Thursday, March 22d.

THIS morning comes intelligence that death has occurred in the family of the owner of the plantation and that his sister is become insane. Our visit there is necessarily abandoned. However, we are not uncomfortable in our present quarters, and its independence reconciles us to the disappointment; for you must know a Cuban planter would as soon think of taking pay for the air and sunshine you breathe in his house as for any amount of board, lodging, or attendance he might give you.

To-day, we discovered an inviting grove of palms just outside the town, and, unwisely careless of the threatenings of the sun, set out to find them. They looked very near, over the tops of the houses, and so tall that, like vegetable Mother Gooses, they seemed to be “sweeping the cobwebs from the sky,” but, as we walk on, seem to recede farther and farther. The sun waxes and waxes; our fatigue becomes exhaustion; but we find, as did Macbeth, that to return is as difficult as to go on; so on we go—melt—utterly dissolve—until, at last, we reach a lovely garden, and with permission from the major domo, drop down upon the roots of a tree in the midst of many of the best fruit and ornamental trees of the country. Was there ever shade so profound, perfumes so delicious, orange-trees so dark-leaved and bright-fruited!

The ground around us is covered with a great variety of fallen fruits of which we do not even know the names. They are left quite at the mercy of various fat, black, lazy, meandering pigs that at first look to you like overgrown rats—for, like all the hogs of Cuba, they are entirely without bristles, as smooth-shaven as if just from the razor of the barber.

Presently, we discover a little house behind the trees, apparently unoccupied. The same idea occurs to us all at once—if we could get it to live in while we remain. We go for the major-domo, who conducts us inside. Rude enough, indeed, for the most rural or romantic tastes, and with eight great black—so black that you could not see them—negroes sitting in the middle of the middle room. They are all dressed in spots; that is, a few rags still cling, by chance, or by preternatural adhesion, to different parts of the body; and all are busily filling some sort of a demijohn with a kind of black bran much grown and used here. Not too inviting, certainly, neither, is the stifling, annihilating walk before us, in a sun whose furnace is heated seven times hotter than before. We survive, I could never tell how, to find that the dinner at home has scarcely survived an hour’s waiting for us, and I go to rest till soup and fish are over.

Immediately after dinner, a Chinaman rides up to the door, leading three horses. A friend of Mr. S——, a sugar planter, hearing of our arrival, sends the horses, with an invitation for us to visit his estate. So soon as habited, I select the horse that wears the side-saddle. He starts off at once in the delightful and peculiar gait of Creole horses,—not an ornamental one, as I somewhere said before, but well suited to the climate, perhaps a result of it,—an amble, giving exhilarating exercise, without fatigue.

The plantation is but a league distant, and very soon the tall white chimneys and low roofs reveal our saccharine destination. Flocks of decently dressed and moderately happy-faced negroes and coolies are at work in the corn-fields. As we pass on an odor as of nice sweet cake while in the progress of baking greets us from the boiling sugar, with a savory familiarity; then a glimpse through the trees of blue walls and red tiles suggests the family mansion.

What can be so fresh and peaceful as that pretty, low, rambling house, nestled in among the greenery, with the huge trees behind it giving that background so indispensible to beauty in houses, while on all sides stranger varieties of trees, flowers, and shrubs breathe upon us the sweetness of their welcome!

Our hostess, a charming lady from the United States, living here twenty years, meets us on the piazza with a graceful hospitality. The gentlemen go to the sugar-house or ingenio, which yields an income of from seventy-five to a hundred thousand per year, with two hundred and fifty negroes and coolies to perform the work. I am taken into the grounds and gardens by Mrs. D—— and her son; where among all that is new I find a great variety of cactuses, many twenty or thirty feet high; ripe oranges, perfectly green in color; mignionette and allspice trees; tall trees of blooming oleanders; also cape jasmines and the night-blooming cereus.

We talk much of the coolie system. Although less amiable than negroes, Mrs. D—— prefers them on account of their superior activity, ingenuity, and intelligence. Nearly all of them can read and write, and have some proficiency in arithmetic and geography. Beside being very passionate, they consider their persons sacred: many of them would die rather than endure any bodily chastisement. Several murders have occurred on this plantation among them, but we learned on the way home that Mr. D—— had the matter hushed up in some way to save their lives and his money. To illustrate the character of these antipodes of ours: A celestial in Havana, supposing himself detected in a theft, confessed his guilt to the unsuspecting owner of the property, also a Chinaman, who at once tied his hands behind his back and commenced leading him through the streets backward. The authorities stopped this, to the great indignation of the persecutor, because he could not do as people always did in his own country. But the companions of the thief all deserted him, refused to eat, sleep, or speak with him, not on account of his guilt, but of the bodily degradation he had suffered, and the next morning in despair he went and hanged himself. Mr. R—— told me of a cook of his (they make the best cooks in the world) who was attacked by a disease for which the doctor, fearing it to be infectious, sent him to the hospital. While there he was attended by the noble Sisters of Charity, of whose unselfish though sometimes mistaken devotion I hear so much. When he was cured one of the nuns said to Mr. R——, “Do take care of him, for he is a good Christian; and as he desired it, we have baptized him.” Afterwards his master, knowing so well the tenaciousness of the idolatry of the Chinese, said to him, “How come it that you were baptized?”—“Oh,” said the fellow, “my head was very hot, and I thought I would let them put a little water on to cool it.” This was being Cooley!

A little event has just occurred on our plantation, from which I am wandering. One of the laborers, a Chinaman, it is suspected (because the negroes are such cowards), threw into one of the wheels of the machinery an iron bolt of some sort to prevent its operation, and so give them all a holiday. The master, not being able to discover the offender, forced them all to work harder than ever through the week, and all the following Sunday.

But night is coming on and we must go in spite of urgent invitations to remain, and many expressed regrets from our kind hostess that her house is already too full of visitors to admit us permanently, and so, promising to “Come soon and spend the day,” we encounter the darkness, and I many misgivings of possible robbers. And why should I not? The country, from all accounts is full of them. Everybody goes armed. Not one man do you meet, from the elegant seÑor down to the stupidest negro, without pistols in his saddle and a long sword at his side, which I always see brushing against the hedges as they ride in the country, or rattling on the pavement as they walk in town.

My fears are somewhat quieted by the assurance that nobody accompanied by a lady has ever been attacked or in all probability will be, an assurance more interesting than convincing, it must be confessed. However, somewhat armed and strengthened by my weakness, we ride through the bristling hedges and star-lighted air until tremor is forgotten in the sweet enchantment of the scene, and we are sorry to see the lights of Guiness rising one by one out of the darkness.

Friday, March 23d.—These people have unquestionably the most heterogeneous tastes in the world. At dinner to-day I counted ten dishes entirely new to me,—all but two, intricate complications of flesh, fish, or fowl, but mostly of vegetables, compounds which no ingenuity of chemist could hope to resolve back to their elements. How think you, is unsophisticated American digestion to make terms with this marked array? How not to disappoint the attentive hostess who expects you to encounter them all unflinchingly, and end them, not yourself, victoriously?

During dinner we happened to mention our intention of procuring horses and riding twice a day in search of adventures and an appetite, when what does a polite Creole opposite do but offer me the use of his own horse as long as I stay: it is in Matanzas and he will be only too happy to send for it.

I found my French useful to decline and to express thanks more ample than the Spanish “gracias.”

decorative image not available