| | 1 | Author: | Dana
Richard Henry
1815-1882 | Add | | | Title: | To Cuba and Back  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Saturday, the twelfth day of February, 1859,
is a dull, dark day in New York, with visitations
of snow-squalls, as the United States
Mail Steamer Cahawba swings at her pier, at
the foot of Robinson-street—a pier crowded
with drays and drivers, and a street of mud,
snow and ice, and poor habitations. The
steamer is to sail at one p.m.; and, by half-past
twelve, her decks are full, and the mud and
snow of the pier are well trodden by men and
horses. Coaches drive down furiously, and
nervous passengers put their heads out to see
if the steamer is off before her time; and on
the decks, and in the gangways, inexperienced
passengers run against everybody, and mistake
the engineer for the steward, and come up the
same stairs they go down, without knowing
it. In the dreary snow, the newspaper venders
cry the papers, and the book venders thrust
yellow covers into your face—" Reading for
the voyage, sir—five hundred pages, close
print!" And that being rejected, they reverse
the process of the Sibyl,—with "Here's another,
sir, one thousand pages, double columns."
The great beam of the engine moves slowly
up and down, and the black hull sways at its
fasts. A motley group are the passengers.
Shivering Cubans, exotics that have taken
slight root in the hot-houses of the Fifth Avenue,
are to brave a few days of sleet and
cold at sea, for the palm-trees and mangoes,
the cocoas and orange-trees, they will be sitting
under in six days, at farthest. There are
Yankee shipmasters going out to join their
"cotton wagons" at New Orleans and Mobile;
merchants pursuing a commerce that knows
no rest and no locality; confirmed invalids
advised to go to Cuba to die under mosquito-nets
and be buried in a Potter's Field; and
other invalids wisely enough avoiding our
March winds; and here and there a mere
vacation-maker, like myself. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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