Chapter XXIV: Steamer Mascot--Conclusion, 270 (6)

Among the passengers who left the ship, were several Americans. One, a large, redheaded, heavy-set man, with genial face and friendly manner, from Mississippi, was a timberman, out buying mahogany in the forests of Yucatan. He told me that Americans are purchasing all the available mahogany now standing in the accessible Mexican forests, and he seemed to regard the mahogany of Yucatan as of especial value. Another of the passengers leaving the ship was a man of small stature and clean shaven. He early attracted our attention by his sanctimonious air, and the frightfully fluent American oaths with which he spiced his games of poker in the smoking room, where in company with a group of flashily dressed and bediamonded Mexicans, he played apparently for the highest stakes. The contrast between his smooth exterior and the noisome contents of his mind, as well as the fact that the two or three hard-faced Mexicans who seemed to have in charge the company of little boys, constantly sought him out in consultation, led to the suspicion that he was the chief trafficker in this death trade. In response to our questioning as to his antecedents and business, he became abusive, and upon my taking his picture with my kodak, he grew angry and afterwards fought shy of all intercourse with his fellow-countrymen. As to who he may really be we know not. When the little boys departed from the ship, we noticed that he also sailed away.

The sun was just sinking, like a ball of fire, into the margin of the western sea, when we weighed anchor and steamed eastward to cross the Strait of Yucatan. The surface of the waters lay calm and quiet as a sheet of glass. We were two nights and a day in reaching Havana, and the one day was spent in crossing the Strait.

Most of the afternoon I have sat or lain upon the forward deck watching the waters and observing the sea life everywhere about me. We have passed innumerable flocks of flying fish. Here and there a few porpoises have tumbled and wheeled about us, but the sharks have disappeared. Also, I have caught sight of my first nautilus, so daintily sailing its convoluted shallop upon the sea. These exquisite shell-fish I have never before seen alive, and I have watched them with keenest interest. They appear only when perfect calm prevails. At the least roughness of the sea, they instantly sink from view. We have also all day been passing through extensive masses of yellow gulf weed, such as I have noticed when traversing the Gulf Stream on transatlantic voyages, only here the weed was in great masses, not yet having been broken up by the tempestuous ocean tides. But we have been accompanied by no birds.

As we drew further eastward the air grew more soft and balmy. We were utterly alone, no craft other than our own appeared anywhere upon the waters.

I fell asleep watching the big stars and dreaming of Spanish galleons and British buccaneers, of Portuguese pirates and French marauders, whose adventurous sails have in the centuries gone by whitened in countless multitudes these now silent seas.

When morning broke, the shores of Cuba bounded the horizon on the south, ten or fifteen miles away. Low sandy reaches stretched along the sea; palms, tall and feathery, were waving in the morning breeze behind the white ribbon of the strand, a faint blue line of mountains lying yet beyond. As we approached the island there seemed to be no break in the coast line, but farther on we discovered a narrow channel, between the fortress of El Moro and the city of Havana and, entering it, came into a harbor, landlocked and storm free, one of the securest in the world. We cast anchor near the projecting rusted wreck of the United States Steamship _Maine_. I had finished my voyage. I was here to go ashore, while a few hours later the _Monterey_ would turn northward and sail on to New York.

XX

The City of “Habana”--Incidents of a Day’s Sojourn in the Cuban Capital

HABANA, CUBA,
_December 5th_.

“Habana,” says the Cuban and Spanish mouth, and the _b_ is so gently uttered that you cannot tell it from a _v_.

Yesterday morning, Tuesday, we cast anchor beneath the ramparts of the great fortress of La Cabaña (Cabanya) in the wide landlocked bay; many other ships swung to their moorings in the quiet waters, among these the battleship _Massachusetts_ and two cruisers, _Kentucky_ and _Kearsarge_, of the navy of the United States.

The harbor of Habana, you will remember, is a mile or more wide and nine or ten miles long, capable of accommodating an extensive shipping. Now, since it has been dredged and cleaned of the accumulated filth of centuries, the largest boats may come up to the docks and sea wall along the city’s marge. The larger vessels, however, just as at Vera Cruz, still prefer to anchor out in the bay, and send passengers and freight ashore by means of tugs and lighters.

We were scarcely moored, when a multitude of small boats surrounded us, all apparently offering to ferry us to the city. We ignored their clamor and clambered aboard the large steam tug to which our baggage was also transferred, and were quickly landed at the customshouse.

My two steamer trunks and big basket of Mexican pottery I left in care of the customs officers, and came up into the city with only a valise. The customshouse is a long, low, stone building, with an iron fence shutting it in and enclosing also an extensive paved storage yard. The Cuban officers, who were very polite, are yet under the military control of the United States and of General Wood, and they all spoke English fluently.

Passing out through the great iron gates, we signalled for a _cochero_, when half a dozen galloped up gesticulating and vociferating eagerly. We choose the cleanest-looking _cocha_ of the lot, a curious ancient vehicle, which seemed to be a cross between the German _fiacre_ and a Parisian _voiture_. Into this three of us climbed, when we set off on a gallop through narrow streets up into the city, halting at last before the Spanish-kept Hotel Pasaje. It is big and airy, and I have a room at the top where I can catch any breeze which may be blowing. The floor of my chamber is tiled; it is fitted with an iron bedstead with wire mattress, and neat American cottage furniture. An electric incandescent lamp dangles from the ceiling, and there are two large sashless windows with slatted Venetian curtains which may be let down to shut out wind and light. My first view of Habana was from one of these windows. I looked out over a city of flat roofs, where much domestic labor was carried on, and then beyond, across the palm-ornamented _plaza_ and along the beautiful Prado to the sea.

My first commercial transaction was the purchase of really fine cigars at a most reasonable figure; and then a packet of postal cards illustrated with views of Cuba. Down in the corner of each card was the legend, “Made in Detroit.” When I called the attention of the Spanish salesman to this fact, he declared “there is no such place as Detroit,” and “undoubtedly the words are the name of the Spanish artist who designed the cards!”

Leaving the hotel, I sauntered toward the Plaza Grande, an open square of several acres, traversed by gravel walks, and shaded by many Royal and other graceful palms; and then crossing it I came to the Prado. “_Muy bonita esta el Prado_,” (very lovely is the Prado), is the common phrase of every Habanista; and rightfully are the Habanese proud of their splendid parklike boulevard.

Habana is built upon a low, broad-topped hill, which descends gently to the water side. On the flattened crest of this hill is the Plaza Grande, and from the Plaza down to the sea, a mile or two in length, stretches the Prado;--a wide boulevard on either side of a broad green strip of park, where a walk-way passes beneath a double row of ancient and umbrageous trees, and comfortable seats are placed at intervals.

It is on the Prado that the fashion and beauty of Habana drives and promenades and lingers to see and be seen of all the world. Along its borders, on either hand, are built many of the noblest mansions of her merchant and planter magnates. To have a residence upon the Prado is to command respect.

The Spaniard and Cuban cared little for his streets, but he devoted himself with lavish attention to beautifying the interior of his home. Hence, in the Cuban as in the Mexican cities, you often pass along between bare uninteresting walls, while the costliest marbles, the richest fabrics, the rarest paintings within, quite hidden from all curious eyes, may be collected.

Later in the day I wandered through the shopping districts along the famous Calles Obispo and O’Rielly, streets so narrow that during the heat of the day they are wholly overspread with awnings while wheel traffic must go down O’Rielly and up Obispo. Here are gathered in plain unpretentious buildings many sumptuous shops. The Cuban has not yet learned the art of window display; he is not up even to the Mexican in that. But once you are within and know what to ask for, beautiful fabrics and expensive goods are shown you without stint. Among other shops, the hat store holds an important place in Cuban as well as Mexican life. In Mexico, the _sombrero_, costly or cheap, marks the social status of the wearer and, just so, here in Cuba the quality of your _panama_ determines the amount of consideration which you receive. I entered the Hotel Pasaje wearing a modern American felt hat, and when I bloomed out in a really good _panama_, the clerks and servants treated me with markedly increased respect. In the same way, when you enter a shop, the clerk sizes up your hat and treats you accordingly.

A noteworthy thing about Habana is the great number of cigar stores. No city in the world possesses so many. Nor are the cigars there purchased to be surpassed. Every one smokes cigars in Habana. The cigarette holds the inferior place. The men smoke cigars; the boys smoke cigars; even many of the women smoke cigars. In Mexico, in the hotels and railway cars, the ladies were usually smoking cigarettes. Here in Habana delicate feminine lips close tenderly upon _el segaro_.

There is also much fruit sold at little stands along the street curbs and at the corners, but in nothing like the quantity or profusion seen in the Mexican cities, nor have I met any _dulce_ boys with trays of candied fruits upon their heads.

There are two chief markets in Habana; one is by the water side, where the fishermen come and where I was greatly interested. There were the splendid _red-snapper_--which I saw in the markets of Mexico fresh from the sea,--a large handsome fish of deep-red color, weighing five or six pounds; and multitudes of sorts I did not know. The other, a large market where flowers and fruits and vegetables are sold is on the hill a mile or two from the sea.

The vegetable gardens in the outskirts of the city, are in the hands of the Chinese, who bring the vegetables to the markets where they are sold by the Cubans. They work the gardens just as they would in Shanghai, in Canton, in Pekin; they have come over from China direct; they already control the greengrocer trade of Habana, and are said to be fast growing rich.

The markets are neither so large, nor so abundantly supplied as those of Mexico City, where the fruits and vegetables of the temperate highlands, and also those of the tropics are offered in the same stall.

It was the day before Christmas when I visited the larger market, and the chief interest of the buyers seemed to be centered in the display of live and suckling pigs. It is the custom of the Cuban to celebrate his Christmas with a royal banquet of roast pig. So the housewife selects a “live and squealing dinner,” ties him together by his four legs and with a cord slung across her shoulder, carries him home, lustily vociferating beneath her arm. I saw few pigs in Mexico, only an occasional hog or shoat, lean and wild, scampering along the wayside in Michoacan; but here, in Cuba, the pig is _el gran Señor_.

The crowds gathering in these markets were in strong contrast to those of Mexico. Here, were none of the warm brown Indian tints, but instead the yellow mulatto and the very dark Spaniard or negro. The curious thing about these Cuban crowds is that the Spanish mulatto, instead of carrying the white man’s color with the negro’s features, bears, on the contrary, the white man’s features with the darker color of his African blood, and hence, the impression created by a Cuban crowd is rather that of men having Caucasian features shaded in color from the paler to the darker hues. It is also said, that many of the darker faces have in them no negro blood at all, but are those of the descendants of the ancient Moors, who, once the lords of old Spain, have left as legacy a proud lineage and swarthy skin. To the unpracticed eye, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the Spanish negro and the “Black Spaniard.” Thus in Cuba the color line of race distinction, as drawn in the United States, becomes almost impossible. Nor does it exist. Men of all shades mingle and mix in social functions, for who can tell whether the dark face is shaded by the infused blood of the lowly negro or the haughty Moor?

In the late afternoon I took my way down along the Prado, and, stopping before No. 55, touched an electric bell. The door opened and I entered a spacious _patio_; on one side stood a modern automobile,--on the other, pots of flowering plants, and I entered a large and airy drawing room.

I might have been in my own country, for it bore the marks of modern taste. It was the drawing room of _Señora_ ---- who as Miss ----, I had known and admired in the United States. She expressed delight at seeing me, greeting me with the cordiality of an old friend. She at once insisted that I accompany her that evening to Mrs. General Wood’s private box at the dinner to be given by the citizens of Havana to the United States naval officers now here with the squadron. The dinner was to be held in the Opera House. It would be the most notable function of the year; all that was distinguished in Cuban, Spanish, and American social, military and naval life would be there assembled. I was a passing traveler, and my white duck trousers and blue flannel coat were scarcely the costume to wear among so brilliant a company; but it was the best I had and what better could I do than accept? My hostess’ husband, as one of the receiving committee, must be separated from her and my escort would stand her in good stead.

A few hours later we were ushered into the big theater, and shown with much ceremony to the private box of the wife of Cuba’s Military Governor. Here were gathered Mrs. Wood herself, the wife of Admiral Converse, and the ladies of their entourage. The scene was splendid. The spacious Opera House, built by the Spaniards with their appreciation of pomp and ceremony and brilliant functions, was filled with a distinguished assemblage; from floor to lofty roof were tiers of boxes, and these boxes were occupied with the beauty and fashion of Cuba. The great parquet of the theater was floored over and upon this space were set long tables. The dinner had already some time ago begun. The company there gathered were nearing the hour when toasts are offered. Young _Señor_ Garcia, son of the Cuban General, was Toast Master of the occasion. On his right sat General Wood; upon his left the Archbishop of Santiago, in rich and gorgeous robes, the first native Cuban priest to reach that high dignity. The American naval and military officers were in full dress uniform, and the Cuban Generals were brilliant in warlike trappings and gold lace. The civilians wore dress suits, and I was conspicuous as the only guest of the evening in white duck and blue flannel.

The speeches were in Spanish and English, and great enthusiasm and good fellowship prevailed. In the course of the evening, most of the gentlemen present came to pay their respects to the wife of Cuba’s Governor, and I had the good fortune to be introduced to the greater part of them.

The sentiment between the Cubans and the Americans is now most cordial, or, perhaps I should say, between the governing and more cultivated Cubans and ourselves; for among those whose knowledge of the United States is gathered chiefly from contact with a soldiery, not altogether courteous in enforcing order, there is little good feeling, but rather a sense of sharp antagonism, which, though usually suppressed, nevertheless now and then crops out.

After the dinner and the closing of the function, I wandered out beneath the stars along the Prado and through the Plaza Grande to my hotel. The streets were yet alive with people, although it was late. In the great square the band had not finished its nightly concert, and the chairs which, in Havana as in Mexico, are rented to the public, were yet well-filled with those who lingered to enjoy the music and the cool night air.

Continuing my way homeward, I caught the distant hum of voices and an occasional shout. The sounds grew nearer. Looking down the Prado, I beheld many moving lights. Then a band began to play. A procession was approaching. I paused to watch. First came a band, men in smart uniforms; following these were men on horseback, some in uniform, some in civilian dress. Then came several other bands, and men and boys on foot carrying banners and lanterns and illuminations. A multitude was marching through the streets. Every now and then they shouted the name “Masso, Masso,” and broke into _vivas_ and _bravos_. At the Hotel Pasaje they halted and renewed their cheers and cries, the wide street becoming packed with the pressing mob, a cheering crowd, mostly dark-faced. The procession was a demonstration in behalf of Masso by the followers of the “Massoista” party. He is the candidate they would elect to the Presidency of the Cuban Republic in opposition to Estrada Palma.

On the afternoon of the following day, I was riding on the tramway in company with a friend, toward the suburbs on the hill, when a tall and courtly Cuban came toward us. He took a seat next to my friend and after a few moments’ conversation, turned to me and said in perfect English that he had noticed me the night before in the box of “_Señora_ General Wood,” and, “that he had remarked me for a stranger in Habana.” He said that he was shortly to leave the car, and asked whether we would not like to visit an old Cuban mansion, in order to see how people in Cuba lived in the style of the old _regime_.

Knowing the gracious manner of compliment habitual among the Spanish peoples, I was going to thank him for the proffered courtesy and decline; but my American friend, to my surprise, promptly accepted the invitation. We left the car in company with our guide, _Señor_ ----, who belongs to one of the oldest Cuban families of French descent,--and is a lawyer of distinction.

We approached a stately residence built of white marble, a series of high marble pillars before a marble portico running along the front. We passed through a small gate within a larger one in a high, wrought iron fence, through a small glazed door in a large doorway and came into a high, wide drawing room, extending across the front of the house. All was white marble,--the floors, the wainscoting, the doorways;--there was no woodwork anywhere. Handsome rugs lay upon the floor and French rattan furniture of easy shapes was scattered about the room. At one side we entered another lofty chamber, similarly floored and wainscoted, used as a ladies’ boudoir, and thence passed out across a wide piazza, into a beautiful and well-kept Spanish garden. The walks were carefully laid out, the beds were full of blooming plants--there were many palms of different varieties, and a marble bath house with running water and a large swimming pool. Beyond the flower garden, we entered a vegetable garden, close to which stood a commodious stable; then returning to the house _El Señor_ asked whether we would like also to see the kitchen. We were shown into a big square room, in the center of which stood an octagonal blue-tiled “stove,” about ten feet across at the top, and four feet high, a sort of porcelain table, containing many niches wherein to build small charcoal fires, a single fire to cook each separate dish. An old negro servant, a freed slave, was preparing the evening meal. We next entered the large dining room, with old mahogany furniture, a long table for banquets, and at one side a small table already set for the evening meal. There was much handsome silver and cut glass upon the high, old-fashioned mahogany sideboard. From the dining room we passed into a library, the shelves filled with French and Spanish and German and English books. Here the father of my host, an eminent judge, had gathered about him much of the world’s choicest literature. Then we came out into the wide _patio_, square and open to the sky, a fountain playing in the middle, and many potted palms and flowering plants set round about. The great house was of one story, and all rooms opened upon the central court. None of the windows were sashed with glass, and Venetian blinds kept out the light and too much air.

Here, in this sumptuous home lived for half a century one of the distinguished families of Havana; here now were living the grandchildren of those who built it.

Our host then led us up to the wide flat roof, whence stretched out before us a panorama of the city, the bay and the open sea.

My friend, who had long lived in Havana, holding a prominent post in government employ, had never before enjoyed the privilege of inspecting so beautiful a Cuban home. As we parted that evening he turned to me and said, “Perhaps the white duck trousers and blue flannel coat, which were so conspicuous last night in the box of Cuba’s Governor General, are to be thanked for this opportunity now come to both of us.” _El Señor_ had been pleased to show a courtesy to the guest of the first lady of the Island.

Neither the great cathedral of Havana, nor any of her churches, nor the honored chapel where Columbus’ bones are supposed to have lain, nor any of her public buildings, not even the “Palace” of the Spanish Captain Generals, are of so striking and splendid architecture as one sees generally in Mexico. The allurement and dazzling fame of the Empire of Montezuma attracted thither all that was daring and forceful and brilliant in old Spain. Even the wonders of Cuba and the Antilles paled before the tales of fabulous wealth and treasure of the conquest of Cortez. The noble churches and architecture of Mexico have no rivals among the Cuban cities. Nor is there among the Cubans that picturesqueness in garb, that striking brilliancy of coloring, which one sees upon the streets of the Mexican cities. In Cuba you see no scarlet and green and blue _zerapes_; no purple and blue and pink _rebozos_; no _rancherros_ and _caballeros_ in velvet jackets and tight-fitting trousers, laced and spangled and buttoned with threads of silver and gold; none of the splendor in coloring and dress of the sixteenth century, which still clings to the street scene in Mexico. Cuba in its outward aspects is distinctly, unromantically modern. The black coat is _de rigueur_; the black hat or the _panama_ is the only covering for the head, and even conventional millinery has begun to drive away the graceful _mantilla_ from the brows of _las señoras_. There is no poetry, no artistic coloring in the life scheme of the Cuban. His face and movements lack the vivacity and alertness inspired by the keen, quickening air of the Mexican Highlands. Even the clothes he wears and the way he wears them bespeak the heavy, sea level atmosphere he breathes. Nor has the language of the Cuban preserved the ancient grace and forcefulness which distinguish the almost classic Spanish of the Mexican. The Spanish spoken in Cuba has added to its vocabulary a multitude of words from the French and English of its neighbors, and from the provincial _patois_ of the formerly numerous Spanish soldiery.

Another time we rode out to the attractive suburbs of Vendado, where are many fine houses and extensive gardens, the greater part of them built in the old Spanish style, but some of the newer buildings after the fashion of modern American architecture. These last are less attractive than those which the Spaniard has evolved from his centuries of living in the latitudes of the tropics.

XXI

Cuba--The Fortress of La Cabaña

HAVANA,
_December 2nd_.

The candle end Captain MacIrvine held in his hand had burned so low that his fingers were scorching. My last match was burned up. We should have to grope our way out. Just at that moment a dim flicker of a distant light gleamed far down the low, narrow tunnelway. It came nearer, it grew larger; a man was there,--a soldier--yes, a Cuban officer, a lieutenant of infantry. With him were two ladies; one older than he, whose face, sweet, but oh, so sad! was furrowed with deep lines. Her hand trembled on her escort’s arm. The other woman was younger, quite as young as the lieutenant, and comely to look upon. “_Si, Señor_,” replied the lieutenant to a query, “I do have one box of the match. Take of them one half. Take of them all. I do know the way out.” He handed MacIrvine a box of small wax tapers. Tears were streaming down the elder woman’s face; the younger gave a sob. The three passed on and turned up the steep ascent to the left. We were in the pitch dark again.

“Who is he? Who are they?” I asked. “He is the officer now in command of this fortification; they are his mother and sister,” MacIrvine replied, half divining my question. “He is of a prominent Cuban family. They were people of wealth. The family were at dinner one evening. A Spanish guard called at the house, sent in a card to the father, who was an eminent judge. He left the table and went to the door. He was arrested and brought here, hatless and in his slippers. When the family went to ascertain why he did not come back to finish his coffee, they learned that he had been taken to La Cabaña. They never saw him again. The Spanish authorities reported that he had ‘escaped.’ In fact, he was brought down here into one of these dungeons, and was walled up alive. These loose rock walls you are now looking at, filling these low arches along this passageway, all tell the same tale. Behind every one of these walls, one or more Cubans have been immured alive. Their bones still rot there.”

When a man was walled in, no record was kept of the dungeon; the guards were subsequently changed and often sent to another fortress. No one might know the victim’s burial place, where he was immured with only a jug of water, a loaf of bread; and the rats robbed him of half of these. Oblivion in life, oblivion in death.

We were in the deepest, darkest dungeonway of the gigantic fortress, La Cabaña, which crowns the height across the bay from Havana. The passage was about four feet wide. Along one side were narrow, low arches, some three feet in span. Most of these arches were wholly filled with a wall of large loose rock. Air might pass through between the chinks, and the rats and lizards could crawl through; an empty rat, not one full-fattened on the dead within. A few of these walls had been torn down, and the scattered bones which sharp teeth had not destroyed had been utterly gathered together and buried in the beautiful cemetery of the city. But most of these walls were yet untouched, the story of their unknown dead forever lost. My foot hit something, I bent down and picked up the tibia of a human arm; the rats had dragged it through the wall. I laid it back gently on a projecting shelf of rock, my soul filled with horror, at the tale of Spanish cruelty it told.

We were a long way from daylight. We had crossed a moat within the giant fortress. We had passed many cave-like chambers built into the massive masonry--the casemates where soldiers and officers had lived in ease. We had entered a small room with stone seats on either hand. It was the outer guardroom of the series of dungeons behind. We had pushed open an immense iron grating which swung on rusty hinges like a door. We had come into a vast vaulted chamber, flagged with huge stones, the center of the floor being lower than the sides, making the drain. Along the walls on either hand, all the way, at a height of about seven feet, were heavy iron rings. To these rings the prisoners had been chained. Sometimes the chains were riveted to iron collars welded about the neck. A man might stand on tiptoe in comfort. When his toes gave out the collar pinched his neck; he sometimes died overnight before the jail guard discovered that his toes were weak. Into this great chamber hundreds of Cuban patriots had been crowded. No air could enter but through the narrow grated door,--no light could penetrate but the faint glimmering that drifted in through the small outer doorway. Those who might die were brought to the grating by any of their fellow-prisoners whose fetters enabled them to move. The great chamber still stank with the reek of blasted mortality. But this was not all. At the far end of the vast room was yet another grated door, now swung open upon rusting hinges. We passed into a second chamber, lower and longer than the first, obscure with perpetual gloom. The faintest gleam of God’s sweet day could be scarcely discerned through the distant door-grating of the first chamber. Here, too, men had been chained to iron rings at intervals along either side. With our lighted candle end, we scanned the massive walls and tried here and there to make out the faintly remaining legend, in faulty Spanish script, of the hapless creature who had graven here his dying word. In this remote dungeon, men were pent up to die of meagre food, of putrid water, of perpetual darkness, and of the foul hot air that crept in from the outer dungeon.

I thought surely we should have no further horrors yet to see. But Captain MacIrvine knew the way. He had been among the first American soldiers to enter La Cabaña and to discover the mysteries of these unknown and sometime forgotten dungeons. At the far end of the second chamber, he pushed open a heavy solid iron door. He entered a narrow passage barely three feet wide and so low that I had to stoop. “Mind where you set your foot. Take care of your head. Go slow,” he cried warningly; and we found ourselves going down a steep decline. The air was dank and fetid. My throbbing head was dull and heavy. Before our approach scurried a too venturesome rat. I stepped upon the slimy body of a lizard. My ear detected the retreat of hosts of scorpions as they clicked their cumbrous claws, but I heard the dismal winging of no bats; here was too deadly an atmosphere for even these to live. We came abruptly to a rock-wall, loose, but firmly set in a low arched depression. The passage widened and turned at right angles, both right and left. It was here we saw the approaching light and met the Cuban officer and the ladies.

When we found our way out to the clear, sweet sunshine again, and I looked into the blue sky arching over my head, and scented in my nostrils the fragrant breeze which swept up from the sea, and then looked up and beheld floating spotless and resplendent, above me and above La Cabaña and above Cuba, now free, my beloved flag, the flag of my own free land, the Stars and Stripes, my heart quickened. I choked a little, and I knew what Cuba and the world had gained through the blood and tears poured out by my country in order that Spanish tyranny should be forever expelled from its last stronghold this side the sea.

Captain MacIrvine and I had met that afternoon near the gateway of the customshouse in Havana, by the water side. We had taken one of the curious, blunt-ended, awning-covered rowboats, which will hold a dozen passengers, and which everywhere crowd along the quays. We had hired the old Cuban waterman for the afternoon, and bade him row us to the water stage of La Cabaña, set us ashore and then meet us at the water gate of El Moro, three hours later in the afternoon. He was brown and withered, with grim square jaw and fine dark eyes. He was a Cuban patriot. He had himself spent nigh two years in the gloomy dungeons of the fortress, his family having long given him up for dead; and all because in his secret heart he dared to love _Cuba Libre_.

La Cabaña is the largest Spanish fortification in the New World. It has been several centuries in growing to its immense dimensions. Crowning the heights across the bay from the city of Havana, its record of compulsory guests is a record of three centuries of the grief and agony of a race. Eighteen to twenty millions of dollars in gold have been spent upon its vast and massive walls and ramparts, its moats and fosses. Impregnable was it deemed to be by the Spanish engineers, and the United States did not have to try what its strength might be in fact. Up the narrow, slanting, rock-paved causeway from the water side to the stern stone portals of the single entrance have passed a long procession of Cuban patriots--men and women, mere boys and white-haired men; and few are they who ever came out again. They died in the dungeons by scores, and their bodies were buried in trenches, or, borne through the subterranean passage to the ramparts of El Moro, were there thrown to the sharks in the open sea. Those of lesser note who dared yet to live, were taken by platoons to a scarred and dented wall and shot to death. This spot is hallowed ground to the free man of to-day. We stood before it with uncovered heads. A little fence stakes it in, a bronze tablet is set against the bullet-battered wall of rock. The grass before us, so luxuriant, has been drenched with the noblest blood of Cuba’s patriots. The Cuban soldier guarding the gateway watched us lift our hats before the sacred and consecrated plot of martyred earth. He bowed to us respectfully as we re-entered, and it seemed to me that there was a deeper, kindlier glitter than casual greeting in his black eye.

A great garrison of regular troops was always kept in military readiness in La Cabaña; now a single company of Cuban infantry occupies the fortress. Cuba free and fifty Cuban soldiers in La Cabaña; Cuba a Spanish province and fifty thousand bayonets to garrison and hold Havana down, one single town!

Many ancient guns yet adorn the ramparts of La Cabaña, the newer artillery having been removed to Spain, or, some say, sunk in the sea. The old chapel now serves for a sleeping room for the Cuban guard. The bell which tolled so often for the lost souls of the condemned is now gone. The fount of holy water is a receptacle for junk. The well-worn flight of steps ascending to the roof, no longer responds to the tread of the thousands of feet that used to press them. Right over the chapel, near the place where swung the bell, stood the garrote where, it is said, more than sixty thousand throats have been clasped and crushed by the iron grips. Perhaps nowhere in the world have so many souls been shriven as in the chapel of La Cabaña, and nowhere have so many lives gone out as by this dread instrument of death. And yet, as we stood on this high platform, with the balmy air of now free Cuba filling our lungs, and watched the Cuban soldiery pacing their beat in the park below, it seemed, in the serene and restful humor of the day, almost incredible that only three short years ago, at most but four, here had been enacted a daily tragedy of cruelty and horror which no human pen will ever be adequate actually to portray.

Back in the year 1894, when I had bought a few Cuban bonds, and in 1896, when I had raised the Cuban flag on my McKinley pole at Coalburg, I had felt in a dim way that I was doing a thing entirely right; but it was not until I stood upon the ramparts of La Cabaña, and considered the monstrous pitilessness of Spanish rule, and saw within the focus of my vision the demonstrated proof of cruelty beyond all conception in the present age,--only then, did I fully realize how God had guided the hearts and thews of my countrymen in rendering forever impossible the continuance of these iniquities.

From La Cabaña we wandered across a stretch of grassy sward a quarter of a mile, to the parapets of El Moro. Builded upon a profound rock foundation it guards the angle of the land between the open sea and the far shore of Havana Bay. Above it, as above La Cabaña, floats the starry flag. Within it resides a sturdy, clean-cut, trim-built garrison of our own boys in blue. It did me good to see them. Vigorous and businesslike they looked. Young men, well-kept, clear-eyed, expressing in their look and gait the easy mastery of the youthful, giant power whose simple uniform they wear. El Moro was never a prison fortress, although there are said to be dungeons yet undiscovered, dug deep into the rock base on which it stands. Nor is it now a fort which could withstand an attack by modern guns. But in the ancient time it was an impregnable pile, and stands to-day, a fine example of what the military art taught men to build in centuries gone by.

Most of the guns are old and out of date, notably a dozen of immense size known among the soldier boys as the “Twelve Apostles,” while just one or two of modern make poke their noses toward the city and the sea.

From El Moro we descended to the water’s edge, and finding our boatman, were ferried across to the tranquil city. The sun was sinking behind the highlands in the west; the azure sky had grown to purple all barred with gold and red. The golden light of eventide illumined the city as with an aureole. It seemed to me a hallowing benison over Cuba now forever free.

XXII

Cuba--Her Fertile Sugar Lands--Matanzas by the Sea

HAVANA, CUBA,
_December 27th_.

A cup of chocolate, a roll, a pat of guava paste, such was my _desayuno_, my breakfast. _Señor_ G----, Superintendent of Civic Training in the Schools of Cuba, had also had his morning coffee, and was awaiting me at the broad portal of the hotel. We call a _cocha_, bade the _cochero_ drive us to the ferry on the bay, and were soon rattling through Havana’s narrow, rough-paved streets. It was early, not yet six o’clock. But the people of the tropics rise betimes and the busy life of the day was well begun. We could look right into the courtyards, and even into the living rooms of the houses, so close did our _cocha_ wheel to the open doorways and to the wide-lifted curtains of the glassless windows. A young mother looked curiously through the iron bars of a window front at the _Americanos_. She held her laughing baby daughter in her arms. A pair of slippered feet, a coral necklace, a friendly smile, and it was clothed for the day. A family sat at a long table, each sipping the clear black coffee. The mother was smoking a huge black cigar, the father a cigar of more moderate size, the children were all smoking cigarettes. Scantily clad peddlers were crying their goods, one his back piled high with tinware. Women were carrying on their heads big baskets of fruit. An ancient jet-black African woman trudged along with a squealing shoat, tied by the four legs and slung to her shoulder. A drove of she-donkeys were standing before an open doorway; their owner was milking one of them, the buyer was standing near so as to be sure that the morning’s milk should be the real thing. The shops, however, were not yet open. It was too early for buyers. But the awnings were being spread over the streets, so as to be ready for the sun when it should wax hot.

As we approached the neighborhood of the bay, the press of footfarers in the streets increased. The narrow sidewalks and even the street itself were filled with men and women moving toward the ferry. Our _cochero_ cracked his whip and hallooed at the crowd, and they fled out of the way, quite good-naturedly. I was trying to light my cigar, but the motion of the vehicle blew out the match. I had just struck a third. A woman on the sidewalk saw my fix. She called to the _cochero_ and pointed to me. He stopped his horse upon its haunches. He waited until my cigar was alight, then he drove on. Such is the custom in a city where every man and woman smokes and _El Segaro_ is the King.

At the long, low-roofed ferry house there was a great crowd, an uncommon press. We paid our _cochero_ a _peseta_ (twenty cents), dismissed him and strode among the thick of the throng.

In its midst were a group of gentlemen in white _panama_ hats and white linen clothes. One of them was short and stout with gray _mustachios_, pointed goatee and flowing gray hair. It was General Masso, the candidate of the Massoista Party for President. I had met him the night when he made his great speech to his cheering followers in front of the Hotel Pasaje, and told them all to refrain from voting when the day for elections should arrive, “for were not all the Palmaistas scoundrels and thieves and would-be usurpers of power, backed, too, by Yankee bayonets! What use was it to vote or try to vote against such combinations for wrong and ill? No! let the Massoistas remain at home, and by the smallness of the vote cast let the world see that the real strength of the Cuban people was not with Palma, the puppet of American power, but with the real people of Cuba, whose day would in the future surely come!” And had not the assembled multitude filled the air with shouts of “_Bravo! Viva Masso!_” With him was Señor Hernandez, candidate for the Vice-presidency of the Massoista Party, who had also stood on a pile of boxes and stirred the excited multitude with eloquence even more intemperate. And there was also _Señor_ Gualberto Gomez, the greatest orator of Cuba, short, stout, gray-haired, with gold spectacles--a Spanish mulatto, the real leader of the great, turbulent, Afro-Spanish race; the powerful backer of the Massoistas, who it is said, had welded the third of Cuba’s Negro-Spanish population into a solid political machine, bounden together with the secret ties of occult brotherhood. His impetuous eloquence it was which swept the Constitutional Convention, and carried the plank for universal suffrage triumphantly to victory against predetermined plans of the Conservative leaders. He would now have his following hold the balance of power in Cuba, and so rule the Island as does his race in Hayti and San Domingo! For the present, he would use the Massoistas and their pro-Spanish propaganda, later he would throw aside the Spanish following and himself rule Cuba through the power of his organized blacks. Young Garcia was there, too, the son of the great leader, discontented with the minor rôle Palma and the Americans have permitted him to play, and anxious for a Cuba wholly free from the interference of the American as well as the Spaniard. Yes, these leaders were all there, and the great square before the ferry house was packed with a cheering multitude to bid them good-bye, and Masso “God speed” on his journey to his plantation home. When I met these gentlemen before, I enjoyed free and frank talk with them, and they had made no scruple in voicing to me their policies and demands:--their determination to rule or ruin; their policy to refrain from voting and then later rise in armed revolt. This morning they were all gathered here to take a last farewell of their really loved chief, Masso, a fine old patriot with a famous war record, whom many now think that men more cunning than himself are using for their own selfish ends.

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

Our track over the now clear waters of the bay led us close alongside the crushed and bended wreckage of the United States Steamship _Maine_, while not far beyond lay at easy anchor three modern warboats of the navy, the _Kearsarge_, the _Kentucky_ and the _Massachusetts_, a proud trio for Spanish and Cuban eyes to look upon. The wreck still lies there, its lonely foremast a mournful monument to the tragedy it marks.

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

In the black, deep and wonderfully fertile soil, the cane grows without care or heed. Here the cane once planted need not be reset for full twenty years, and the stock may be cut at six months’ intervals through all that time. No wonder the sugar-growers of Louisiana cry aloud, for they must reset their roots every third year, and can only count on two sugar crops from that; while their cane does not yield nearly so much sugar to the ton as the crops from these Cuban lands. Nor can the sugar grower of the Florida Everglades compete with the fertility of Cuba. Seven years, at most, to a single root is there the limit, five years is more often the rule, and the stalk is but little sweeter than that of Louisiana growth. The American sugar men are now scouting the land in Cuba. I met them from Louisiana and from Texas and from Florida. They are bound to come in numbers greater yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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