Chapter XIV: Scenes in Cuba (2)

“Lord love you, no,” said little Reefpoint; “here, lash me to my beast, and no fear.” The doctor made him fast, as desired, round the mule’s neck with a stout thong, and then drove him at the barricade, and over they came, man and beast, although, to tell the truth, little Reefy alighted well out on the neck with a hand grasping each ear. However, he was a gallant little fellow, and in nowise discouraged, so he undertook to bring over the other quadrupeds; and in little more than a quarter of an hour we were all under weigh on the opposite side, in full sail towards Don Ricardo’s property. But as we proceeded up the valley, the destruction caused by the storm became more and more apparent. Trees were strewn about in, all directions, having been tom up by the roots--road there was literally none; and by the time we reached the coffee estate, after a ride, or scramble, more properly speaking, of three hours, we were all pretty much tired. In some places the road at the best was but a rocky shelf of Limestone not exceeding twelve inches in width, where, if you had slipped, down you would have gone a thousand feet. At this time it was white and clean, as if it had been newly chiselled, all the soil and sand having been washed away by the recent heavy rains.

The situation was beautiful; the house stood on a platform scraped out of the hillside, with a beautiful view of the whole country down to St Jago. The accommodation was good; more comforts, more English comforts, in the mansion than I had yet seen in Cuba; and as it was built of solid slabs of limestone, and roofed with strong hardwood timbers and rafters, and tiled, it had sustained comparatively little injury, as it had the advantage of being at the same time sheltered by the overhanging cliff. It stood in the middle of a large platform of hard sun-dried clay, plastered over, and as white as chalk, which extended about forty feet from the eaves of the house, in every direction, on which the coffee was cured. This platform was surrounded on all sides by the greenest grass I had ever seen, and overshadowed, not the house alone, but the whole level space, by one vast wild fig-tree.

“I say, Tom, do you see that Scotchman hugging the Creole, eh?”

“Scotchman!” said I, looking towards Don Ricardo, who certainly did not appear to be particularly amorous; on the contrary, we had just alighted, and the worthy man was enacting groom.

“Yes,” continued Bang, “the Scotchman hugging the Creole; look at that tree--do you see the trunk of it?”

I did look at it. It was a magnificent cedar, with a tall straight stem, covered over with a curious sort of fretwork, wove by the branches of some strong parasitical plant, which had warped itself round and round it, by numberless snakelike convolutions, as if it had been a vegetable Laocoon. The tree itself shot up branchless to the uncommon height of fifty feet; the average girth of the hunk being four-and twenty feet, or eight-feet in diameter. The leaf of the cedar is small, not unlike the ash; but when I looked up, I noticed that the feelers of this ligneous serpent had twisted round the larger boughs, and blended their broad leaves with those of the tree, so that it looked like two trees grafted into one; but, as Aaron Bang said, in a very few years the cedar would entirely disappear, its growth being impeded, its pith extracted, and its core rotted, by the baleful embraces of the wild fig, of “this Scotchman hugging the Creole.” After we had fairly shaken into our places, there was every promise of a very pleasant visit. Our host had a tolerable cellar, and although there was not much of style in his establishment, still there was a fair allowance of comfort, every thing considered. The evening after we arrived was most beautiful. The house, situated on its white plateau of barbicues, as the coffee platforms are called, where large piles of the berries in their red cherry like husks had been blackening in the sun the whole forenoon, and on which a gang of negroes was now employed covering them up with tarpawlins for the night, stood in the centre of an amphitheatre of mountains, the front box, as it were, the stage part opening on a bird’s eye-view of the distant town and harbour, with the everlasting ocean beyond it, the currents and flaws of wind making its surface look like ice, as we were too distant to discern the heaving of the swell, or the motion of the billows. The fast falling shades of evening were deepened by the sombrous shadow of the immense tree overhead, and all down in the deep valley was now becoming dark and undistinguishable, through the blue vapours that were gradually floating up towards us. To the left, on the shoulder of the Horseshoe Hill, the sunbeams still lingered, and the gigantic shadows of the trees on the right hand prong were strongly cast across the valley on a red precipitous bank near the top of it. The sun was descending beyond the wood, flashing through the branches, as if they had been on fire. He disappeared. It was a most lovely still evening--the air--but hear the skipper.

“It is the hour when from the boughs,
The nightingale’s high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers vows,
Seem sweet in every whisper’d word;
And gentle winds and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf is browner hue,
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,
When twilight melts beneath the moon away.”

“Well recited, skipper,” shouted Bang. “Given as the noble poet’s verses should be given. I did not know the extent of your accomplishments; grown poetical ever since you saw Francesca Cangrejo, eh?”

The darkness hid the gallant captain’s blushes, if blush he did.

“I say, Don Ricardo, who are those?”--half-a-dozen well-clad negroes had approached the house by this time--“Ask them, Mr Bang; take your friend Mr Cringle for an interpreter.”

“Well, I will. Tom, who are they? Ask them--do.”

I put the question, “Do you belong to the property?”

The foremost, a handsome Negro answered me, “No, we don’t, sir; at least, not till tomorrow.”

“Not till tomorrow?”

“No, sir; somos caballeros hoy” (we are gentlemen to-day.)

“Gentlemen today; and, pray, what shall you be tomorrow?”

“Esclavos otra ves,” (slaves again, sir,) rejoined the poor fellow, nowise daunted.

“And you, my darling,” said I to a nice well-dressed girl, who seemed to be the sister of the spokesman, “.what are you today, may I ask?”

She laughed--“Esclava, a slave to-day, but to-morrow I shall be free.”

“Very strange.”

“Not at all, senor; there are six of us in a family, and one of us is free each day, all to father there,” pointing to an old grey-headed negro, who stood by, leaning on his staff--“he is free two days in the week; and as I am going to have a child,”--a cool admission,--“I want to buy another day for myself too--but Don Ricardo will tell you all about it.”

The Don by this time chimed in, talking kindly to the poor creatures; but we had to retire, as dinner was now announced, to which we sat down.

Don Ricardo had been altogether Spanish in Santiago, because he lived there amongst Spaniards, and every thing was Spanish about him; so with the tact of his countrymen he had gradually been merged into the society in which he moved, and having married a very high caste Spanish lady, he at length became regularly amalgamated with the community. But here, in his mountain retreat, sole master, his slaves in attendance on him, he was once more an Englishman, in externals, as he always was at heart, and Richie Cloche, from the Lang Toon of Kirkaldy, shone forth in all his glory as the kind hearted landlord. His head household servant was an English, or rather a Jamaica negro; his equipment, so far as the dinner set out was concerned, was pure English; he would not even speak any thing but English himself.

The entertainment was exceedingly good,--the only thing that puzzled us uninitiated subjects, was a fricassee of Macaca worms, that is, the worm which breeds in the rotten trunk of the cotton-tree, a beautiful little insect, as big as a miller’s thumb, with a white trunk and a black head in one word, a gigantic caterpillar.

Bang fed thereon--he had been accustomed to it in Jamaica in some Creole families where he visited, he said--but it was beyond my compass. However, all this while we were having a great deal of fun, when Senora Campana addressed her husband--“My dear, you are now in your English mood, so I suppose we must go.” We had dined at six, and it might now be about eight. Don Ricardo, with all the complacency in the world, bowed, as much as to say, you are right, my dear, you may go, when his youngest niece addressed him.

“Tio--my uncle,” said she, in a low silver-toned voice, “Juana and I have brought our guitars”--

“Not another word to be said,” quoth Transom--“the guitars by all means.”

The girls in an instant, without any preparatory blushing, or other botheration, rose, slipped their heads and right arms through the black ribbons that supported their instruments, and stepped into the middle of the room.

“The Moorish Maid of Granada,” said Senora Campana. They nodded.

“You shall take Fernando, the sailor’s part,” said Senora Candalaria, the youngest sister, to Juana, “for your voice is deeper than mine, and I shall be Anna.”

“Agreed,” said Juana, with a lovely smile, and an arch twinkle of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not the poetry.

The Moorish Maid of Granada

FERNANDO

The setting moon hangs over the hill;
On the dark pure breast of the mountain lake
Still trembles her greenish silver wake,
And the blue mist floats over the rill.
And the cold streaks of dawning appear,
Giving token that sunrise is near;
And the fast clearing east is flushing,
And the watery clouds are blushing;
And the day-star is sparkling on high,
Like the fire of my Anna’s dark eye.
The ruby-red clouds in the east
Float like islands upon the sea,
When the winds are asleep on its breast;
Ah, would that such calm were for me!

And see, the first streamer-like ray
From the unrisen god of day,
Is piercing the ruby-red clouds,
Shooting up like golden shrouds:
And like silver gauze falls the shower,
Leaving diamonds on bank, bush, and bower,
Amidst many unopened flower.
Why walks the dark maid of Granada?

ANNA

At evening when labour is done,
And cool’d in the sea is the sun;
And the dew sparkles clear on the rose,
And the flowers are beginning to close,
Which at nightfall again in the calm.

Their incense to God breathe in balm;
And the bat flickers up in the sky,
And the beetle hums moaningly by;
And to rest in the brake speeds the deer,
While the nightingale sings loud and clear.

Scorched by the heat of the sun’s fierce light,
The sweetest flowers are bending most
Upon their slender stems;
More faint are they than if tempest tost,
Till they drink of the sparkling gems
That fall from the eye of night.

Hark! from lattices guitars are tinkling,
And though in heaven the stars are twinkling,
No tell-tale moon looks over the mountain,
To peer at her pale cold face in the fountain;
And serenader’s mellow voice,
Wailing of war, or warbling of love,
Of love, while the melting maid of his choice,
Leans out from her bower above.

All is soft and yielding towards night,
When blending darkness shrouds all from the sight;
But chaste, chaste, is this cold, pure light,
Sang the Moorish maid of Granada.

After the song, we all applauded, and the ladies having made their conges, retired. The Captain and I looked towards Aaron Bang and Don Ricardo; they were tooth and nail at something which we could not understand. So we wisely held our tongues.

“Very strange all this,” quoth Bang.

“Not at all,” said Ricardo. “As I tell you, every slave here can have himself or herself appraised, at any time they may choose, with liberty to purchase their freedom day by day.”

“But that would be compulsory manunmission,” quoth Bang.

“And if it be,” said Ricardo, “what then? The scheme works well here why should it not do so there--I mean with you, who have so many advantages over us?”

This is an unentertaining subject to most people, but having no bias myself, I have considered it but justice to insert in my log the following letter, which Bang, honest fellow, addressed to me, some years after the time I speak of.

MY DEAR CRINGLE,

“Since I last saw you in London, it is nearly, but not quite, three years ago. I considered at the time we parted, that if I lived at the rate of L3000 a-year, I was not spending one-half of my average income, and on the faith of this I did plead guilty to my house in Park Lane, and a carriage for my wife,----and, in short, I spent my L3000 a year. Where am I now? In the old shop at Mammee Gully--my two eldest daughters, little things, in the very middle of their education, hastily ordered out, shipped as it were, like two bales of goods to Jamaica--my eldest nephew, whom I had adopted, obliged to exchange from the--Light Dragoons, and to enter a foot regiment, receiving the difference, which but cleared him from his mess accounts. But the world says I was extravagant. Like Timon, however--No, d----n Timon. I spent money when I thought I had it, and therein I did no more than the Duke of Bedford, or Lord Grosvenor or many another worthy peer; and now when I no longer have it, why, I cut my coat by my cloth, have made up my mind to perpetual banishment here, and I owe no man a farthing.”

But all this is wandering from the subject. We are now asked in direct terms to free our slaves. I will not even glance at the injustice of this demand, the horrible infraction of rights that it would lead to; all this I will leave untouched; but, my dear fellow, were men in your service or the army to do us justice, each in his small sphere in England, how much good might you not do us? Officers of rank are, of all others, the most influential witnesses we could adduce, if they, like you, have had opportunities of judging for themselves. But I am rambling from my object. You may remember our escapade into Cuba, a thousand years ago, when you were a lieutenant of the Firebrand. Well, you may also remember Don Ricardo’s doctrine regarding the gradual emancipation of the negroes, and how we saw his plan in full operation at least I did, for you knew little of these matters. Well, last year I made a note of what then passed, and sent it to an eminent West India merchant in London, who had it published in the Courier, but it did not seem to please either one party or the other; a signal proof, one would have thought, that there was some good in it. At a later period, I requested the same gentleman to have it published in Blackwood, where it would at least have had a fair trial on its own merits, but it was refused insertion. My very worthy friend, who acted for old Kit at that time as secretary of state for colonial affairs, did not like it, I presume; it trenched a little, it would seem, on the integrity of his great question; it approached to something like compulsory manumission, about which he does rave. Why will he not think on this subject like a Christian man? The country--I say so--will never sanction the retaining in bondage of any slave, who is willing to pay his master his fair appraised value.

Our friend----injures us, and himself too, a leetle by his ultra notions. However, hear what I propose, and what, as I have told you formerly, was published in the Courier by no less a man than Lord----.

Scheme for the gradual Abolition of Slavery.

The following scheme of redemption for the slaves in our colonies is akin to a practice that prevails in some of the Spanish settlements.

We have now bishops, (a most excellent measure,) and we may presume that the inferior clergy will be much more efficient than heretofore. It is therefore proposed,--That every slave, on attaining the age of twenty one years, should be, by act of Parliament, competent to apply to his parish clergyman, and signify his desire to be appraised. The clergyman’s business would then be to select two respectable appraisers from amongst his parishioners, who should value the slave, calling in an umpire if they disagreed.

As men even of good principles will often be more or less swayed by the peculiar interests of the body to which they belong, the rector should be instructed, if he saw any flagrant swerving from an honest appraisement, to notify the same to his bishop, who, by application to the governor, if need were, could thereby rectify it. When the slave was thus valued, the valuation should be registered by the rector, in a book to be kept for that purpose, an attested copy of which should be annually lodged amongst the archives of the colony.

We shall assume a case, where a slave is valued for L120, Jamaica currency. He soon, by working by-hours, selling the produce of his provision grounds, etc. Acquires L20; and how easily and frequently this is done, every one knows, who is at all acquainted with West India affairs.

He then shall have a right to pay to his owner this L20 as the price of his Monday for ever, and his owner shall be bound to receive it. A similar sum would purchase him his freedom on Tuesday; and other four instalments, to use a West India phrase, would buy him free altogether. You will notice, I consider that he is already free on the Sunday. Now, where is the insurmountable difficulty here? The planter may be put to inconvenience, certainly, great inconvenience, but he has compensation, and the slave has his freedom--if he deserves it; and as his emancipation in nine cases out of ten would be a work of time, he would, as he approached absolute freedom, become more civilized, that is, more fit to be free; and as he became more civilized, new wants would spring up, so that when he was finally free, he would not be content to work a day or two in the week for subsistence merely. He would work the whole six to buy many little comforts, which, as a slave suddenly emancipated, he never would have thought of.

As the slave becomes free, I would have his owner’s allowance of provisions and clothing decrease gradually.

It may be objected--suppose slaves partly free, to be taken in execution, and sold for debt. I answer, let them be so. Why cannot three days of a man’s labour be sold by the deputy marshal as well as six?

Again--Suppose the gang is mortgaged, or liable to judgments against the owner of it. I still answer, let it be so--only, in this case let the slave pay his instalments into court, in place of paying them to his owners, and let him apply to his rector for information in such a case.

By the register I would have kept, every one could at once see what property an owner had in his gang--that is, how many were actually slaves, and how many were in progress of becoming free. Thus well disposed and industrious slaves would soon become freemen. But the idle and worthless would still continue slaves, and why the devil shouldn’t they?

(Signed) A. B----.

There does seem to be a rough, yet vigorous sound sense in all this. But I take leave of the subject, which I do not profess to understand; only I am willing to bear witness in favour of my old friends, so far as I can, conscientiously.

We returned next day to Santiago, and had then to undergo the bitterness of parting. With me it was a slight affair, but the skipper! However, I will not dwell on it. We reached the town towards evening. The women were ready to weep, I saw; but we all turned in, and next morning at breakfast we were moved, I will admit--some more, some less. Little Reefy, poor fellow, was crying like a child; indeed he was little more, being barely fifteen.

“Oh! Mr Cringle, I wish I had never seen Miss Candalaria de los Dolores; indeed I do.”

This was Don Ricardo’s youngest niece.

“Ah, Reefy, Reefy,” said I, “you must make haste, and be made post, and then....”

“What does he call her?” said Aaron.

“Senora Tomassa Candalaria de los Dolores Gonzales y Vallejo,” blubbered out little Reefy.

“What a complicated piece of machinery she must be!” gravely rejoined Bang.

The meal was protracted to a very unusual length, but time and tide wait for no man. We rose. Aaron Bang advanced to make his bow to our kind hostess; he held out his hand, but she, to Aaron’s great surprise apparently, pushed it on one side and regularly closing with our friend, hugged him in right earnest. I have before mentioned that she was a very small woman; so, as the devil would have it, the golden pin in her hair was thrust into Aaron’s eye, which made him jump back, wherein he lost his balance, and away he went, dragging Madama Campana down on the top of him. However, none of us could--laugh now; we parted, jumped into our boat, and proceeded straight to the anchorage, where three British merchantmen were by this time riding all ready for sea. We got on board. “Mr Yerk,” said the Captain, “fire a gun, and hoist blue Peter at the fore. Loose the foretopsail.” The masters came on board for their instructions; we passed but a melancholy evening of it, and next morning I took my last look of Santiago de Cuba.