University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XIII.

When I came out from my chamber this
morning, the elder Mr. C———had gone.
The watchful negress brought me coffee, and
I could choose between oranges and bananas,
for my fruit. The young master had been in
the saddle an hour or so. I sauntered to
the sugar-house. It was past six, and all
hands were at work again, amid the perpetual
boiling of the caldrons, the skimming
and dipping and stirring, the cries of the
caldron-men to the firemen, the slow gait of
the wagons, and the perpetual to-and-fro of
the carriers of the cane. The engine is doing
well enough, and the engineer has the great
sheet of the New York Weekly Herald,
which he is studying, in the intervals of
labor, as he sits on the corner of the brickwork.

But a turn in the garden is more agreeable,
among birds, and flowers, and aromatic trees.
Here is a mignonette-tree, forty feet high, and
every part is full and fragrant with flowers,
as is the little mignonette in our flower-pots.
There is the allspice, a large tree, each leaf
strong enough to flavor a dish. Here is the
tamarind-tree: I must sit under it, for the sake
of the old song. My young friend joins me,
and points out, on the allspice-tree, a chameleon.
It is about six inches long, and of a
pea-green color. He thinks its changes of
color, which are no fable, depend on the will
or on the sensations, and not on the color of
the object the animal rests upon. This one,
though on a black trunk, remained pale green.
When they take the color of the tree they
rest on, it may be to elude their enemies, to
whom their slow motions make them an easy
prey. At the corner of the house stands a
pomegranate-tree, full of fruit, which is not
yet entirely ripe; but we find enough to give
a fair taste of its rich flavor. Then there are
sweet oranges, and sour oranges, and limes,
and cocoa-nuts, and pine-apples, the latter not

entirely ripe, but in the condition in which they
are usually plucked for our market, and abundance
of fuschias, and Cape jasmines, and the
highly prized night-blooming cereus.

The most frequent shade-tree here is the
mango. It is a large, dense tree, with a general
resemblance, in form and size, to our lime
or linden. Three noble trees stand before the
door, in front of the house. One is a Tahiti
almond, another a mango, and the third a
cedar. And in the distance is a majestic tree,
of incredible size, which is, I believe, a ceyba.
When this estate was a cafetal, the house
stood at the junction of four avenues, from the
four points of the compass: one of the sweet
orange, one of the sour orange, one of palms,
and one of mangoes. Many of these trees fell
in the hurricanes of 1843 and '45. The avenue
which leads from the road, and part of
that leading towards the sugar-house, are preserved.
The rest have fallen a sacrifice to the
sugar-cane; but the garden, the trees about the
house, and what remains of the avenues, give
still a delightful appearance of shelter and
repose.

I have amused myself by tracing the progress,
and learning the habits of the red ants, a
pretty formidable enemy to all structures of
wood. They eat into the heart of the hardest
woods; not even the lignum vitæ, or ironwood,
or cedar, being proof against them.
Their operations are secret. They never appear
upon the wood, or touch its outer shell. A
beam or rafter stands as ever with a goodly
outside; but you tap it, and find it a shell.
Their approaches, too, are by covered ways.
When going from one piece of wood to another,
they construct a covered way, very small
and low, as a protection against their numerous
enemies, and through this they advance
to their new labors. I think that they may
sap the strength of a whole roof of rafters,
without the observer being able to see one of
them, unless he breaks their covered ways, or
lays open the wood.

The course of life at the plantation is after
this manner. At six o'clock, the great bell begins
the day, and the negroes go to their work.
The house servants bring coffee to the family
and guests, as they appear or send for it. The

master's horse is at the door, under the tree,
as soon as it is light, and he is off on his tour,
before the sun rises. The family breakfasts
at ten o'clock, and the people,—la gente, as
the technical phrase is for the laborers, breakfast
at nine. The breakfast is like that of the
cities, with the exception of fish and the variety
of meats, and consists of rice, eggs, fried
plantains, mixed dishes of vegetables and
fowls, other meats rarely, and fruits, with
claret or Catalonia and coffee. The time for
the siesta or rest, is between breakfast and
dinner. Dinner hour is three for the family,
and two for the people. The dinner does not
differ much from the breakfast, except that
there is less of fruit and more of meat, and
that some preserve is usually eaten, as a dessert.
Like the breakfast, it ends with coffee.
In all manner of preserves, the island is rich.
The almond, the guava, the cocoa, the sour-sop,
the orange, the lime, and the mamey apple,
afford a great variety. After dinner, and
before dark, is the time for long drives; and,
when the families are on the estates, for visits
to neighbors. There is no third meal; but coffee,
and sometimes tea, is offered at night.
The usual time for bed is as early as ten
o'clock, for the day begins early, and the chief
out-door works and active recreations must be
had before breakfast.

In addition to the family house, the negro
quarters, and the sugar-house, there is a range
of stone buildings, ending with a kitchen, occupied
by the engineer, the mayoral, the boyero,
and the mayordomo, who have an old negro
woman to cook for them, and another to
wait on them. There is also another row of
stone buildings, comprising the store-house,
the penitentiary, the hospital, and the lying-in
room. The penitentiary, I have described.
The hospital and lying-in room are airy, well-ventilated,
and suitable for their purposes.
Neither of them had any tenants to-day.
In the centre of the group of buildings, is a
high frame, on which hangs the great bell
of the plantation. This rings the negroes up
in the morning, and in at night, and sounds
the hours for meals. It calls all in, on any
special occasion, and is used for an alarm to
the neighboring plantations, rung long and

loud, in case of fire in the cane-fields, or other
occasions for calling in aid.

After dinner, to-day, a volante, with two
horses, and a postilion in bright jacket and
buckled boots and large silver spurs, the harness
well-besprinkled with silver, drove to the
door, and an elderly gentleman alighted and
came to the house, attired with scrupulous
nicety of white cravat and dress coat, and with
the manners of the ancien régime. This is M.
Bourgeoise, the owner of the neighboring, large
plantation, Santa Catalina, one of the few cafetals
remaining in this part of the island. He is
too old, and too much attached to his plantation,
to change it to a sugar estate; and he is
too rich to need the change. He, too, was a
refugee from the insurrection of St. Domingo,
but older than M. C—. Not being able
to escape, he was compelled to serve as aid-de-camp
to Jacques Dessalines. He has a good
deal to say about the insurrection and its results,
of a great part of which he was an eyewitness.
The sight of him brought vividly to
mind the high career and sad fate of the just
and brave Toussaint L'Ouverture, and the brilliant

successes, and fickle, cruel rule, of Dessalines,
—when French marshals were out-manœuvred
by negro generals, and pitched battles
were won by negroes and mulattoes against
European armies.

This gentleman had driven over in the
hope of seeing his friend and neighbor, Mr.
C—, the elder. He remained with us
for some time, sitting under the veranda,
the silvered volante and its black horses and
black postilion standing under the trees. He
invited us to visit his plantation, which I
was desirous to do, as a cafetal is a rarity
now.

My third day at La Ariadne, is much like
the preceding days: the early rising, the coffee
and fruit, the walk, visits to the mill, the
fields, the garden, and the quarters, breakfast,
rest in-doors with reading and writing,
dinner, out of doors again, and the evening
under the veranda, with conversations on subjects
now so interesting to me. These conversations,
and what I had learned from other
persons, open to me new causes for interest
and sympathy with my younger host. Born

in South Carolina, he has secured his rights
of birth, and is a citizen of the United
States, though all his pecuniary interests and
family affections are in Cuba. He went
to Paris at the age of nine, and remained
there until he was nineteen, devoting the ten
years to thorough courses of study in the
best schools. He has spent much time in
Boston, and has been at sea, to China, India,
and the Pacific and California,—was wrecked
in the Boston ship Mary Ellen, on a coral
reef in the India seas, taken captive, restored,
and brought back to Boston in another ship,
whence he sailed for California. There he
had a long and checkered experience, was
wounded in the battle with the Indians who
killed Lieut. Dale and defeated his party,
was engaged in scientific surveys, topographical
and geological, took the fever of the
South Coast at a remote place, was reported
dead, and came to his mother's door, at the
spot where we are talking this evening, so
weak and sunken that his brothers did not
know him, thinking it happiness enough if
he could reach his home, to die in his
mother's arms. But home and its cherishings,
and revived moral force, restored him;
and now, active and strong again, when, in
consequence of the marriage of his brothers
and sisters, and the departure of neighbors,
the family leave their home of thirty-five
years for the city, he becomes the acting
master, the administrador of the estate, and
makes the old house his bachelor's hall.

An education in Europe or the United States
must tend to free the youth of Cuba from
the besetting fault of untravelled plantation-masters.
They are in no danger of thinking
their plantations and Cuba the world, or any
great part of it. In such cases, I should think
the danger might be rather the other way,—
rather that of disgust and discouragement at
the narrowness of the field, the entire want
of a career set before them,—a career of
any kind, literary, scientific, political, or military.
The choice is between expatriation,
and contentment in the position of a secluded
cultivator of sugar by slave labor, with occasional
opportunities of intercourse with the
world and of foreign travel, with no other field

than the limits of the plantation afford, for
the exercise of the scientific knowledge, so
laboriously acquired, and with no more exciting
motive for the continuance of intellectual
culture than the general sense of its
worth and fitness.