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

Although the distance to Havana, as the bird
flies, is only sixty miles, the railroad, winding
into the interior, to draw out the sugar freights,
makes a line of nearly one hundred miles.
This adds to the length of our journey, but
also greatly to its interest.

In the cars are two Americans, who have
also been visiting plantations. They give me
the following statistics of a sugar plantation,
which they think may be relied upon.

Lands, machinery, 320 slaves, and 20 Coolies,
worth $500,000. Produce this year, 4,000
boxes of sugar and 800 casks of molasses, worth
$104,000. Expenses, $35,000. Net, $69,000,
or about 14 per cent. This is not a large interest

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on an investment so much of which is
perishable and subject to deterioration.

The day, as has been every day of mine
in Cuba, is fair and beautiful. The heat is
great, perhaps even dangerous to a Northerner,
should he be exposed to it in active exercise,
at noon,—but, with the shade and motion of
the cars, not disagreeable, for the air is pure
and elastic, and it is only the direct heat of the
sun that is oppressive. I think one notices the
results of this pure air, in the throats and nasal
organs of the people. One seldom meets a
person that seems to have a cold in the head
or the throat; and pocket handkerchiefs are
used chiefly for ornament.

I cannot weary of gazing upon these new
and strange scenes; the stations, with the
groups of peasants and negroes and fruit-sellers
that gather about them, and the stores
of sugar and molasses collected there; the
ingenios, glimmering in the heat of the sun,
with their tall, furnace chimneys; the cane-fields,
acres upon acres; the slow ox-carts carrying
the cane to the mill; then the intervals
of unused country, the jungles, adorned with

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little wild flowers, the groves of the weeping,
drooping, sad, homesick cocoa; the royal palm,
which is to trees what the camel or dromedary
is among animals,—seeming to have strayed
from Nubia or Mesopotamia; the stiff, close
orange-tree, with its golden balls of fruit; and
then the remains of a cafetal, the coffee plant
growing untrimmed and wild under the reprieved
groves of plantain and banana. How
can this tire an eye that two weeks ago to-day
rested on the midwinter snow and mud of the
close streets of lower New York?

It is certainly true that there is such a thing
as industry in the tropics. The labor of the
tropics goes on. Notwithstanding all we hear
and know of the enervating influence of the
climate, the white man, if not laborious himself,
is the cause that labor is in others. With
all its social and political discouragements,
with the disadvantages of a duty of about
twenty-five per cent. on its sugars laid in the
United States, and a duty of full one hundred
per cent. on all flour imported from the United
States, and after paying heavier taxes than
any people on earth pay at this moment, and

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yielding a revenue, which nets, after every deduction
and discount, not less than sixteen
millions a year;—against all these disadvantages,
this island is still very productive and
very rich. There is, to be sure, little variety
in its industry. In the country, it is nothing
but the raising and making of sugar; and in
the towns, it is the selling and exporting of
sugar. With the addition of a little coffee and
copper, more tobacco, and some fresh fruit and
preserves, and the commerce which they stimulate,
and the mechanic and trading necessities
of the towns, we have the sum of its industry
and resources. Science, arts, letters, arms,
manufactures, and the learning and discussions
of politics, of theology, and of the great problems
and opinions that move the minds of
the thinking world,—in these the people of
Cuba have no part. These move by them, as
the great Gulf Stream drifts by their shores.
Nor is there, nor has there been in Cuba, in
the memory of the young and middle-aged,
debate, or vote, or juries, or one of the least
and most rudimental processes of self-government.
The African and Chinese do the manual

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labor; the Cubans hold the land and the
capital, and direct the agricultural industry;
the commerce is shared between the Cubans,
and foreigners of all nations; and the government,
civil and military, is exercised by the
citizens of Old Spain. No Cuban votes, or
attends a lawful political meeting, or sits on
a jury, or sees a law-making assembly, except
as a curiosity abroad, even in a municipality;
nor has he ever helped to make, or interpret,
or administer laws, or borne arms, except by
special license of government granted to such
as are friends of government. In religion, he
has no choice, except between the Roman
Catholic and none. The laws that govern
him are made abroad, and administered by
a central power, a foreign Captain-General,
through the agency of foreign civil and military
officers. The Cuban has no public career.
If he removes to Old Spain, and is known as
a supporter of Spanish royal power, his Creole
birth is probably no impediment to him. But
at home, as a Cuban, he may be a planter, a
merchant, a physician, but he cannot expect to
be a civil magistrate, or to hold a commission

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in the army, or an office in the police; and
though he may be a lawyer, and read, sitting,
a written argument to a Court of Judges, he
cannot expect to be himself a Judge. He may
publish a book, but the government must be
the responsible author. He may edit a journal,
but the government must be the editor-in-chief.

At the chief stations on the road, there are
fruit-sellers in abundance, with fruit fresh from
the trees: oranges, bananas, sapotes, and cocoas.
The cocoa is eaten at an earlier stage
than that in which we see it at the North,
for it is gathered for exportation after it has
become hard. It is eaten here when no harder
than a melon, and is cut through with a knife,
and the soft white pulp, mixed with the milk,
is eaten with a spoon. It is luscious and
wholesome, much more so than when the rind
has hardened into the shell, and the soft pulp
into a hard meat.

A little later in the afternoon, the character
of the views begins to change. The ingenios
and cane-fields become less frequent, then
cease altogether, and the houses have more the

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appearance of pleasure retreats than of working
estates. The roads show lines of mules
and horses, loaded with panniers of fruits, or
sweeping the ground with the long stalks of
fresh fodder laid across their backs, all moving
towards a common centre. Pleasure carriages
appear. Next comes the distant view of the
Castle of Atares, and the Principe, and then the
harbor and the sea, the belt of masts, the high
ridge of fortifications, the blue and white and
yellow houses, with brown tops; and now we
are in the streets of Havana.

It seems like coming home; and I feel as
if I had been an age away, when it is only
eight days since I first saw Cuba. Here are
the familiar signs—For mayor y menor, Posada
y Cantina, Tienda, Panaderia, Relojeria,
and the fanciful names of the shops, the hihg
pitched falsetto cries of the streets, the long
files of mules and horses, with panniers of
fruit, or hidden, all but their noses and tails,
under stacks of fresh fodder, the volantes,
and the motley multitude of whites, blacks,
and Chinese, soldiers and civilians, and occasionally
priests,—negro women, lottery-ticket

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venders, and the girl musicians with their
begging tambourines.

The same idlers are at the door of Le
Grand's; a rehearsal, as usual, is going on at
the head of the first flight; and the parrot is
blinking at the hot, white walls of the courtyard,
and screaming bits of Spanish. My
New York friends have got back from the
country a day before me. I am installed in
a better room than before, on the house-top,
where the sun is hot, but where there is air,
and a view of the ocean.