THIS evening comes Mr. S—— from Father P——, full of a nice pretty house we are to get in the country. Immediately a horse resembling an overgrown rat is procured, warranted amiable with ladies, and we prepare for investigation.

Imagine my dismay when about to mount, to find the side-saddle turned to the right of the horse instead of the left. It is indeed the ordinary style of this extraordinary country. I remember seeing ladies in long, white habits, riding in this way in the suburbs of Havana, quite at ease, and unsuspicious of the droll figure they were making. I have, however, seen or been told that ladies in the south of Europe are taught both modes of riding, still, I am not inclined to try a new horse in a new manner; so, after a change of saddles, we find ourselves sailing off in the stereotyped gait of the Cuban horse, than which nothing can be more safe, or less calculated for the display of horsewomanship. The scene is exquisite; we could ask no change in “the day, the place, the hour, the sunshine and the shade,” except that one might excuse the low, red afternoon sun from peering up so inquisitively as it does under one’s eyelids.

How dense and massive are these great cactus hedges on either side of the road! and how their fierceness is softened or masked by thick vines creeping and penetrating everywhere, with blossoms and perfumes in their hands!

My equestrian experiences continually reimpress upon me a discovery I am making in the philosophy of mental photography of scenery.

Riding towards the east is far more inspiriting than going towards the west. Travelling to the south is equally more cheering than to the north. I find that western views, however intrinsically beautiful, have in them an accent of sadness, of departure, of farewells. It is there that the sun, and moon, and stars go down to be buried, leaving behind them a consciousness that all bright and fair and tender things must also drop into a night of death.

Eastern views, on the contrary, however rude and desolate, are yet seen and beautified through an atmosphere of hope. A sweet sense of promise always comes up from under the orient; there is an inherent life and light in it that no stalking shades can terrify.

Northern views, though outwardly full of grace and beauty, have always about them a haunting desolation. You think only of those “thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,” with no heart beating under the ribs, no blood in the veins, no kindling in the fixed eye. You fall into shivering reveries about the unbending attitude of those hyperborean scenes, wondering if it is their backbone, the north pole that keeps them there forever, so stiff and stark. You see those ice fields inhabited mostly by the longing looks, the gasping yearnings of lost souls who are condemned to burn forever in flames that do not purify or consume.

But southern views, though they may be insipid or uncouth in material form and feature, are always sweet with the very soul of passion and poetry. They cry out for you in advance to all sorrow and hopelessness and death,—

But the low roofs and bright walls of the house we are seeking have discovered us through the trees.

We enter the long, straight avenue of palms interspersed with laden orange-trees, and are met at the door, not by simply the mayoral, as we had expected, but by the son of the proprietor who, contrary to our information, lives here with his family.

We are shown to the sala, the living and dining-room combined. Here sits the pretty, pale mistress sewing on little dresses, while her child of two years totters up to meet us, three large fourths of her comfortable little brown delicious form visible.

Our errand is of course baffled, but we sit talking until the host invites us to visit the grounds. They are large, cultivated with great care and watered by a kind of inundation. Numbers of exotic fruits are shown us among others, well grown American apples, which it has been said, like peaches, will not grow in the tropics. Think of apples nearly ripe in the month of March!

After having made our adieus we turn our horses’ heads towards the wild, primitive-looking forest across the plantation. Directly we find a serpentine path through the dark, rich, reddish-brown soil, the only soil in which oranges and many other tropical fruits will grow; which stains the men’s feet who work in it, or shoes if they have them; browns the oxen, carts, everything that it touches; and which is grateful as “music after howling,” to sun-dazzled eyes.

I have not before been so much impressed by the exquisite contrast of palms and bamboo-trees growing together. The strange, sombre palm, with its erect, uncompromising trunk, its long, straight, dark leaves, looking so doric, so rich in individuality, and then, nestled quite under its very shadow, you often see a clump of the slender willowy, delicate bamboo, its pale green leaves, so soft and fine and feathery. It is the vegetable masculine and feminine attraction. Or it is not unlikely that a stern warrior, and an ethereal post would be drawn together by the same contrasts.

As the path narrows and the forest thickens, these dull things are obscured by densely woven vines, which everywhere hover over these trees, making the forests at times so dense, that it must be a very small bird or breeze to get through them: as for a man, he might as well attempt to wedge his way into the future before the present has cut a way for him.

But we do not care to have night shading these shadows with her black crayons, and so, at the first opening, turn our horses’ heads, and amble homeward, beneath the thrillings of those great ardent hearts up in the blue bosom of the sky; those stars so large and fair that we need no astronomer to suggest that it is only distance which keeps them from being suns.

Saturday, 24th.—When we had drunk the delicious coffee and milk, or, more accurately, milk and coffee, which our landlady brings so soon as we are awake, or should be, we hurried off for the early ride.

What can be more fresh and innocent, more externally young, than this tropical nature! She is a robust Titaness, it is true, but always out of her strong comes forth sweetness, and no riddle either. How readily she justifies the taste which decks her in these early mornings with all her jewels! And then she is so tender, so peaceful, so serene. Her tears, thank heaven, like those of infants, are not tears of sorrow. Her tempests, tornadoes, and straits of passion have been studiously kept from us. It is true one misses that “sense of promise everywhere” with which our Northern springs console their sweet virgin hearts, for nature is always here in her fruition of beauty; “her every future is already in her every present.” “The world,” says Plato (and he knows), “is God’s epistle to mankind.” Here the manuscript is written in a large, generous hand; the ink flowed freely; the thoughts are largely outlined.

Even the people, in spite of numerous reports of robberies, have almost universally an innocent and amiable expression of countenance and the most unoffending, respectful way in the world. Even the horses, I am constantly assured, are never vicious. A lady might ride at random any of the native species with safety. It may be that an habitual and contented indolence is largely among the causes, but it strikes me that harmlessness is the most apparent characteristic of these children of the sun.

I must have forgotten to tell you of a remarkable phenomenon which we met every morning coming in to market from the country, or already arrived when we leave. It moves like an animal; its physiognomy is that of a vegetable. The first thing you see advancing upon you is a huge heap of corn-stalks, called fodder, I think, at home, and mollacca here. It is very high above, and trails upon the ground below. By careful examination, you may discover at one end of it a muzzled appearance resembling a horse’s head; from the other extremity dangles a possible appendage you would declare to be his tail, while sometimes, by careful scanning and difficult investigation, you may count four feet under the thing, upon which it seems to move. Sometimes, eight or ten of these mysterious apparitions are fastened in a procession by a rope, pace slowly along with one negro to drive or conduct it, often sitting astride on the top of this superstructure. After many investigations, I venture to affirm that the framework of this architecture is actually a horse buried, yet alive and doing well. It would also have amused you to see the great sun-umbrellas nearly all these countrymen carry on horseback; not of the dark orthodox colors, but a bright light red alternated with blue or yellow, tipped with black, or purple bordered with green: an attempt to eclipse the sun in more ways than one.

After breakfast we with our umbrellas walked over to accept the invitation of Father M—— to see his garden, or rather the garden in the courtyard of the Marquis of V——, in whose vacant house the priest lives alone and free of expense. Finding that he had not yet returned from morning mass, we took the liberty of avoiding the scorching sun of the garden by rambling through the great deserted corridors, chambers, and antechambers, all built and furnished in Spanish style and only occupied, like most of the great houses out of the cities, one or two months of every year. Presently, after I had duly ensconced myself to rest in one corner of a sofa behind the door of the grand drawing-room, came in the priest, jolly as the priests of romance, saluting us with a stunning volley of Spanish and politeness; we replying in smiles and nods which Mr. S—— did not translate, and in English, which he did. The reverend father is a short man even for a Creole, and when sitting suggests the form of a pyramid; but the little twinkling gray eyes situated near the apex of the structure suggested anything rather than the sepulchral. After we had seen and duly admired some of the frescoes in the rooms and all the distant views from different upper piazzas and windows, the priest, with the air of one who is doing you an uncommon favor, invited us to visit his sanctum. I put on a look of becoming gravity and awe, and, with a feeling of profound grief at my ignorance of the mysteries of science, and, alas! of art and theology, and with profound gratification that there are some works, even in Cuba, where science and wisdom find refuge, where learning and piety shake hands, I follow the father and the gentlemen follow me.

We enter a dark, long passage leading to this cell of midnight vigils and occult research; the door slowly opens, I reverently enter upon—heaps of tinsel leaves and flowers, with scissors and glue and all the paraphernalia for flower-making; piles of bouquets lie on the bed, all with silver leaves exactly alike, and each one with a brick-red rose in the centre. They are to decorate the church on Easter Sunday; they are the only proofs of piety and science and lore that the sanctum of our jolly priest possesses.

After dinner, Father M—— came in, bringing a gentleman who said we could have a house of his in the country. We go at once on our horses, to find a river of remarkably clear and pure water running behind the house among the trees, all most inviting; but the house is wretchedly dilapidated, kitchen to be built, and, withal, a Creole overseer is to occupy one half of it. Thus nonplussed, we resign all thought of a permanent location in the country, and decide to spend our time in travelling over the island so soon as the interest of Guiness is exhausted.

From this place we ride to Le Armistad, the ingenio of Mr. D——, our first Guiness friend, with the hope of getting some guirappa or cane-juice to drink. It is said to have remarkable fattening as well as curative power. But the machinery is silent, the chimneys are smokeless, the odor of nice sweet cake only regales the nostrils of the memory; and so, redisappointed, we turn again toward home, and ride through the hedges by the light of a Venus that has a halo as distinct as you may have seen around the moon. Instead of fast horsemen with dangling sword and pistol-equipped saddle, we only meet sleepy-looking market-men returning home astride the collapsed panniers, which in the morning bulged at each side of their horses like huge saddle-bags, stuffed with all kinds of fruits or poultry, and these poor horses would think themselves fortunate if fruits and ducks and chickens were all that is packed upon their devoted backs. Not only all the fodder and charcoal go to town in this way, but I saw this morning four exhausted-looking creatures wilting along through the mid-day sun with chairs, tables, and bedsteads, piled high upon their backs, and sometimes a good-for-nothing-looking negro mounted on the top of all openly rejoicing in that “bad eminence.”

Sunday, March 25th.—Awoke too late and too weary for early mass this morning. Immediately after breakfast I was attracted to the window by martial music and a procession. The landlady came in, saying it was the burial of an officer’s child. First came the musicians, mulattoes with handsome serious faces; after them boys in the dress of novices, then the priests in robes. But no relatives or mourners were to be seen, for the immediate friends of the dead never go to the burial, do not leave their houses on these occasions. It is not considered decent or appropriate anywhere on the island. One is constantly impressed with the truth that geographical nearness has little to do with real nearness. All the customs of this country ally it much more nearly to Europe than to America.

I stood looking carelessly on at the long procession, with only curiosity excited, when I am attracted by the peculiarly sad and solemn and tender expression in the faces of the soldiers who follow. I see tearful eyes turned toward the centre of the group. I look—what an apparition! Never shall I forget the shock, the thrill, the agony of the sight. Upon an open litter carried in the hands of these soldiers it lay, the little angel face of rarest possible loveliness, wreathed with flowers that are pale and fair, but not so fair and pale as itself. The little dead hands full of white flowers are raised and clasped in a supplicating attitude, the little heavenly form, just the fatal and familiar size, is robed in a trailing white satin shroud, and over this unearthly vision shines the burning sun with mocking glare, and upon it stare the passers-by with indifferent faces through which no broken heart has ever looked. But with this wonderful image some mother’s soul at home is blackened, with this wonderful image the blackness of the grave will be brightened. Ah, that grave! It will hold another dead infant upon its heart, but it will give back none in return!

March 26th.—Again this morning from bed to horse for a little free air, a little hour to enjoy this wonderfully sweet and delicious nature before the sun begins his reign of tyranny, and, to all who have the temerity to encounter his personal presence, reign of terror.

Among untried points of the compass, we remember due south as one. Here we very soon find ourselves and the road entering upon a long avenue formed by hedges that have grown to trees, often meeting over our heads. These are filled with birds and flowers of all songs and perfumes; through them we catch glimpses of scattered cocoa-nut groves and wide cane-fields.

Presently we come upon a high, ornamented, close-locked gate, the first of the kind we have seen, and as unlike a sketch I made of it as a pretty gate must almost be to a bad drawing of it. On approaching more nearly we find written upon it “Cafetal.” We look over the side fence and discover a wide avenue of palms leading to the concealed house, and on both sides the pretty coffee-plant, with its small, dark-green leaves. All over the wide fields it is growing under the shade of a great variety of trees,—the cocoa-nut, orange, palm etc.; for you must know the coffee-plant has the feminine peculiarity of always needing shelter and protection, as well as of causing palpitations, exhilarations, trepidations, and nervousness generally.

What a shame and sin it was to turn all these shady, poetical cafetals into horrid ingenios with their treeless, monotonous, endless fields of cane, their dreary smoking chimneys, their steaming engines, and broiling machinery of men and women!

In the perpetual battles between gold and beauty, it is likely, I fear, the latter will not win until it has the millennium for an ally.

As we were turning away from the closed gate, a huge piece of midnight, bungled into human shape, and dressed, or rather undressed, so as to display the herculean proportions of the entire morning and evening of his body, having the noon in eclipse, came up to us, holding out an immense charcoal paw, accompanied by a beseeching jumble of chopped Spanish.

B—— put in it a piece of silver, which the black-meat looked at so contemptuously as to quite spoil his attempt at a civil “gracias.”

Evening.—We ventured to penetrate the inviting avenue of this morning; found it leads to the beautiful Cafetal of “La Providencia.” The grounds lovely, with overgrown ornamental trees and shrubs, and pretty brook of rural and domestic habits. Just beyond we met the administrator with his wife and sister, returning on horseback from the “south side.” where we had much wished to extend our own ride. The pros why we should go are:—this is just the season for the sea-cow; they are being caught in large numbers, and I am positively assured by those who should know, that they are the real original mermaid—the prosaic suggestion of all the romantic ballads and traditions. But the cons that confront our enthusiasm are mostly the roads, which are so bad as to be dangerous; the horses we met had been almost buried in the mud, and it is a severe test of the strength of the most vigorous person. So we yield to the urgencies of that wretched bugbear, invalidism, and, finally, to the invitation of the party, to go back with them to the house. Here we are urged to remain to dinner, which is waiting in the large living-room where we sit, but the sun is already set, and we excuse ourselves, accepting at last some fruit and a glass of guirappa.

By the time we have passed the grounds night is lapping over the edge of day without any perceptible clasp of twilight. And those hedges so high and thickly woven! The starlight scarcely contrives to get through them. How easily an army of robbers might conceal there and rush upon us, unarmed as we are, and the darkness robbing us of our only protection—my sex, and its weakness and appeal to gallantry. Our horses even instinctively press close to each other and quicken their pace. But the darkness, or the invisible hand and heart that fashion it, protects us safely home. Here we are just in time for the usual evening music on the plaza, a pretty square in the heart of the little town, made and ornamented by concha, with much taste and expense. It is like all the plazas I have seen, an imitation of the one at Havana; with exactly four palm-trees, with shrubs and flowers and statues; with small bilious-looking men, and belles with regular oriental features, soft and dark eyes, fat forms, pretty ball dresses, and an awkward mode of progression which they fancy is walking.

Tuesday, 27th.—To-day we explored our way to a new sugar plantation, the first I have seen where the cane is ground by oxen instead of the usual steam-engine. I have always pitied those poor oxen and horses pacing round and round in the mill, round and round with the rounding months and years; but these wretched beings who drive them, with long whips or rather poles in their hands, calling out to the long train of animals at every step, as they follow them, in hideous monotonous, guttural tones that never end; fifty in number, all young and mostly females; night and day, day and night; and several overseers with the invariable long whip in hand to watch at every step,—it made me heart-sick, and glad enough to turn from the entrance of the building, where we sat on our horses, and ride up to the house of the mayoral for a glass of water. His wife, with an interesting Creole face and Spanish tongue, insists that we dismount, which accordingly we do, and wait while the slip-shod negress (negresses here are always slip-shod) goes to the sugar-house for guirappa. We learn that the plantation belongs to Marquise Somebody, who only comes once in two or three years, occupying the family house across the green, which, though ample and well built, has not a tree, a shrub, a leaf to turn it into a home. As we wait, a small chain-gang passes by us, coolies and negroes linked together at their work; not an uncommon appendage to a plantation, and in fact essential with coolies, who are quite certain to commit suicide if whipped. The lady tells me by proxy that she much prefers negroes to coolies because they are so much more amiable.

This being the reverse of opinions frequently expressed to me, I infer that the preference indicates the character of the employer quite as much as that of the servants.

We return home with the eight o’clock morning sun applying itself with the vigor and precision of a hot flatiron to the back of our necks. Here we cool off and rest ourselves for the substantialest of breakfasts, only to be surpassed by the substantialest of appetites.

As a daily increasing strength allows a daily increase of circuit in our excursions, we this evening ventured toward the attractive range of mountains stretched across the northern horizon. Our course soon led us upon the “Royal Highway,” a broad, smooth military road leading to Havana; presently we turned upon a wandering equestrian path, with the appearance of once having been the rough bed of some mountain stream. And this is not improbable, for the entire luxuriously fertile plain of Guiness is watered by streams born and matured here; their course and the amount of water each plantation shall receive being regulated by the government.

The water for the towns we see carried in little casks, upon the backs of the horses.

The soil on those barren heights being too sterile for the luxurious tastes of the sugar-cane, Indian corn, vegetables for the markets, and many unfamiliar plants are cultivated by the simple, contented-looking Creoles, whom we find living in these little scattered cottages, with their high-pointed thatched roofs, few or no windows, and multitudinous appendages of goats and children.

Arrived at the top of one mountain, we find another still towering above us, evidently commanding the northern view, so nothing remains but to pick our way across the valley and its hill, and inquire the best path of the wondering mountaineers. As we go on the squalidness increases; the soil becomes more stony and obdurate; the whole aspect of the country, with the exception of here and there a stray palm, Mr. S—— tells us, is precisely like that of the poorer parts of Ireland.

At one point we come across oxen toiling up a hill with an immense hogshead of water, upon a real Yankee sled; at another we meet a dashing horseman, who reins up to salute us. Mr. S—— praises his horse, when he replies, with a bow full of native grace, “It is always at the service of your worship.”

But here we are at last, upon the very pinnacle of this temple, beholding the kingdoms of Cuba and the glory thereof.

East and west of us mountains—those pyramids of nature, which will never, like those of man, forget their maker—are rising and falling to suit their own ideas of grace and majesty; north and south are stretched fair and smiling plains and valleys, with all their strong contrasts and harmonious blendings of colors: the horizon on the south is caressed by the soft, sunny, sky-blue waters of the Carribean Sea, looking like the beginning of a new firmament; the northern horizon is washed by the darker and wilder waves of the Atlantic; and over all is poured, in bewildering floods, the glory and passion of a tropical sunset.

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