fondness for assassination by the knife ;
for the duello con las armas blancas, — the " white arms,"
— as he calls it. I have known four men murdered in the
streets by unknown hands, in as many consecutive nights,
in a Cuban town, and the police never discovered who did
it. The fatal stab from behind, under the shoulder blade,
has sent many a Spaniard to his account ere now, and

172 CUBAN SKETCHES.
many an one who deserved it. Two men sometimes m.eet
face to face in the street, and fight it out with hideous
knives. If for any reason they part, they fight on sight ;
every time they meet. The dagger and the passions of /
the Latin lie close together. Among the Saxon races/
the man who carries a knife is regarded as a kind of
a.ssassin, while even a gentleman may sometimes have a
pistol in'his pocket and thereby cause no remark. It is
because the knife is the emblem of assassination, of
quick, silent, gliding, treacherous death, of a wound for
which surgery knows no remedy.
There is, I believe, an essential race difference in the
methods of hating, loving, and revenge. There are men
who desire to fight and not to kill ; these are Saxons.
Thefe are those who desire only to kill ; these are Latins.
There are those with whom the love of woman puts jeal
ousy far off and out of mind, and with whom love is
faith ; these also are Saxons. There are those with
whom suspicion walks ever by love's side, in whose pas
sion there is no mixture of confidence, and who nurse in
their hearts a demon and an angel together. This is the
Latin. In this, as in other things, we have only to cross
the Gulf Stream to find our antipodes.

CHAPTER XVI.
MOTHER CHURCH.
THE most remarkable feature of the Constitution of
the United States is seldom thought of by her
citizens. It is that she has no religion of the State, and
no Church established by law.
There are lands where Church-and-State rule has held
for many centuries, but where it has at last become a
mere form ; a nominal and theoretical thing that is ad
vocated by one party for the sake of grandeur and tradi
tion, and opposed by another for the sake of opposition
and a desire to change. But there are other regions
where it is not by any means a form, but a vital prin
ciple of government. One of these is Cuba, and the
stranger may soon discover it to be the case. After
breathing the freer air of heresy all his life, he feels to
a degree stifled — religiously choked. For no man can
escape the pressure. You cannot, without the consent
and assistance of the Church, marry anybody whoso
ever or at all ; and, if you are a Protestant, you must
actually unite with it before you can be permitted to
exercise the right of choice among the ladies of your
acquaintance. You cannot conveniently be born with
out the Church, and can prove your legitimacy by no
means outside of her records, and without her you had
better not die, 173

174 CUBAN SKETCHES.
The Mother Church is the mistress of ceremonies of
all kinds. She owns the cemeteries practically, is inter
ested in the sale of coffins and management of hearses,
buries the dead, licenses the inhuming and exhuming of
all bodies, and is a kind of orphans' court for the bene
fit of herself and, the surviving heirs. In every village
she erects her cross, and jangles her bells, and issues
her pious and salutary decrees. Everywhere, more com
mon than even doctors, are her black-robed and solemn-
visaged servants. Holding fast to the end of all things
with a tenacious grasp, making herself the great indis
pensable in every thing that men desire most to attain
and enjoy, she is, by the consent and assistance of the
government, more strong than the government itself, and
closes the long list of her powers and terrors by a
dread jurisdiction over the world to come.
It is the old Church, the Church " Romana, Apostol-
ica, Catholica," the Church as she is and was meant to be
in southern Europe, that holds sway in Cuba. The man
who begs leave to exercise his wickfed reason, and has the
temerity to doubt a dogma, who fails to see the truth of
a statement or the foundation for a pretence, cannot be
otherwise than in some sense opposed to her. She has
her will in most things, and takes no pains to conceal the
fact that she considers a heretic already doomed, and
that she will not believe him under oath. She pervades
the land, and in a sense she owns it. She has an essential
place in the police system, and is an ingredient and neces
sary part of every thing.
I grieve to state, however, that notwithstanding all
this, the Church in Cuba seems to be poor. Pecuniarily
she has fallen upon these later and evil times in which
dying sinners are not permitted by heirs peacefully to

MOTHER CHURCH. 175
endow and die, even if they would. Her buildings,
while many of them are venerable, are none of them
palaces, and some of them are greatly in need of plaster
and paint. Her vestments are cheap, her jewels are
tawdry, the lace is cotton, the gold is brass.
The church edifice of the Cuban town, of the dilapi
dated character already alluded to, is a peculiar build
ing within, though doubtless much like all others in
Spanish America. Its most peculiar characteristic is a
want of any thing that can truly be called magnificence,
with a vast and futile attempt at something like it.
There are, of course, no seats. The worshippers are not
to be accommodated with the irreverent appliances of
ease, but are expected, once for all, to bend their legs
and keep them bent. This gives rise to a curious scene
of every-day occurrence. Only women go to church as
worshippers. The males usually attend for the pur
pose of seeing them worship. Each pious dame brings
a little carpet, or rather a small-sized negro brings it for
her. She kneels, but in the course of a few minutes
sits. An ill-bred person would say, squats. Tired with
the course of the ceremonial, she at length reclines. In
the middle of the service the floor is strewn with a
choice assortment of ladies' dress-goods with the ladies
inside of them. At certain places in the ceremonial, it
is necessary for everybody to place themselves again in
a kneeling posture, and there is a general struggle to at
tain this 'end. To see two or three hundred women
scrambling at once from a reclining to a kneeling position,
has a tendency for the moment to destroy the solemn
feeling one should have under the circumstances.
The ultramontane theology is fully illustrated by the
decorations of the walls, especially the pictures. Some

176 CUBAN SKETCHES.
of these last are little less than horrible, both as objects
of worship and as works of art. For instance, I remem
ber one, and indeed very vividly, the lower half of
which represented a large number of nude people walk
ing about in the midst of flames. Some of them are
infants, and some, old parties particularly bald and
wrinkled. They do not seem to be squirming and howl
ing as much as they ought under the circumstances.
They are more like people astonished at finding them
selves in an exceedingly disagreeable predicament. But
above, in the upper half of the picture, is the Virgin,
with a sentimental smile on a very common physiognomy,
looking down " from the gold bar of Heaven " upon the
flame-clad crowd of unfortunates. They are plainly in
Hell, these people ; — none of our modern, rather dreary,
but not-so-bad-as-it-might-be hells, but the old-fashioned,
genuine, literal locality. There is conveyed to the mind
of the devout Catholic the idea that they are roasting,
and ought to be. I have imagined, as I contemplated
the picture, that the Virgin was saying to one of her
companions in the beatific upper half of the picture, a
bald and homely seraph : " Don't you imagine, Zacha
rias, that they are quite cooked by this time ? " I am
aware that this is very, very wicked, and an illustration
of all the good it does to a miserable Protestant to hang
up pictures in churches. But I am determ.ined not to
be frightened into being good, though I am convinced
that but for a strong resolution of that kind, the pic
tures of a Cuban church would do the business.
Here and there through the building there are boxes
with glass sides, and a candle burning within, transpar
ently painted with skulls and cross-bones, and other mor
tuary emblems. I do not know what these death's-head

MOTHER CHURCH. 1 77
lanterns are for, and frankly confess my ignorance of
what they are called. But people crawl from one to the
other on their knees, and pray to them, as they do to
every other object in the building. There is a life-size
image of the Man of Calvary, stretched upon his cross,
dreadfully realistic in its representation of a dead man
who has suffered torture. The knees are bloody and
abraded, the wound in the side runs blood, and each scar
made by nail and thorn and scourge is there. It is horri
ble. There is young Saint Sebastian, looking very smil
ing, with his body stuck full of arrows like a pin-cushion. '
There are a large number of Virgins, assorted sizes and
moods, sad, glad, or merely complacent, for the wonder
ful woman has the faculty of being four or five hundred
women at once, suiting herself to all climes and races.
There are a dozen or so of the regular dried saint in glass
cases, all bald, all clad in red and purple gowns, all hav
ing the general look of having been made in the same fac
tory, after the same general model, and all producing the
vague impression that if they are in heaven and look like
that, one does not wish to go there.
At intervals stand the confessionals. These are wooden
boxes, with a comfortable seat inside for the priest, and
sides of perforated tin. At almost any hour, you may
see some sin-stricken soul kneeling on the floor with her
lips to the tin partition, pouring her iniquities into the
ear of a red-faced priest. And here we arrive at the se
cret of the whole business, and obtain the key to the
power of Roman Catholicism. The shames, crimes, and
unhappinesses that come to the ear of the Church, the
causes for assassinations, jealousies, hatreds, suspicions;
the secret springs and motives of life and society; the
nameless things that mothers, husbands, and brothers do

178 CUBAN SKETCHES.
not know : all these things Mother Church knows. It was
a .shrewd invention of the fathers. By it she indeed holds
the keys, and is infallible, if infallibility means not guess
ing, but knowing.
There is only one occasion, however, upon which the
average male Cuban or Spaniard goes to confession.
That is, when he is on the eve of matrimony. If he de
clines to do so, then the Church declines to marry him,
and as there is no such thing as a civil marriage he has
no remedy. Thus, once in the life of almost every man,
"the long-delayed penance is sure to fall, the long-retained
fee sure to be paid. Then, in many cases, the hardened
sinner goes away, and tells the boys what the priest asked
him, what he answered, and how he did not do any pen
ance whatever. It is sadly true that it is the feminine
soul, and not the masculine, that respects the sacraments.
The great majority of men cherish an ill-concealed dis
like to the faith of the fathers, though refusing to coun
tenance any other. He is disposed to have a private
Opinion of the infallibility of the Church, the purity of
the priesthood, the divine authority of dogma, and the
pecuniary disinterestedness of the whole sacred college.
He believes a little competition is necessary to enliven
ecclesiastical routine and reduce the fees.
I have said that the Church in Cuba seemed not to
have attained great wealth. I have never yet attended
services where the establishment was rich enough to af
ford an organ. In the little towns of Mexico the band
and instruments of the last night's baile are good enough
for choir-service the following morning. It is not greatly
different here. The unsanctified cottage "organ" so
called, the quincum-quancum of country churches, the
musical sister of the sublime accordeon, is the ordinary

MOTHER CHURCH. 1 79
devotional instrument. But there is nothing strange in
the celebration of mass without a single worshipper. It is
all the same. The church is always open, and something
is always going on. An old cock-fighting rou^ may be off
at one side repeating an assorted selection of prayers to
atone for misspent Sundays and ounces, and a gay mu
latto, burdened with more amours than she can carry,
which is saying a great deal, kneels at the confession cup
board. Idle boys play here and there, and grown-up
vagabonds loaf around, apparently engaged in counting
the candles. Occasionally there is an old woman of the
humbler class, going from picture to image, and taking
all as they come, saying a prayer to each, and giving her
moral nature a regular cleaning up. If it is not piety it
is penance, the salutary dispensation of the man in the
cupboard. There are seasons of the year when religious matters
are more lively than at other times, and the languid zeal
of the flock is stirred up. There are, or should be, half
a dozen bells in every church steeple, of all sizes, kinds,
and tones. These they ring at such times, — begin early
and ring pretty much all day, and ring them all at once.
The tune is slam — bang, — bang, bang, bang, and da capo;
slam — bang, — bang, bang, bang. They are all slam-bang
ing, big and little, of all sizes and keys, with all grades of
harmony and dissonance. Nobody wishes to live within
a mile of the church.
Feast-days, "fiestas," are a special and characteristic
institution. They are a remarkable feature of religious
life to the man from active and go-ahead regions like the
United States. There are twenty or more of them in the
course of the year, and Holy Week is a continuous seven
of them at once. They could not be endured in any ac-

l8o CUBAN SKETCHES.
tive northern country, and Mother Church seems to leave
them out of the calendar in her dealings with the irrever
ent and money-getting Yankee. Everybody stops work.
All the laboring classes are religious then. You must
wait for your shoes, your coat, and your washing until a
working-d*ay comes again. All this time Sunday counts
for nothing. There is, indeed, a little more activity and
frolic than on other days. Even during the sadness of
Lent, Sunday is counted out, and everybody may dance,
sing, eat meat, trade horses, and fight cocks with a clear
conscience. There is no Sunday in the year, and Good-
Friday is the nearest approach to one. The Cuban lady
sews and darns on Sunday with especial industry, if ever
she does.
With the numerous feast-days comes the procession.
There is a mania for processions, and no end to them in
point of numbers and kind. I do not know what they
are good for. They are not pretty, or solemn, or of pe
cuniary benefit, or aids to holiness, and remain in my
mind unclassified, save that I am disposed to include
them under the general heading of mummery. There is
a long one in May, for the especial honor of the Virgin,
in which the ladies take part. Such is the theory. But
the " ladies " ?ire usually a shade darker than is fashion
able. There are other processions in which only gentle
men — the military especially — march. Then you may
see the Virgin, escorted by soldiers and a band, pass by,
while the Dons come after, clad in their best clothes,
each carrying a candle, and each doing his best to keep
the wax from falling on his best coat.
On Good-Friday the religious season and the processions
reach their culmination together, and thereafter decline.
From ten o'clock on Thursday until the same hour on

MOTHER CHURCH. l8l
Saturday, is a period of solemn and ostentatious mourn
ing. Carriages and horsemen are suppressed by law.
The streets are nearly deserted and the shops are closed,
except that you can enter by the back door, and every
body who has any idea of doing the correct thing is at
tired in solemn black. All the day of Friday, you are
distressed by a peculiar hammering sound, a noise as of
continuous knocking. The devout are engaged in
pounding upon boards and boxes with sticks, as an ex
pression of grief. All the neighborhood is at it, and they
keep you awake until midnight with the performance.
But the church bells are not rung, which may be re
garded as some compensation. About eight o'clock in the
evening the grand display begins, and I can easily see
how, to these people, it is a most impressive scene.
First in the procession comes a youth carrying a
wooden box containing a big stone, and this he shakes
and rattles vigorously until he is tired out, when another
takes his place. Then comes Pilate, a tall negro in a tail
coat and cocked hat, the only emblem of his distinguished
nationality being a Roman sword, worn as Pilate never
wore his. After him comes Judas, carrying a ten-foot
pole, streaked red and white, precisely like a barber's
emblem, and on the top of it a. conical box containing
the thirty pieces of silver. Judas' mode of progress is
very peculiar, and to me quite unaccountable. He takes
one long, stiff-legged stride, then he brings the other foot
up at right angles with the first, and at the same moment
strikes the ground vigorously with the end of his pole,
making the aforesaid silver pieces rattle and dance as a
warning to all men against the currency of the fathers.
Then come the bearers of the cross, a toy cross, with the
nails, the hammer, and all the horrible paraphernalia of

1 82 CUBAN SKETCHES.
the mighty tragedy that was the turning-point in the
destiny of mankind.
After these is borne the figure of the Victim, dead
and pale, upon a bier beneath a purple canopy, and sur
rounded by scores of candles. A priest walks before,
chanting in lugubrious tones the service for the dead, and
a band comes after, playing a dirge. The multitude line
the streets or follow the procession, carrying innumerable
candles. The Virgin cannot be left out of any religious cere
mony, and presently she also appears. She stands gaz
ing upward, sad and tearful, her waxen hand upon her
heart. She seems, indeed, to have more followers than
the dead Christ. She is accompanied by "that other
Mary," equally sorrowful. This is the only instance in
the Romanist ceremonial in which the Queen of Heaven
appears otherwise than decked with roses, and smiling.
You look after the pageant when it has passed, and
see the thousand candles gleam through dust and distance,
and it seems tawdry and childish. The impression it
makes is fleeting. It is no more than as if a regiment of
the line had passed. The passion of the Son of Man is
not to be illustrated by a torchlight procession. I have
seen a deeper effect produced by the common service
of a little church in the far frontier of our country, aided
only by the homeliest surroundings and the home
brewed eloquence of a circuit-preacher who, inspired by
his theme, knew how to talk of Calvary and its victim.
The parades of Mother Church, with all their images and
candles, and the realistic display of the instruments of
judgment and crucifixion, are in vain.
It seems to me, after having seen it often, that the
Church procession is a thing out of date. Savages who

MOTHER CHURCH. 1 83
would believe, as the Church desires that all should, in
the actual sacredness of the things carried about, and who
would not be required to regard them as emblems only,
might be strongly impressed. The Church is the most
successful of missionaries, but she fails largely among
highly educated and, therefore, sceptical people, who are
disposed to see the difference between a spectacular dis
play and an abstract truth. The Church does insist that
things are holy, that water may be blessed, that forms are
potent. She has relics enough to save all mankind. But
in these days many a Cuban negro understands that the
spectacle is wax and wood, and that in the matter of dis
play the Church cannot compete with the theatre.
The large number of priests in a single ecclesiastical
jurisdiction is astonishing. They seem to have the same
monkish disposition to congregate they had in early
times. They live in the Church and by the Church.
They are, as they assert, married to the Church. They
wear everywhere the garments that proclaim them. But
they are not particularly ascetic, or else asceticism agrees
wonderfully well with their systems. They do not seem
to be men of fasts and vigils. They can be seen at any
time, when they are off duty, in the barracks they occupy
in the rear of the church, with their robes tucked about
their knees, their chairs tilted backward, smoking and
gossiping like other good fellows. They tell unholy
stories, too, and laugh as men may laugh who have an
assurance of a life situation, plenty to eat, and genteel
clothes of a specific kind.
But I cannot see how any man, with a man's feelings,
can consent to wear all his life a priest's hat. It is some
three feet wide, with the brims rolled up at the sides like
a scroll. All the rest one might agree and consent to, in-

1 84 CUBAN SKETCHES.
eluding the shorn spot on the crown, the size of a dollar.
There is no doubt that the Church has a large portion
of the community pretty well scared all the time. She
begins at the beginning, and sends the infant into the
world with a ceremony and accompanying documents
without which it is impossible at any time thereafter to
prove legitimacy. She afterward solemnizes a marriage
for him, which no other has the power to do, with accom
panying documents, and by a ceremonial which lasts an
hour, with the bride, groom, and whole party on their
knees, each with a candle in his hand. Every thing is
absolutely necessary, and every thing costs something.
There seems also to exist within her scope the power to
do things which she herself forbids. A marriage forbid
den by her rules may be nevertheless performed if the
parties can offer inducements to that end. The laws for
bid anybody to be interred in holy ground unless the de
ceased was a son of the Church. Yet it can be done for
an ounce, more or less. The priest in Cuba does not
seem to regard the brethren in the United States as being
any better than they ought to be, and thinks the Spouse
of Christ there somewhat demoralized. This a priest once
told me, and added that the difficulty consisted in the
Church not being a part of the government. He evi
dently thought it might be, as easily as not. This man,
a Spaniard, had under his shovel-hat no more idea of the
nature of said government, or the conditions under which
his or any other Church exists there, than he had of
domestic felicity.
Dying is quite a serious business anywhere, but it be
comes doubly so when a son of the Church comes to his
end. I have often seen passing by, first, a man ringing a
bell, second, two youths carrying candles, third, a street

MOTHER CHURCH. 185
cab containing two priests, and, last, a rabble of small
boys following from curiosity and vague horror. The
rule is that he who hears the bell shall kneel in the street,
though a compromise is usually effected by taking off the
hat. These priests are on their way to shrive a dying
man, and carry with them the host, — the veritable body
of Christ ! They go by one street, and return by another.
They must ride and not walk, and it is presumable that if
the person dies before they reach the house it were better
that he had never been born.
Yet, strangely enough, I have never seen a priest at a
funeral, though it is the fashion for the attending phy
sician to punctiliously attend. Funerals are remarkable
pageants, and Cuba can boast the most hideous hearses
in the world. It is huge, tawdry, dingy, an old catafalque
of ancient times, the thought of which must add ter
ror and gloom to the parting hour. The attendants are
negroes, clad in cocked hats and coats of the " claw
hammer " variety, made to fit anybody. The whole
apparatus seems to have been used a thousand times. At
a> funeral everybody begins to smoke as soon as they get
into the street. The bearers smoke as they walk beside
the hearse, and the negro smokes who is driving the cata
falque. My advice to everybody has always been, " Don't
die in Cuba," and everybody has always answered that
they would not if they could help it. To close what I
have to say in connection with the funerals of the faithful
at the cemetery, I have seen the coffin broken with an
axe, and the clothing of the body ripped and slashed with
a knife, preparatory to its deposition in the tomb. The
dead are sometimes robbed for the coffin and clothing,
and it was a thing once considered indispensable to so
mutilate both as to render them valueless. I say it was

1 86 CUBAN SKETCHES.
SO considered. I have my personal opinion as to the ex
isting necessity of the custom, but as the statement may
seem rather strong, I am willing to state only what I
have myself seen, with the hope that by this time grave
yard-employes have reformed.
Strange notices sometimes appear in the Cuban news
papers in the form of advertisements. One very common
one reads that on such a date, the — th anniversary of
the death of Seflor Don Fulano de Tal, all those who
shall appear at the parish church and pray for his soul,
shall be paid the just and full sum of two dollars each.
It plainly appears from this, that the more -money and
other good things a man has been possessed of in this
life, the better his chances are to curtail his punishment
in the next, which is hardly fair. It would also seem that
the Power who hears and answers prayer, is as much
affected by the petition made for the sake of earning two
dollars, as by the prayer of faith, hope, or penitence.
I am not discussing doctrines ; these are merely the in
ferences of one of the wicked.
At certain seasons of the year a notice, like Luther's
theses pasted upon the church door, tells the wayfaring
sinner that he who shall say so many Paters, so many
Ave Marias, etc., for so many days, shall have absolu
tion for sixty days. By order of his Excellency, the
Most Reverend Bishop of Havana.
I have said there was no Sunday, and that the only
day at all like it was Good Friday. If the idea gathered
from this should be that Mother Church is an intentional
teacher of Sabbath-breaking, the inference would be a
mistaken one. Such is, and has always been, the Sunday
of Catholic countries. The idea that there is any harm
in it, does not occur to any one. Go to mass in the

MOTHER CHURCH. 187
morning, and you may do what you like afterward.
Sunday is the reception day, the dinner-day, the day for
parades and reviews. Sunday evening is the gayest at
the theatre and the Plaza. The bull-fight is in full ca
reer, the cock-pit crowded, and no soul doing any harm.
Any attempt to deprive the laboring class of their
holiday, would produce riot and disorder.
Such, in some of its features, is the Mother Church in
Cuba. It is not such as ours, and either takes its charac
ter from the people among whom it thrives, or else has
given the people their remarkable character. She has
had and still has her vast influence, notwithstanding that
the women only, as a rule, are faithful. A great part of
the wit, the talent for ribaldry of the Spanish mind, is
directed against the Church. Even in a country where
freedom of speech and of the press is scarcely known,- the
shop-windows are hung with pictures that broadly bur
lesque the shovel hat, the monastic abstemiousness, the
vow of chastity, and the confessional. Yet the great or
ganization retains her peculiar power. Protestantism is
in its organization weak, as compared with this most an
cient and most cunningly devised cf human institutions.
Through all, she remains unimpaired, unchanged, mighty.
Not by virtue of the truth that is in her, but by mystery,
majesty, the element of fear, and the assumption of truth
without reason, argument, or denial. She represents a
power beyond human judgment, and holds the keys of
Heaven.

CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT WE EAT.
THE Dofla Vicenta lives beside the highway, and is
the mistress of a lonesome bodega, One of her
chief means of livelihood is the manufacture of butifar-
ras, which she sells in the neighboring town. She is a
dumpy, bright-eyed little Catalan, many times a wife and
widow, cleanly, talkative, and not likely to starve. She
has a great deal of custom among charcoal and fodder
carriers, cartmen, and passing soldiers, and deals out her
little glasses of aguardiente with many a blandishment
and smile.
As I passed her little hostelry in frequent journeyings,
I one day observed a sick ox beside the road. He was
down ; he could no longer raise his head ; he was beyond
medicine or fodder. He had an ulcerated sore neck, his
eyes were glassy, and each protruding bone and rib was
visible under his stretched skin. He was a lost ox.
The following morning when I passed by, the brute was
dead. As several persons were busy about the remains,
including the Dofla herself, I accosted one of them.
" Muchacho," I said, " you are going to eat that ox?"
The varlet grinned. " Why not ? " said he, " he didn't
die, — we killed him this morning."
I tell this little story, absolutely true in all its details,
to illustrate the fact that in Cuba you do not always

WHAT WE EAT. 1 89
know just what you are eating by the name of the dish.
Along the same road beside which the ox died, I have
seen hundreds of cattle going to the slaughter-house.
Every ox so lame, so sore-necked, so lean as to be ab
solutely useless for any other purpose, was on his
way to the market, and was next day eaten. Every
cow, a great-great-grandmother of her kind, long since
calfless, toothless, and milkless, was on her way to the
same fate. I long ago paid a visit to the shambles and
discovered that the question in regard to beef-kine was
not, is the animal fat enough? but, is he lean, sick, vicious,
useless enough ? I had long since ceased to eat beef.
The people believed I had a promesa, — a vow regis
tered with the Virgin, — and could see no other reason.
Tliey don't mind such little things, such American ca
prices about the value of fat ribs and good health in a
beef-ox. The reason why this is so is, that Cuba, at least all civ
ilized Cuba, is a miserable cattle country. An ox is
valuable and expensive. There are no imported breeds,
and if there were, for four or five months of the year
there is nothing for him to eat. He is valuable, and
almost exclusively used as a draught animal in town
and country. When he is good for nothing else, and
would die anyhow, then they eat him.
If he was slaughtered ever so fat it would make but
little difference. The vender of meat has a quarter on
a hook, and slices it down to suit the weight his cus
tomer requires. He cuts other pieces endways, side
ways, in long and ragged strips, or in bloody chunks,
just as it happens. The primest piece you can find at
the hotel is the large muscle out of the thigh, cooked
SO, brought to the table, and cut crosswise into small

190 CUBAN SKETCHES.
round chips. This is " ros-bif." There is no juice, fat,
or tenderness. It is just the same as fried heel-taps.
This deficiency in beef, fpr which, after all, there is
as large and constant a demand as in any country, is
largely supplied by the substance called tassajo (Eng.,
tess-a/z-ho). This is the dried cow of South America.
It seems that in those prolific regions south of the
equator, the animal is killed, the hide and head taken
off, the bones extracted, and the flesh, in huge slabs,
dried upon the sand. Cuba is the great market for this
product. You can smell a tassajo warehouse three
blocks. But, well-cooked, it is pretty good. The ani
mal was not sick, and once in a while you encounter a
a little fat in it. Ships come loaded with it. It is
handled like leather, and flung around loose in sides and
backs and slabs. It is not cheap, neither. At this
writing it is worth more per pound than American beef
is in England.
This dish you encounter on every table, at every
meal, and, accompanying it, another staple called Bacalao
(Eng., bac-al-<2^-o). This last is merely dried codfish, and
the great market for it also is Cuba. I beg leave to
correct the popular opinion that it is because it is a
Catholic country. If there are those in Cuba who ab
stain from meat during Lent, or even Holy Week, I
have not met them. It is because they are used to it,
and like it, and eat it at all times. A meal never is
complete without it. It is scarcely considered fish, for
the bountiful supply of the latter, yielded by all the bays
and inlets of the coa.st, does not affect its consumption.
The modes of its preparation for the table are in some
cases similar to our own, and in some a great deal bet
ter. They are infinite in variety, dry, wet, piquant, taste-

WHAT WE EAT, I9I
less, hard, soft. If any disease should appear among the
codfish, the calamity would be first felt in Cuba.
As I recall the Cuban table, I am always reminded of
the error that a tropical country is necessarily a bounti
ful one. When you sit down to a meal you are surprised
that all the essentials are of foreign production. An
absolute necessity is rice. As the American consumes
potatoes, so do these consume this tasteless dish. At a
Christmas-eve supper, eaten at twelve o'clock at night,
the company will regard but indifferently the sliced ham,
boned turkey, and cold confections, if the huge dish of
boiled rice is not there to accompany them. If you see
a gentleman with a lunch on a railway train, you will be
amused to observe that it consists mainly of cold rice, —
insipid and unpalatable in the last degree to one not ac
customed to such gastronomy, and quite as clammy as
cold boiled potatoes.
All this, with the exception of the beef such as Dofia
Vicenta made sausages of, is of foreign production exclu
sively, and to the list bread is yet to be added. The
tropical bread deserves an entire and separate chapter to
do it justice. Notwithstanding the inevitable rice, it is,
among the better classes here as everywhere, the staff of
life. I warn the intending visitor to these realms that it
is the thing he will find at first most objectionable. He
can get it only in one unvarying form, — a little muffin of
oblong shape, dry, and so hard that it requires both hands
to crack it. To be good it must be mainly crust. It is
always cold and always stale. The batter-cake, the warm
roll, the biscuit, are all unknown. The vast variety of
the products of the flour of wheat known among us, were
never heard of here. It goes hard with the beginner,
goes easier after a while, and finally becomes his choice.

192 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Soup is always at the Cuban dinner-table ; thick stuff
that must be eaten rather than taken as a liquid. Nine
times in ten it is what they call fideos, being a
slushy mess of stewed vermicelli, without taste or flavor ;
a dish and not an appetizer. The word soup, as under
stood elsewhere, has no application in Cuba. It is rather
in the form of a mess.
It is easier to catalogue the Cuban larder by stating
what they have not, and never heard of, than by stating
categorically what they have. It is a country without
small fruits, without apples, peaches, pears, any of the
berries. " Pies " are greasily made of meat, with a crust
half an inch thick. Butter, and even the common prod
uct of milk which we call cream, is unknown. They get
a dim and inadequate idea of some of these things by
importations. They will eat butter that is beyond hope
and call it good, and believe that canned peaches and
strawberries have the genuine flavor of the tree. Some
times a very small quantity of milk-butter is made in the
country. It is white and thin and soft. As a conse
quence, the Cuban lady refuses to believe that naturally
yellow butter is made anywhere — it is, it must be, dele-
teriously colored.
After the same manner, this lady has acquired the
idea that any piece of beef with a bone in it is, and must
be, not a steak, but " ros-bif." These notions, and such
as these, go to make up the sum of life's small difficulties
in a Cuban restaurant.
I have frequently heard, and once believed, that there
was a very limited consumption of meat, and especially
of pork, in warm countries. I was surprised to find that
Cubans were so carnivorous as to excel even Americans
both as to quantity and frequency. They take it

WHAT WE EAT. 1 93
roasted, stewed,- fricasseed, deviled, and boiled, and pig
holds the place of honor. Of the roast variety of that
delicious and much-abused dish I was ever fond, but
never met with a Cuban lady who could not easily van
quish me in eating pig upon festive occasions. She will
cause a pile of bones to grow up beside her plate with a
facility only equalled by an American girl with chicken
at a Sunday-school picnic.
This, notwithstanding the fact that the Cuban porker
is a queer-looking animal, rather built for running than to
be eaten. When he is fattest he is gaunt, long of visage,
sorrowful, thin-legged, the farthest possible remove from
a marketable pig. He is carried on horses, tied by the
leg and driven, cried and crying through the streets on
men's backs, tethered to a stake, and sparingly fed, and yet
is the darling animal of the populace. Half the time he
goes wandering about the country-house, his triangu
lar visage inserted into every opening, his useful nose in
contact with every thing that is not his, and bringing fleas
to be added to the countless thousands already domesti
cated in the household. But the Cuban is patient of the
flea, having long since discovered that he cannot be in
duced to desist by carambas, or even naughtier words.
After its peculiar style, the Cuban table ought to be
the most plentiful in the world. It often is so to the ex
tent of fifteen or twenty dishes for breakfast. Of these,
rice, bacalao, and tessajo, are invariably the principal and
indispensable. Then there is sometimes a little fresh
beef, dear and bad as it is, and, at especial times, roast
pig, a dish to be remembered. Eggs appear constantly,
generally hard-boiled. The Cuban hen has no cold
weather to afford her an excuse for restraining herself in
her useful mission, and keeps steadily on in her laying of

194 CUBAN SKETCHES.
small eggs with pale yolks. Sometimes there is an extra
ordinary dish of green corn, half-filled, and quite hard. It
seems difficult to catch this succulent dish at the right
stage for cooking. I have always maintained there was
something wrong about Cuban corn, green or ripe. They,
however, excel us in one aspect of the question, for they
call it by its name — maiz.
There is a dish, which is the only one in the long cate
gory of Cuban dainties that I have never tasted. It is
called " anjiaca " (ang-he-ac-ah), and is a green-looking,
watery compound of all the vegetables that grow, boiled
together. This is the mixture so loudly extolled by the
Cubanized American, and is served in vast quantity in a
huge dish. It is amusing to see the Cuban lady in deli
cate health eat of this preparation on account of its deli
cacy and wholesomeness.
The root crop is truly varied and extensive. The yam
grows as large as a man's arm, and loses in taste what it
gains in size. It is much better degenerated as it is with
us into the " sweet " potato. There is a large assortment
never enumerated by me, that does not usually appear
upon the table of towns-people, and is indispensable to
the countryman upon whose board bread is never seen.
They are the necessaries of his daily life, and, accustomed
to them from early infancy, he has no taste or desire for
any thing else. " Boniato " was the food of the Cuban
insurgents. Growing all the year and found in every field,
it was a substitute for bread, beans, and potatoes. That
unfortunate rodent, the jutea, was their meat whenever
found. The two together are reported to have consti
tuted the revolutionary commissary department.
Eating in Cuba occupies a more prominent place in
each day's program than it does with us. Breakfast does

WHAT WE EAT. 1 95
not come until ten or eleven o'clock, the later the better.
Dinner is the end of the day, occupies two hours, and is
due at five to six. It is a family good time, and nobody
is in haste. Toward the end of it the red wine begins to
circulate, and the cigar is lighted. The ladies stay, and
either the Cuban female is less sensitive to the fumes of
smoke than others, or the large open rooms render it less
offensive. In any case, it is here as elsewhere the weed
that is the emblem of sociability and peace. The meals
of the family are pictures of social life that would be
charming in any country. The members of the house
hold indulge in argument, criticism, gossip, laughter, and
endless small talk. It is the only place where you may
see a reserved people as they really are.
Finally comes the indispensable cup of coffee, — such
coffee as I believe is unknown elsewhere, — brewed gen
erally by some member of the family, served in a little
cup, and taken by sips and spoonfuls. I do not know
the secret of its deliciousness. It seems to be in taste
and aroma the very essence of the Arabian berry. An
examination of the kind used discloses the fact that it is
a small, dark-green berry, looking very much like what
we call second-class Rio.
The lateness of the breakfast has brought about the
commendable habit of doing most of the work of the day
before that meal. But early rising is not, as I have so often
heard, the preeminent virtue of Southern people. After
sunrise is considered quite early enough. The first thing,
then, is the cup of coffee, and equally necessary the long
and strong cigar. Then ¦ the Cuban proceeds to occupy
himself, if he is ever occupied. For three hours there
is great activity. At ten there is a sudden quietness.
The universal and ubiquitous street cab ceases its rumb-

196 CUBAN SKETCHES.
ling. The sellers of fruit, charcoal, and lottery-tickets at
last give the nerves a needed period of rest. Through
every open window may be seen, often embowered in
vines and flowers, the long breakfast-tables and gath
ered families. Near twelve o'clock the bustle begins
again, subdued and more quiet now on account of the
heat, but still a movement. The day has begun again its
tyranny of heat and lassitude, and every thing drags un
til before breakfast again.
But where is the " siesta," — the much talked of after
noon snooze ? Candor compels me to state that I never
knew an instance of it, and, as a custom at least, it does
not exist in Cuba. What there is of it, comes after din
ner. As remarked elsewhere, there are no hearths and
fires, no domestic circle. Reading is too active an em
ployment to be engaged in generally except before
breakfast, and the " evening lamp " is perhaps considered
as too enticing to the universal mosquito. I have been
amused at the universal prevalence of drowsiness when
the dinner festivities are once over. As one passes along
the street, rows of nodding people are seen through every
window. They even sit under the trees on the plaza and
sleep. The community is in a somnolent state until
about ten P.M., when one begins to hear a general bang
ing of big front doors, and may take it for granted that
it has gone to bed in earnest.

CHAPTER XVIII.
ISLAND IDEAS,
IT has often been said, and is probably true, that
the thoughts of an islander differ in size and
character from those of people who inhabit regions
of wider extent. Evidences of this appear daily to
one who has gone from the United States to Cuba,
and thoughts and language present themselves to him
in social intercourse and daily association that some
times cause him to wonder, sometimes to smile.
This chapter, as a study of island ideas, the reader will
find rather a statement of disconnected facts than a con
tinuous narrative.
Those who will read these pages have been accus
tomed to life in a land an idea of whose vast territory,
great wealth, and increasing power, has of late years
dawned upon the world at large like a revelation. Peo
ple speak now of the United States with a look and
tone of which they are not conscious, but which are
indicative of the feeling of the intelligent foreigner tow
ard the land whose vastness is but thinly occupied
by fifty millions of people, whose bread is eaten in all
lands, and whose manufactures are extending themselves
for the common uses of mankind. This country, great,
peaceful, and republican, is strongest in the moral force
whose influence is felt everywhere on the side of law,
197

198 Cuban sketches.
order, and liberty. She has her friends and foes, those
who hate, and those in whose dreams she stands as
the ideal land, foremost and happiest of the earth.
But no man speaks ill of her, save sometimes the Cu
ban and his self-sufficient relative the Spaniard. To
these it seems that the destiny of the Saxon is likely
to be swayed by a weight hanging heavily upon her
uttermost border, — a, weight six hundred miles long by
about forty wide.
For the island idea is that Cuba is a continent, per
haps not literally, but in effect. Havana and New York
are capitals of the world. They are reluctantly willing
to divide the honors. A certain inner consciousness
of the Cuban islander makes him believe that only ad
verse circumstances, such as want of money or want of
knowledge, prevents every man from emigrating to Cuba.
The idea of cold is terrible to him, and he fancies it must
be so to every human. It is a climatic egotism especially
islandic in form. He does not say so, but nevertheless
believes, that in climate, soil, intelligence, wealth, and size
his country leads the van.
After one is satisfied with the occupation of seeing all
there is to see, the question arises, " What and how do
these people think upon ordinary topics ? " It is a species
of knowledge not easily obtained. Modes of thought
must be inferred from a thousand acts, a thousand speak
ing silences, and from daily converse with many persons.
The good, the bad, and the indifferent, one finds to be
merely relative terms. Abstract justice and right differ
so widely in their application that they finally seem to be
merely matters of habit and education, and it would seem
there is no such thing as absolute truth.
I made an attempt at an early day to find out if the

ISLAND IDEAS. ic^i^
Cuban was as religious as he seemed. For appearances
indicate that he is intensely so. There is but one Church
and one form of worship. Priests and persons profes
sionally connected with the Church and its forms, were
plentifully besprinkled everywhere. The bells were al
ways ringing, processions always marching, and church
spires appeared above the irregular line of roofs on every
hand. I encountered a number of persons named Jesus,
and perceived a passion for saints and saintship even in
the signs and advertisements. Hotels, steamboats, sugar-
plantations, streets, roads, bridges, hospitals, regiments,
corrals, brick-yards, quarries, jails, are all named after
some saint, or some virtue, or some religious idea. The
Trinity (La Trinidad) figures everywhere, the common
est and most tiresome of designations, as its excessive
commonness misleads. So great is the desire not to miss
an opportunity to name streets after some canonized
being, that they sometimes appear in duplicate, or oftener,
in the same town, and must have the title supple
mented by adding " of the mercies," or, " of the sor
rows," or, " of " something else, so that the wayfarer
may not be misled. " The Conception " is a favorite
designation for any thing from an estate to a fishing-
smack. "The Nativity" goes for any thing down to a
tobacco-shop. Charity, Hope, Holy Faith, Penitence,
Compassion, The Sacrament, appear everywhere in variety
endless and confusing. There is a street, " Obrapia,"—
Pious Work Street.
Religious ingenuity has been well nigh exhausted in the
fit naming of innumerable sugar-plantations. In regard to
these the saints have no rest. Nearly all are " San " or
" Santa " something, and those that are not are called by
names as amusing as the others are religious, as Peace,

200 CUBAN SKETCHES.
Hope, Glory, Central China, etc. Schools invariably are
designated by a name implying sacredness, being usually
called after a female saint, if a girls' school, and aftc a
male, if a boys', and the day of the year set apart for
this especial holiness is observed as a holiday.
Every girl is named Maria. It is Maria Teresa, Maria
Dolores, Maria Mercedes, Maria any thing, but always
Mary. If there be no opportunity to have a Mary in the
family otherwise, a boy is so named. Jos6 Maria is one
of the commonest of these masculine-feminine apella-
tions ; Salvador (Saviour), Manuel (Emanuel), and others
of similar character are also • usual as the names of boys.
It seems impossible to get far away from something reli
giously suggestive, for, wander where one will amid the
great number of common names, one finds the greater
portion of them to belong to a canonized person of some
age of the Church.
It remains to add, that notwithstanding all these prima
facie evidences of religious feeling, it is not a religious
people. The idea does not grow out of zeal or devotion,
but rather out of a habitually careless use of the names
of things sacred. Reverence is perfunctory, — a mat
ter of form rather than an actual feeling. Ladies in
good society will not say caratnba ! but ejaculate " Dios
mio ! " " Jesus ! " " Ave Maria Purissima ! " The reader
may imagine how strangely such expressions would sound
from the lips of a lady in the United States, at her own
table, for instance. To these it is not even irreverent.
It is, by the habitual mode of thought in Cuba, impossi
ble to be profane. Por Dios ! is upon the lips of little
children from the time they begin to lisp. Translated
into Enghsh, it is one of the most odious adjurations of
the vulgar. Religion is a system of ceremonies rather

ISLAND IDEAS. 20I
than of beliefs. They have familiarized the Catholic
mind with the names of sacred things, with the offiees
and functions and forms, while the Puritan has been
trained to believe that religion is a thing of the mind, of
understanding, of feeling.
Another island idea is that things, localities, persons,
may be sacred of themselves. The Church edifice is holy.
Blessed water, the vestments of priests, the vessels of
ceremony, images, relics, — all are holy. Campo Santo, the
resting-place of the bodies of those who died Catholics,
is holy ground. It is useless to state that these are
island ideas exclusively, as they are undoubtedly com
mon to all Catholic countries, but it has seemed to me
that there is no other region where they have obtained
so great a hold upon the general mind.
I have taken the liberty, in a former chapter, of allud
ing to the fashions in dress prevailing in the cities of
Cuba. Strange as they sometimes are, they do not
originate on the island. They are rather the fashions of
others copied to the extent of burlesque. The natural
dandyism of the native islander keeps him from abating
an inch or a jot from what he imagines to be la moda.
When the use of false hair became general in France and
the United States, or rather, a year or two after it be
came so, the vast piles of jute upon the heads of Cuban
ladies became monumental. The coiffure was of the
proportions of a good-sized basket, and made the wearer
appear as though she was carrying, with toil and patience,
a burden of fifty pounds upon the back of her head.
I was not on the island in the days of hoops, but the
" pull-back " came in last year. It ceased then to be the
custom of ladies to sit down. Half a foot or so was an
immense stride. A fashion no more unbecoming in itself

202 CUBAN SKETCHES.
than a thousand others have been, degenerated into a
binding of the lower limbs together, and a swathing of
the person in fetters of cloth. Only the universal good
taste of women who understand the art of dressing as
well as any in the world, saves them from French ex
tremes that would burlesque the name of taste, and
scandalize beauty.
Men go further. It is rare to find a masculine under
fifty with sense or courage enough to refuse to be made
a spectacle of by his tailor. Queer hats, remarkable
shirts, strange boots, fill the streets with grotesque
figures. With these things the population is exceed
ingly contented. No sober second thought persuades
them that they are not appearing precisely as is required.
The ignorant foreigner's smile, if seen, is regarded as an
evidence of his own inaptitude or ignorance. The
islander believes he is right, in this as in all things. The
narowness of his horizon affects him. He is confident,
and even criticises the garb and demeanor fresh from
Chestnut Street and Broadway.
There is no feature of provincialism more strangely
marked than the Cuban's dividing line between himself
and the foreigner. There is a shade of reproach in the
very name, and a half distrust lurks in the demeanor of
all toward the unfortunate outside barbarian. An Amer
ican goes among his acquaintances under the title gener
ally of " Esa Americano" or "El Americano." The
German is designated as " Aquel Aleman," and so on
through all kindreds and tongues, The islander finds it
almost impossible to speak of a foreigner without men
tioning the fact that he is a foreigner, and it is not in his
bones to like him.
I do not i understand the reason or motive of the uni-

ISLAND IDEAS. 203
versal coherence of islanjder to islander. No Cuban was
ever the real friend of any but a Cuban. The Spaniard,
his relative, is far outside the pale. The American, from
whom he has more to expect than from any other, is " un
ie los brutos Americanos," — a man who is barbarous, ig
norant, and a foreigner. The German and Englishman
fare no better, and the Spaniard worst of all. The
islander desires no annexation, no connection with any
stronger power, no change, no influence from outside.
V/here he imbibed the idea that he is a nation, contain
ing within himself all the facts of greatness, I know not.
When at last the boon of independence and the oppor
tunity for self-government come to him, I fear he will
find it a harder task to organize his policy, lay the foun
dations of national credit, create a statute-book, and in
sure to every man the justice he dreams of, than he now
knows. I sometimes doubt if there is any such thing as con
servatism — that disposition to leave unchanged systems
that have been tried for which the Englishman is dis
tinguished — existing in the United States. It is not an
acquired quality. It goes by blood and race. It means
a refusal to experiment, and, in a great degree, a refusal
to learn. But we may borrow of the Cuban. There is
no way in which you can bore, torment, and distress him
more than by trying to teach him a new way to an old
thing, or to convince him that something is better than
he has known. It gives him infinite pain to be required
to acquire a new idea. He will buy and use machinery,
after a long time, and when finally convinced that it is
impossible to do without it. But his slavery to custom
is nearly absolute and abject. It would be impossible, in
the course of half a century of steady endeavor, to

204 CUBAN SKETCHES.
change the hour of dining, or th^ preparation of a single
dish he likes. The cooking-stove he declares to be im
possible, because it would give the cook " spasms." I do
not understand how, or why, but it is what he says and/
believes. Yet it requires from five o'clock in the morn-/
ing until ten of the forenoon to prepare the family
breakfast, and all the rest of the day to get the dinner,
and three or four, able-bodied persons to do it. For
many years he would not touch iced-water, or any other
thing that was not tepid. He insists upon sawing his
boards backward, and cutting his wood with a mediaeval
axe. A wheel-barrow is his aversion, and he is content
with one tenth of the result of a hard day's work, if only
he can be allowed to painfully carry dirt in a little box.
The antique shapes of his hardware would give his
hinges, latches, keys, and locks a place in a museum.
It is very lately that he acquired the use of the Ameri
can broom in place of a bunch of scrub. Roast beef,
beefsteak, and all bovine preparations he speaks of famil
iarly, without any idea of what they actually are. In
dian meal bread he prepares for dessert. Samp, hominy,
oatmeal, cracked wheat, he will have none of.
His diseases are, he believes, produced by unique
causes. He must, on pain of death, eat certain things
only at certain times ; he cannot tell why, but holds to his
views with childlike faith.
His horse equipments are as ancient as Spanish cabal-
kro tradition and fashion can make them. He rides a
huge saddle with holsters at the sides for pistols, and
uses a bridle heavy with metal and terrible with jaw-
breaking arrangements, for the management of a steed
that generally requires considerable persuasion.
He insists upon selling chocolate at a silk-store, in

ISLAND IDEAS. 205
buying his brooms at a shoe-shop, and his ready-made
clothing at a jewellery establishment. He uses only char
coal, because it is the custom, and costs more, and be
cause there is no chimney to carry away the smoke of
any other species of fuel. His wife and daughter refuse
to use rain-water for bathing, and insist upon its useless-
ness for cleaning purposes. So great is his fondness for
rice that he carries it with him on his journeys. He
smokes three or four times during the progress of a
meal, and takes coffee from six to twenty times a day.
His ailments are frequent and his doses drastic and in
numerable. Cuba is a blissful region for doctors and drug
gists. He has no ideas of hygiene as a science, cares
nought for smells, is oblivious of drainage. He closes
tight all the openings of his bedchamber, and avoids a
draught as he would poison. He complains of cold with
the mercury at 75", and bundles and wraps in the temper
ature of June. He is full of care about the little things
of life, and full of gossip about the small torments of
others. These, categorically, are some of the symptoms of the
manner of thought that governs the life of our island
neighbor. He can give no reasons save that so and so is
" the custom of the country," the Latin's riiost potent law.
The end of it all is, that there is no new thing. The
spirit of inquiry is dead. Changes do not come until the
old way has died the natural death of an useless or inade
quate thing. I- cannot convey to the reader any idea of
the effect upon the man and his surroundings, of this
dead and changeless conservatism. You know, every
hour of your association with him, that he is religiously
believing and practising obsolete " isms " and mouldy con
ceits, the falsity of which ought to have been discovered

206 CUBAN SKETCHES.
a century ago. I shall never understand how it is that
practical demonstration will not convince him that a man
may shave while suffering with a cold and not die, or
that a glass of water after coffee does not kill, or that the
free passage of air in a chamber does not produce his
dreaded " spasm."
It follows that there are no Cuban inventions. There
is no patent-office in Cuba, or need of any, or any thing
approaching it in the most distant manner. The islander
does not understand a machine, and seems incapable of
catching the idea. His plow that was, and often still is,
a sharpened stick, has been changed here and there for
something of iron and a little less clumsy, made at Pitts
burg. Yet in deference to his peculiar prejudices, and to
induce him to buy it, the " beam " is long enough to
reach the yoke of his oxen's necks, instead of the usual
short beam and chain. A genius from Yankeedom has
been building wind-mills for the pumping of water, and it
was as much a revelation as the steam-engine must have
been to the original Creole, as motive power for a sugar-
mill. There is a time coming, in which these things must
change, or the Cuban must go to the wall, and the ne
gro take his place. The rich little region cannot be
sleeping forever beside her dominant neighbor, unin
fluenced by the strong life that overflows its boundaries
like a flood. Time will come when he must imbibe
the idea of a free school and a free church, a jury sys
tem. Habeas Corpus, and trial by law. Whether he will
or no, he must take in the idea of at least one railway
through his island from end to end, mail-service in postal
cars, an express company, letter-boxes upon lamp-posts,
postal cars, and three-cent postage. He will be called

ISLAND IDEAS. 207
upon to grow accustomed to a telegraph system in which
the operator shall read by sound his instrument, and he
can send his messages without the intervention of a gov
ernment official. By force of circumstances he will be
required some time to change his ancient customs, and
arise betimes and stir up the energies of his tailor, his
shoemaker, and his wash-woman, and betake himself to
the depot without the formal grandeur of a bearer for
his grip-sack. I dare hardly prophesy so far, but hope
there will come a day when his daughter may walk the
street unattended by a brigade, and his wife may go her
ways among the shops and leave the negroes to their oc
cupations at home.
For, during six years' residence I perceived a slight
change, an almost imperceptible widening of ideas. The
telephone began to be spoken of as having begun its
mysterious whisperings at the capital, and the American
bicycle perambulated in retired streets. There was awak
ening a new spirit of inquiry in regard to such conven
iences as office-desks, plated ware, cutlery, and calendar
clocks. During that time the city postmaster improved
his office conveniences by ordering from New York a set
of lock boxes, and selling them at twenty-one dollars
each. Strangest of all, a hat and feather could be seen at
long intervals upon ladies' heads, and Yankee calico be
came common for dresses. The last time I received a
receipt for my baggage and paid the usual fee therefor,
I was told by the agent that his company contemplated
the use, at an early day, of the American system of brass
" check-es." The celebrated woven wire mattress was
exposed for sale in hardware stores, and a bridge was
built across the creek called Yumuri, of iron arches made
at Paterson. It is true they were four years at it, and

208 CUBAN SKETCHES.
made what could readily have been contracted at forty
thousand dollars, cost about two hundred thousand.
By and by they will cease to contract molasses by the
keg, for the reason that it was some thirty or forty years
ago brought to market in kegs on the backs of pack-mules,
and sell it by the hogshead as it is. Sugar may also go
by the pound instead of by the arroba, and save the trou
ble of an extra problem in division. Already the dollar
is a coin, and the decimal system of money marches side
by side with the real, escudo, doubloon, and onza, one be
ing in bills and the other in gold. The volante is going
out and the four-wheeled carriage coming in.
There are hopes of the final overthrow of some items
of ancient conservatism, as is plain from the foregoing
narrative. Evil times have fallen. Prosperity and easy
wealth are things of the past. There is nothing that will
so quickly change a system as its ceasing to " pay." It
is very certain that almost every thing in Cuba has ceased
to pay. A few people, principally women, have gone to
work now who never worked before. Dandyism has be
gun to look " seedy." Costly houses are changing hands.
Belles of fashion whom I knew five years ago, live now
in by-streets, and their Husbands have retired from the
plaza and the caf^. The great effort of the planter is to
borrow money to pay taxes, and the great industry the
collection of the same. For the revenue is " farmed " to
capitalists, and an army of collectors makes life a burden.
Cuba is a sick man, of whose recovery there are doubts, —
sick from war, misgovernment, slavery, extravagance, and
the want of men of the middle classes who are humble
enough to work and intelligent enough to govern. No
man can live long in Cuba without carrying away with
him some enduring memories of its people, which soften

ISLAND IDEAS. 209
as time passes. No man can do other than hope for its
emancipation from Church, State, and Custom. But no
reader of these pages can live to see such a result, even
in the brightest, richest, and most hopeful of all Spanish
American colonies.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE AMERICAN IN CUBA.
SO nearly at the end of a series of desultory sketches
of the Latin as he is among his gods at home,
it has occurred to me that the American in Cuba is too
interesting a subject to be passed without his appropriate
chapter. He commands upon alien shores his due share
of attention from those of whom I have thus far
written. He is a figure in the community as strange,
sometimes as grotesque, as those with whom he mingles
seem to him.
The relations of the American to the Spaniard are
antipodal. It is plain that they will never be brought
to think alike, and that they have separate worlds of
desire, of endeavor, and of belief. As haste is the
characteristic of one, so is slowness of the other. If
the usual American does not see a thing in half a
minute, the chances are he will never see it, though it is
but fair to say that he usually does. The Cuban or
Spaniard waits, deliberates, goes slow, ponders, and the
opportunity usually goes by him. The ways of the
American fill his Spanish friend with concealed astonish
ment. He never gesticulates. He will sit quietly and
look calmly in the face of his interlocutor, growing angrier
every moment, and never move until he means to break
something. He sometimes commits the unusual offense

THE AMERICAN IN CUBA. 211
of carrying his hands in his breeches pockets. Sometimes
his hat is observed to be perilously perched on the for
ward corner of his head. He walks at a gait destructive
of personal dignity. He is often guilty of the atrocity of
whistling the airs of his childhood in the street. He will
not submit to custom, and makes an unseemly distur
bance about the quality of his cocktail, his coffee, and his
beef. His clothes fit him like the clothes of a soldier,
and he is addicted to straw hats, thick-soled shoes, and
a suicidal indifference to draughts of air and cold water.
His demeanor indicates a bold indifference to public
opinion, and a careless disregard of what the islanders
may perhaps think of him and his ways. It must be con
fessed that he is somewhat exasperating. He is of a land
where there are no princes, about which there are no tra
ditions, and very little history. His country has no con
quest in her record. She is free and great by chance, and
has become so outside of all ancient rules and precedents.
He lacks taste. His is not the land of song, and dance,
and wine. The universal Yankee is a mechanic, a man
interested only in machines. He cares no jot for art, for
the music of the guitar, for stories of glory. He is as
out of place among the Latins as a newly-painted frame-
house would be. He hates papers and passports, the
surveillance of the police, and the gracious permission of
petty functionaries. He conveys the disagreeable im
pression of one who proposes to go where he pleases,
and do very much as he likes. There is in his de
meanor too much self-reliance. He is at no pains to
conceal his contemptuous opinions of much that passes
around him. He looks what he does not speak, and
has the reputation of being a quietly dangerous per
son. If the cab-horse balks with him, he will seize his

212 CUBAN SKETCHES.
belongings, and walk the remainder of the way. If he
wants any little thing he will go and get it for himself.
He disobeys police regulations in small things, and some
times has come into actual collision with the guardians
of the public peace. He hates the everlasting to-morrow,
and believes in to-day ; and to-morrow is the talisman of
Cuba. Such, in general outline, is the American as he appears
to the Cuban and Spaniard. He has unconsciously im
pressed himself upon them as a person outre, lawless, un
cultivated, ill-tempered, impolite, disregarding - those
things deemed absolutely essential by the majority of
mankind — Spanish mankind. Even that typical Ameri
can, General Grant, left behind him, after a visit that
gave the rulers of Cuba a great deal of trouble, a vague
impression not satisfactory. He was not suave enough,
did not pay sufficient regard to detail, and went away
evidently thinking of something else.
Thus have we gained for ourselves a reputation in the
land. So far as the foreign idea of us is concerned, it is
evident that we care as little about it as possible.. The
fault lies in the peculiar circumstances to which every
American is born. We are natives of a region so vast
that not one European in a hundred has any conception
of it, and the Spaniard least of all. It is a country whose
laws, language, religion, social customs, and dress, are the
same from end to end. Her citizens have placed her in the
foremost rank of modern greatness by means of the per
sonal characteristics that are criticised abroad. The impa
tience, the want of attention to small things, the indiffer
ence to mere form, the contempt for mere ceremony, the
disregard of every thing that does not " pay," the impa
tience under new and useless forms of legal restraint, the

THE AMERICAN IN CUBA. 213
especial restiveness under the demands of the " paternal "
form of government, whose guardianship extends to the
commonest duties and necessities of life, — all this is na
tural to the American, by no fault of his, and even with
credit to himself and his training.
But there are differences between the American and
those whom he visits that are not so easily enumerated.
It is natural for our visiting brother to believe that if the
foreigners do not all speak English they ought, and that
they are much to blame for the delinquency. His ina
bility to order his breakfast, to cause any person in the
establishment to understand his commonest wants by
frantic pantomime, or any other means, exasperates hiifi.
Nor does he find that foreign ideas of comfort are coin
cident with his own. It seems to him impossible to live
amid such surroundings as are considered sumptuous, or
to relish the tepid and tasteless dishes served to him as
prince's food. For some unexplained reason he is prone
to expect something better than he ever gets, or, at least,
the appetizing feature of novelty, and is disgusted to find
it as bad as possible, and tiresome after a day. So he
becomes ill-natured, and believes, and too often says,
that his landlord is an animal and his associates no
better. After a while he becomes in some measure accustomed
to his disagreeable surroundings. He acquires a smatter
ing of the language with three times the facility with
which any foreigner, except the German, learns English,
and becomes very much at home among those for whom
in his heart he cherishes a feeling of mingled indiffer
ence and pity. He often improves a favorable oppor
tunity of expressing with a strong accent his opinion
of the country. He begins to astonish conservative na-

214 CUBAN SKETCHES.
fives with innovations. His table-waiter is his first and
last victim, whom he causes to lead a miserable life,
but whose allegiance he still maintains by means of lib
eral fees. After a while comes a time when he is liked,
and not liked. His courage, plainness, ingenuity, and
activity are admired without any intention of imitating
them. His evident determination to get what he wants,
despite custom and precedent and the trouble it costs, is
disliked exceedingly. To the tailor and the shoemaker,
he becomes a marked man. Their astonishment is at first
very great, at the encounter with a man who disregards
fashions, despises prevailing styles, and establishes a
school of cutting and fitting for himself, and will have no
other. The feminine American, when she finds herself upon
these shining shores, fares worse. An idea that the cook
ery might be cleaner prevails in her mind. She finds it
impossible to endure quietly the new code of female de
portment of which she has become a subject, and de
sires to go where and when she will. She tries it once or
twice, refusing to credit stories of the consequences, but
afterward is willing to comply with the social code, and
be quite miserable. But she persists longer than the
male species in her endeavor to reform the country. She
changes her hotel once a week, and finds each one worse
than the other, and still insists that something can be
found which does not exist. Finally, she retires into a
state of quiet Saxon endurance, makes the best of her
martyrdom, but still casts her eye in the direction of the
kitchen and the cook, and chooses her dishes at the table
with perspicuous intelligence.
The American who comes to Cuba to stay a week in
variably departs in disgust. Very many who came " to

THE AMERICAN IN CUBA. 215
escape the cold," and make the tour of the island, leave
by the same steamer, within a week, and without having
gone away from Havana. That brilliant town seems to
be considered entirely satisfactory and sufficient without
further journeying. He who comes on business, and is
obliged to make a virtue of necessity and content himself
with what he finds, generally makes himself a reputation
ere he departs. His fresh northern face, the cut of his
clothes, his gait, and the noise he makes with his boots,
mark him as the " Jankee" wherever he goes. It has
seemed to me sometimes that only the queer American
visits Cuba, it appearing to require a peculiar cast of
character to enable a man to carry out so singular a
caprice. Some of the strangest geniuses that the soil
of the United States ever produced are stock characters
in Havana and Matanzas every winter. Some of them
have acquired an amusing way of speaking Spanish, much
to the annoyance of the hotel servants, and their own
satisfaction. They "have a certain round of business,
which they are supposed to attend to every day. Others
are the habitual consular visitors, specially mindful of
the entertainment of that official during his office hours.
Others are of that peculiar class of adventurers who have
no money, no occupation, no particular errand anywhere,
yet who live, spend, dress as the lily, and are happy.
The quite young man is frequent, and amid these con
trasting surroundings is a* study of what young America
actually is as compared to young Cuba and young Spain.
He seems to be somewhat defiant in his attitudes, looks
the " hard bat" awaiting a favorable opportunity to figure
prominently in a difficulty, and presents a certain square
ness of visage and hard look of the eye to the whole tropi
cal community. Yet at home he is only an ordinary, mild-

2l6 CUBAN SKETCHES.
mannered boy, like most of his race and kind. The con
trast he presents to most of his class here, he is in no
way conscious of, and one sees in him the strongest pos
sible illustration of the effect of climate and race upon
every line of the figure and every unconscious move
ment. There is the American abroad who will never return.
He came originally, he says, to avoid the rigors of the
northern climate. He cannot stand cold. He has re
mained so long that he has become a mixture of Cuban,
Spaniard, and Yankee. He speaks the language quite as
well, perhaps, as he ever spoke English. He has grown
fond alike of the dishes and the customs of the country,
and has fallen into all the bad and none of the good
habits of those among whom he has cast his perpetual
lot. He neglects his " papers" of citizenship for years at
a time, and only comes to reclaim his status to prevent
the eldest of a mixed and numerous offspring from being
drafted as a soldier, or some such emergency. Long ago
he has passed through all climatic diseases and dangers,
and grown accustomed to deleterious beverages. The
same thing has happened to him that does to all who
live long in the country ; he has become incurably indo
lent. He has changed his complexion to coffee-color,
his vigorous gait to a shamble, his figure to a confirmed
stoop, and his tastes and desires to the standard tastes
and desires of one who has leased to be particular and
takes life as it comes.
During all this man's residence abroad he never ceases
to talk of the fact that he is a Yankee of the Yankees,
and that he means to return to the land of his nativity.
He never does return, it is true, and is no longer capable
of a residence there. It is merely one of his diversions

THE AMERICAN IN CUBA. 217
to make himself beHeve he will. His country has gone
away from him ; it is amusing to note how little he knows
now about it. Notwithstanding his foreign affiliations
and tastes, he is always to be found with others of his
kind, or fraternizing with the similarly situated English
man. He and this Englishman, whoever he may be, do
not agree. The disputes about relative merit, institu
tions, manufactures and their quality, the conditions of
society and capital, and all the ancient themes, occur
daily. But I have noticed that the two are, notwithstand
ing, generally to be found sitting upon the same bench at
the same c-a.it, dinging their national prattle with much
earnestness into each other's unwilling understandings.
It is useless to talk of the essential differences existing
between the Briton and his relative on this side. They
amalgamate whenever opportunity offers. Foreigners
do not understand the difference, or the differences, be
tween them, and the American and Englishman seem, in
Cuba at least, to be essentially the same.
This man who has lost his country practically, is usu
ally another illustration of the effect of the climate of
the south upon northern blood. Indolence is not his only
or most striking characteristic. He attains at last a
comfortable laxity bf moral fibre. Right is nothing, con
venience every thing. His great desire is to pass dull
time away. How much an object this last may become,
one who has never lived in Cuba cannot be made to un
derstand. Dulness has long ago settled down upon the
land. The days follow each other in dreary procession,
and the end and the beginning are the same. There is
nothing to do but to fall into bad habits, to take endless
refrescos and smoke innumerable cigars, and try to find
cool places wherein to lounge. I should say that ten

2l8 CUBAN SKETCHES.
years were enough to do the business for any ordinary
mortal, and that fifteen or twenty were sufficient to un
dermine an original case of Spartan virtue.
Why this man does not become a member of society,
interest himself in local questions, become part of the
community, and cease to be so conspicuously and always
a foreigner, is but a natural enquiry. In rare cases he
may, and in some measure does. It is never his fault
that he does not. Cuba is not, by an inconceivable and
measureless distance, a republic. There are no local
questions in which it is of any use for even the ordinary-
born subject to interest himself, much less a foreigner
and a man who has democracy and the republican idea in
his bones and blood. He may marry as many times as
he possibly can, and each time a daughter of the country.
His children he may enumerate by the half dozen. It
does not alter his status. It anchors him very firmly
where he is, and that is the only effect of it so far as he
is personally concerned. He begins the usual tropical
process of vegetation and simultaneous decay. There is
a curious law of human nature that finds one of its nu
merous illustrations in him. As the Indian was never
made a white man of, but the white man has in a thou
sand instances been perfectly Indianized ; as the northern
vine will flourish in Cuba to monstrous size and bear only
leaves, while the tropical plant dies in the north, so may
the northern man become Cubanized. Away from his
natural surroundings he will go downward unless he is
very careful, but never upward without constant and great
endeavor. The Cuban himself is a deteriorated Spaniard,
though he may not know it, and will never believe it.
There are instances in Cuba of Americans of education
and fine natural talent, safely and for all time anchored

THE AMERICAN IN CUBA. 219
to a growing family, who, conscious of a mistake beyond
repair, make the best of it, and dignify the creeping in
dolence which daily possesses more and more of them by
the name of philosophy. So it is, — the philosophy
which does not care what comes, and reduces life to a
series of involuntary bodily functions.'
So it comes, that to the American in Cuba, there are
two results. If he goes and returns, he never wishes to
go again. If he goes and stays, he locks and seals
against himself the door to all endeavor. The govern
ment is to blame, his liver is very culpable, and an in
sidious chmate wraps him in a tepid bath. Laziness su
pervenes and becomes chronic, and the entire want of
something to strive for that is worth an effort, completes
the business. He may get money, and money alone is
by rfo means worth the pains it costs. But in nine cases
out of ten he does not get so much as that, and of late
years he has in most cases been deprived of even that he
had. He has learned the fatal lesson, to endure with
apathy. Contrary to the general character of the man at
home, I have never known a broken American in Cuba to
regain his losses, or to recover his health or his character.
Last scene of all comes the foreign " bummer," often
the outcome and the natural result of what has already
been described. This is a man who in a long time has
not cared whether he has had any occupation or not. He
has had his day of uselessness and enjoyment, and now
lingers about the caf6 most frequented by Americans
and English, intent upon finding an opportunity, favora
ble or unfavorable, to refresh himself. The climate is
kind to him in his worst case. There is no cold, and a
dilapidated condition entails no personal discomfort. He
has ceased to care for the rest. At irregular periods he

220 CUBAN SKETCHES.
visits the American Consulate, declaring that it is a mat
ter of high importance that his "papers" should be
looked after and regulated, entertaining the official with
inconsequent narratives gathered not so iriuch from a
long and varied experience in Cuba, as from a grotesque
and tedious imagination, and finally ending with a re
quest for the loan of three dollars.
The American in Cuba may undoubtedly, as he ap
pears in this last stage, be found also at home. But the
various stages through which he has passed to arrive at
his last and most enduring condition, the causes of his
dilapidation, the peculiar tone of his mendicancy, make
his case peculiar. He is a history of Cuban life, a lec
ture upon the effects of climate combined with gin, but
more, a sermon upon the subject of hopelessness. P"or a
long time he has had nothing to live for, no projects
however foolish, no ambitions however petty. The same
man may go the same road at home, but never so easily
and uninterruptedly, never without some occasional in
tervals of repentance, and some futile efforts at reform.
Often, as his end approaches, I have known him to
make an expiring effort to go back to what he still calls
" home." Amid a general wreck of hopes and faculties,
there is still an object worth an effort. Even he does
not desire to die in Cuba. Some charitable sea-captain
takes him on board, and he drops out of the life that
has known him so long as completely as if he were al
ready dead. Nobody cares or cries, and few reflect
upon the fact, of which he is conclusive proof, that
nearer than wife, home, or friends, the la.st thing loved
and longed for is the land of our nativity, the home
of the race from which we spring, the soil wherein it
is blessed to lay even our useless bones.

PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF " A LADY'S LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS."
UNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN. An account of Travels on
Horseback in the Interior. By Isabella L. Bird. 2 vols. 8vo.
Illustrations and maps. ..... . $5 OO
" Of Miss Bird's fascinating and instructive volumes it is irapossible to speak
in terms of too high praise. They fully maintain the well-earned reputation of the
author of ^SixIMonths in the Sandwich Islands' and - A Lady's Life in the Rocky
Mountains' as a traveller of the first order, and a graphic and picturesque writer.
The title she has chosen for her new book is no misnomer. Few foreigners, even of
the stronger sex, would have had the courage and perseverance to face and surmount
the obstacles which a frail woman in ill health, accompanied only by a single native
servant, encountered in her cross-country wanderings. But Miss Bird is a born travel
ler, fearless, enthusiastic, patient, instructed, knowing as well what as how to describe.
No peril daunts her, no prospect of fatigue or discomfort disheartens or repels her," —
Quarterly Revieuu, October, 1880. ,
^' Miss Bird is one of the most remarkable travellers of our day. Penetrating
into regions wholly unknown by the outside world, she has accomplished, by the
force of an indomitable will, aided by great tact and shrewdness, a task to wiiich few
men would have been found equal; and she has brought away from the scene of her
researches not only a lively tale of adventure, but a great store of fresh and interest
ing information about the character and habits of a people now undergoing one of the
strangest transformations the world has ever seen. We doubt whether the inner life
of Japan has ever been l>etter described than in the pregnant pages of this pertinacious
Englishwoman." — N. Y. Daily Tribune.
" Beyond question, the most valuable and the most interesting of recent books
concerning Japanese travel. * * * one of the most profitable of recent travel
records." — N. Y. Evening Post.
" One of the most readable books of travel of the &&y."—N. Y. Daily Times.
" Miss Bird has given us what to-day must be regarded as the best work on
Japan." — N. Y. Herald.
" But it is in descriptions of men and manners that she excels, and in these she
is so excellent that in no other book in English is there anything like so vivid a picture
as she gives of the Japanese people." — N. Y. World.
" Her graphic power, her literarjr skill, and surprising freshness of material,
especially in the second volume, make this book one of the very best, and as a work
of travels the best, in the library of books relating to Japan."— Rev. Wm. E. Gkiffis,
in tiie N. Y. Independent.
" Her narrative is one of intense interest * * * forms a thoroughly valuable
and desirable addition to any \io^3.xy "—Congregationalist.
" Miss Bird's book is fascinating throughout."— The A merican, Philadelphia.
" She draws out the story of the homely, everyday life in Japan as it has never
before been presented."— 7%^ Republican, Springfield, Mass.
) " Japan is truly a wonderful country * * * who follows Miss Bird in its
unbeaten tracks will be not only interested, but delighted and almost enchanted.
* * * shehastoldusmoreaboutthecountry,itshistory,itsliterature,its business,
and the habits, thoughts, and customs of the people, than we might learn from forty
ordinary books on Japan * * * a remarkably good book * * * it is brimful
of information, much of which has never come under our eye before. —Boston Post.
" We do not hesitate to say that 01 all the books of Japanese travels which we
have seen— and we have seen a score or two— this is, without question, the best."
— Louisville Courier-yournal.
" Among the works of travellers, relating to this country, we are inclined to
rank'Ur.beatenTracksin Japan' as perhaps the best. * * * In all respects it is
a sensible, useful work."— Troy Daily Times.
" A minute account of the interior of Japan. * * * on nearly every page
something new or novel is set forth. * * * This record of life in the interior of
Jap.-JJ is the freshest and most satisfactory of any which has yet been given to the
public." — San Francisco Evening Bulletin.

PUBLICATIONS OF G. P PUTNAM'S SONS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "UNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN."
A LADY'S LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. By Isa
bella Bird, author of " Unbeaten Tracks in Japan," etc. Third
edition, octavo, illustrated,  $i 75
" Of the bold dragoonSeWho have recently figured' in military life, bewitching
(he world with feats of noble horsemanship, the fair Amazon who rides like a Centaul
pver the roughest passes of the Rocky mountains will certainly bear away the palm."
'—Neiu York Tribune.
" Told with a gracefulness and an enthusiasm that render her work more enter
taining and thrilling than any fictitious story of adventure." — New England Farmer.
"¦ Throughout the whole book there is a beauty and simplicity of style, brimful
of good cheer, which renders the book as vivacious and chatty as a romance." — Pitts
burgh Teleg^'atn. " We have not met so charming a book of travel in many a day." — New York
Evening Mail.
" It is really a delightful and enjoyable book.'' — New York Express.
'' She has made of her letters, in a. word, an uncommonly worthy book o\
travel." — New York E-vening Post .
'* The letters that describe all she saw very vividly are collected to make this
volume, which is altogether the most entertaining and the most full of pleasant de
scription that has appeared having the Rocky Mountain region as its subject."—
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
^' A most interesting book of travels." — Boston Daily Evening Traveller.
" While it is thrilling and romantic in sorae places, it is equally entertaining
and historical in other chapters." — Rochester Evening Express.
" Miss Bird is an ideal writer. She can see, and she can use the w^ords that
place what she sees before the reader. She has regard to the essentials of a scene or
episode, and describes these with a. simplicity that is as effective as it is artless.
Humor is here, of a quality precisely suited to a traveller ; never obtrusive, but never
deficient when the need comes, oiling the wheels of action just in time to counteract
friction. Better still, perhaps, she possesses individuality, inasmuch that although she
vouchsafes us no self-drawn portrait, nor any approach to one, we sensibly derive an
idea of her appearance and traits from the impress which these make upon the circum
stances of her position. * * *
" For, spontaneous and unadorned as is her narrative, it is more interesting than
most of the novels which it has been our lot to encounter, and, in fact, comprises char
acter, situations, and dramatic effect enough to make ninty-nine novels out of a hun
dred look pallid and flat in comparison. * * *
" Her whole experience is a singular combination of the natural and the dra
matic, as well as a most encouraging record of feminine confidence and masculine
chivalrousness." — The Spectator.
" A fascinating book of travel." — Cincinnati Commercial.
" Her descriptions are graphic, often charming, and always entertaining."—
Ngw York Herald.
" This volume has proved an agreeable surprise. Not having any acquain
tance with the author's previous works, we took up this with no prepossessions in its
favor, but found ourselves interested from the start, and read to the end with ever-in
creasing pleasure." — Worcester Spy,

PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
A NEW VOLUME BY "JOHN LATOUCHE."
PORTUGAL, OLD AND NEW. By Oswald Crawfurd, British
Consul at Oporto. Octavo, with maps and illustrations, cloth
extra,  . . . • $3 50
Mr. Crawfurd, who is better known in literature under his nom de ^lume of
|ohn Latouche, has resided for many years in Portugal and has had exceptional op-
oortunities for becoming thoroughly acquainted with the country and its people.
"The whole book, indeed, is excellent, giving the reader not information
only, but appreciation of Portugal, its climate, its people and its ways. It is not*
book of travel, but a book of residences, if we may say so." — New York Evening Post.
*^ Mr. Crawfurd's admirable book is most opportune, and his long residence in
the country, his intimate and critical knowledge of the language, history, poetry, and
the inner life of the people, render him an authority as safe to follow as he is pleas
ant. * * * The book is excellent in every way." — AtkencBum.
" A more agreeable account of Portugal and the Portuguese could scarcely
have been written, and it will surprise us if the book does not live as one of the best
descriptions we possess of a foreign nation." — St. yames Gazette.
A FORBIDDEN LAND ; OR, VOYAGES TO THE COREA.
With full description of the manners, customs, history, etc., of a com
munity of some 16,000,000 people hitherto almost entirely unknown.
By Ernst Oppert. Octavo, with maps and illustrations, $3 00
** The author combines a story of his personal adventures, with a most intel
ligible description of the country, its inhabitants, their customs, and of everything
wnich would help his readers to form a correct idea of what he himself saw and
learned." — The Churchman.
'*¦ Sure to be eagerly and widely read * ' * * contains almost the only au
thentic description of Corea and its people with which the public are familiar." — San
P'rancisco Bulletin.
** FuU of data of the highest value on the geography and history of Corea, its
commercial value and products/' — New York Times.
" Mr. Oppert has made a book of rare interest." — New York Evening Post.
** His personal narrative is one of great interest * * * he is rewarded for
his enterprise in being able to communicate so much novel and valuable information
in regard to a country which has so long remained beyond the scope of geographical
research." — New York Tribune.
ROMAN DAYS. By Viktor Rydberg. Translated by Alfred
Corning Clark, with Memoir of the author by H. A. W. Lindehn.
Octavo, cloth. Illustrated . . ... $2 00
The volume embodies the results of careful historical studies, and gives some
legendary matters not heretofore brought forward. The art criticisms are the work
of a poet and scholar ; the brief historical and topographical sketches, those of a clear-
headed philosopher and eager traveller, a quick observer, a man of general and thor
ough culture. The book is a picturesque mosaic of the many brilliant, sober, gay,
comic, dramatic, tragic, poetic, vulgar elements that make up the past history of that
wonderful city and the physiognomy it bears to-day.
*•¦ We welcome this work from the hardy North for its broad scholarship, its
freshness and ripeness. The articles betray an artistic discrimination rare in one not
a sculptor by profession and experienced and enthusiastic in that art. Rydberg pos
sesses the pure plastic spirit."— A'^. Y. Herald.

PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
A NEW BOOK BY THE AUTHOR OF "CONSTANTINOPLE."
HOLLAND AND ITS PEOPLE. By Edmundo de Amicis, authcs
of " Constantinople," " Studies of Paris," " Morocco," " Spain," etc-
Octavo. With i8 full-page plates  $2 oo
In this volume of which editions are appearing at once in Florence, Paris,
London and New York, the brilliant author of " Paris ^' and " Constantinople " has
turned his steps to a land abounding in picturesque effects and whose history is full of
dramatic interest, and his vivid descriptions of the Hollanders and their homes show
Uiat his pen has lost none of its eloquence or delicacy of touch. His analysis of the
traits and characteristics of this sturdy race, which has played so important a part in
the history of Europe, is most interesting and valuable.
" In descriptive passages, Signer Amicis is at home. A wealth of imagery
flows from his pen and lightens the pages into prose poems. He has a quiet humor of
the Latin type, a disposition to be amused ; but he is quick to sympathize with the
emotions of his Dutch friends, and if he smiles at their stolidity, admires the rugged
qualities and native genius which have produced a WiUiam of Orange, a John DeWitt,
a Barneveld, and a Rembrandt." — Boston Traveller.
" Edmundo de Amicis has transformed the land of dykes into a land of beauty?
of wonder, and of enchantment. He has written, in a word, a book in every sense
charming." — Chicago Tim.es.
" It is only simple justice to say that a more deUghtful volume of travell
hardly may be found." — Philadelphia Times.
" His sparkling, graphic book is a thoroughly charming one, to which we givff
the most unaffected praise." — LouisviUe Courier-Journal.
BY THE SAME, AUTHOR.
CONSTANTINOPLE. 8vo, cloth  Ji 50
De Amicis is one of the strongest and most brilliant of the present generation
of Italian writers, and this latest work from his pen, as well from the picturesquenesb
of its descriptions as for its skilful analysis of the traits and characteristics of th» med
ley of races represented in the Turkish capital, possesses an exceptional interest and
value. " The most picturesque and entertaining volume contained in the recent litera
ture on the Eastern question." — Boston Journal.
'' A remarkable work * » * the author is a poet, an artist, a wonder
worker in words * * * his descriptions are given with rare skill." — N. Y.Evenin£
Post. STUDIES OF PARIS. By Edmundo de Amicis, author of "Con
stantinople," *' Morocco," "Holland," etc. i2mo, cloth extra, $1 25
A series of wonderfully vivid and dramatic pictures of the great world's me
tropolis, by a writer whose previous books have gained a reputation for exceptional
clearness of perception and facilitj- in description. There is hardly a writer wno can
rival him in his power of reproducing for his readers the very atmosphere of the place
he describes. These " Studies " include original and characteristic papers on the two
authors whom he considers especially representative of the Paris of to-day — Hugo and
Zola. "Poet in prose, painter in phrases, subtle musician in the harmonies of lan
guage, de Amicis has comprehended the manifold amazement, the potent charm of
Pans as no writer before him has done." — Portland Press.
" A marvel of intense, rapid, graphic and poetic description, by one of the nost
brilliant of modern Italian writers. The chapters on Hugo and Zola show the same
power of description and analysis in dealing with mind and character."— CArw^ia*
Register.

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