To Cuba and back. :: :: University of Virginia Library

To-morrow, I am to go, at eight o'clock,
either to the church of San Domingo, to hear
the military mass, or to the Jesuit church of
Belen; for the service of my own church is not
publicly celebrated, even at the British Consulate;
no service but the Roman Catholic
being tolerated on the island.

To-night there is a public mascara (mask
ball) at the great hall, next door to Le Grand's.
My only window is by the side of the numerous
windows of the great hall, and all these
are wide open; and I should be stifled if I
were to close mine. The music is loud and
violent, from a very large band, with kettle
drums and bass drums and trumpets; and because
these do not make noise and uproar
enough, pistols are discharged, at the turns in
the tunes. For sleeping, I might as well have

been stretched on the bass drum. This tumult
of noises, and the heat are wearing and oppressive
beyond endurance, as it draws on past
midnight, to the small hours; and the servants
in the court of the hall seem to be tending at
tables of quarrelling men, and to be interminably
washing and breaking dishes. After several
feverish hours, I light a match and look
at my watch. It is nearly five o'clock in the
morning. There is an hour to daylight,—and
will this noise stop before then? The city
clocks struck five; the music ceased; and the
bells of the convents and monasteries tolled
their matins, to call the nuns and monks to
their prayers and to the bedsides of the sick
and dying in the hospitals, as the maskers go
home from their revels at this hideous hour
of Sunday morning. The servants ceased their
noises, the cocks began to crow and the bells
to chime, the trumpets began to bray, and the
cries of the streets broke in before dawn, and
I dropped asleep just as I was thinking sleep
past hoping for; when I am awaked by a
knocking at the door, and Antonio calling,
"Usted! Usted! Un caballero quiere ver

Usted!" to find it half-past nine, the middle
of the forenoon, and an ecclesiastic in black
dress and shovel hat, waiting in the passage
way, with a message from the bishop.

His Excellency regrets not having seen me
the day before, and invites me to dinner at
three o'clock, to meet three or four gentlemen;
an invitation which I accept with pleasure.

I am too late for the mass, or any other
religious service, as all the churches close at ten
o'clock. A tepid, soothing bath, at "Los baños
públicos," round the corner, and I spend the
morning in my chamber. As we are at breakfast,
the troops pass by the Paseo, from the
mass service. Their gait is quick and easy,
with swinging arms, after the French fashion.
Their dress is seersucker, with straw hats and
red cockades: the regiments being distinguished
by the color of the cloth on the cuffs of the
coat, some being yellow, some green, and some
blue.

Soon after two o'clock, I take a carriage for
the bishop's. On my way out I see that the
streets are full of Spanish sailors from the men-of-war,
ashore for a holiday, dressed in the

style of English sailors, with wide duck trowsers,
blue jackets, and straw hats, with the
name of their ship on the front of the hat.
All business is going on as usual, and laborers
are at work in the streets and on the
houses.

The company consists of the bishop himself,
the Bishop of Puebla de los Angelos in
Mexico, Father Yuch, the rector of the Jesuit
College, who has a high reputation as a man
of intellect, and two young ecclesiastics. Our
dinner is well cooked, and in the Spanish style,
consisting of fish, vegetables, fruits, and of
stewed light dishes, made up of vegetables,
fowls and other meats, a style of cooking well
adapted to a climate in which one is very willing
to dispense with the solid, heavy cuts of
an English dinner.

The Bishop of Puebla wore the purple, the
Bishop of Havana a black robe with a broad
cape, lined with red, and each wore the Episcopal
cross and ring. The others were in
simple black cassocks. The conversation was
in French; for, to my surprise, none of the
company could speak English; and being

allowed my election between French and
Spanish, I chose the former, as the lighter infliction
on my associates.

I am surprised to see what an impression is
made on all classes in this country by the
pending "Thirty Millions Bill" of Mr. Slidell.
It is known to be an Administration measure,
and is thought to be the first step in a series
which is to end in an attempt to seize the island.
Our steamer brought verbal intelligence
that it had passed the Senate, and it was so
announced in the Diario of the day after our
arrival, although no newspaper that we brought
so stated it. Not only with these clergymen, but
with the merchants and others whom I have
met since our arrival, foreigners as well as
Cubans, this is the absorbing topic. Their
future seems to be hanging in doubt, depending
on the action of our government,
which is thought to have a settled purpose to
acquire the island. I suggested that it had not
passed the Senate, and would not pass the
House; and, at most, was only an authority to
the President to make an offer that would certainly
be refused. But they looked beyond the

form of the act, and regarded it as the first
move in a plan, of which, although they could
not entirely know the details, they thought
they understood the motive.

These clergymen were well informed as to
the state of religion in the United States, the
relative numbers and force of the various denominations,
and their doctrinal differences;
the reputations of Brownson, Parker, Beecher,
and others; and most minutely acquainted with
the condition of their own church in the United
States, and with the chief of its clergy.
This acquaintance is not attributable solely to
their unity of organization, and to the consequent
interchange of communication, but
largely also to the tie of a common education
at the Propaganda or St. Sulpice, the catalogues
of whose alumni are familiar to the
educated Catholic clergy throughout the world.

The subject of slavery, and the condition
and prospects of the negro race in Cuba, the
probable results of the Coolie system, and the
relations between Church and State in Cuba,
and the manner in which Sunday is treated
in Havana, the public school system in America,

the fate of Mormonism, and how our government
will treat it, were freely discussed.
It is not because I have any reason to suppose
that these gentlemen would object to all they
said being printed in these pages, and read
by all who may choose to read it in Cuba,
or the United States, that I do not report
their interesting and instructive conversation;
but because it would be, in my opinion, a violation
of the universal understanding among
gentlemen.

After dinner, we walked on the piazza, with
the noble sunset view of the unsurpassed
panorama lying before us; and I took my
leave of my host, a kind and courteous
gentleman of Old Spain, as well as a prelate,
just as a few lights were beginning to
sprinkle over the fading city, and the Morro
Light to gleam on the untroubled air.

Made two visits in the city this evening.
In each house, I found the double row of
chairs, facing each other, always with about
four or five feet of space between the rows.
The etiquette is that the gentlemen sit on the
row opposite to the ladies, if there be but

two or three present. If a lady, on entering,
go to the side of a gentleman, when the other
row is open to her, it indicates either familiar
acquaintance or boldness. There is no people
so observant of outguards, as the Spanish
race.

I notice, and my observation is supported by
what I am told by the residents here, that there
is no street-walking, in the technical sense, in
Havana. Whether this is from the fact that
no ladies walk in the streets,—which are too
narrow for comfortable or even safe walking,
—or by reason of police regulations, I do not
know. From what one meets with in the
streets, if he does not look farther, one would
not know that there was a vice in Havana,
not even drunkenness.