To Cuba and back. A vacation voyage. |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
| IX. |
| X. |
| XI. |
| XII. |
| XIII. |
| XIV. |
| XV. |
| XVI. |
| XVII. |
| XVIII. |
| XIX. |
| XX. |
| XXI. |
| XXII. |
 | XXIII. |
MATERIAL RESOURCES. EDUCATION. |
| XXIV. |
| XXV. |
 | CHAPTER XXIII. To Cuba and back. |  |
MATERIAL RESOURCES. EDUCATION.
Cuba contains more good harbors than does
any part of the United States south of Norfolk.
Its soil is very rich, and there are no large
wastes of sand, either by the sea or in the interior.
The coral rocks bound the sea, and the
grass and trees come down to the coral rocks.
The surface of the country is diversified by
mountains, hills and undulating lands, and is
very well wooded, and tolerably well watered.
It is interesting and picturesque to the eye,
and abounds in flowers, trees of all varieties,
and birds of rich plumage, though not of rich
notes. It has mines of copper, and probably of
iron, and is not cursed with gold or silver ore.
There is no anthracite, but probably a large
can be used for manufactures. It has also
marble, and other kinds of stone; and the hard
woods, as mahogany, cedar, ebony, iron-wood,
lignum-vitæ, &c., are in abundance. Mineral
salt is to be found, and probably in sufficient
quantities for the use of the island. It is the
boast of the Cubans, that the island has no
wild beasts or venomous reptiles. This has
been so often repeated by tourists and historians,
that I suppose it must be admitted to
be true, with the qualification that they have
the scorpion, and tarantula, and nigua; but
they say that the bite of the scorpion and
tarantula, though painful, is not dangerous to
life. The nigua, (sometimes called chigua,
and by the English corrupted into jigger,) is
troublesome; and if it be permitted to lie long
under the flesh, is ineradicable, and makes amputation
necessary. With these exceptions,
the claim to freedom from wild or venomous
animals may be admitted. Their snakes are
harmless, and the mosquitoes no worse than
those of New England.
As to the climate, I have no doubt that in
healthy and delightful, in summer as well
as in winter; but on the river borders, in the
low lands of black earth, and on the savannas,
intermittent fever and fever-and-ague prevail.
The cities have the scourge of yellow fever;
and, of late years, also the cholera. In the
cities, I suppose, the year may be divided, as
to sickness, into three equal portions: four
months of winter, when they are safe; four
of summer, when they are unsafe; and four
of spring and autumn, when they are passing
from one state to the other. There are,
indeed, a few cases of vomito in the course
of the winter, but they are little regarded,
and must be the result of extreme imprudence.
It is estimated that twenty-five per
cent. of the soldiers die of yellow fever the first
years of their acclimation; and during the
year of the cholera, sixty per cent. of the
newly-arrived soldiers died. The mean temperature
in winter is 70°, and in summer 83°,
Fahrenheit. The island has suffered severely
from hurricanes, although they are not so frequent
as in others of the West India islands.
and have suffered from droughts in winter,
though usually the heavy dews keep vegetation
green through the dry season.
That which has been to me, personally, most
unexpected, is the industry of the island. It
seems to me that, allowing for the heat of
noon and the debilitating effect of the climate,
the industry in agriculture and trade is rather
striking. The sugar crop is enormous. The
annual exportation is about 400,000 tons, or
about 2,000,000 boxes, and the amount consumed
on the island is very great, not only in
coffee and in daily cooking, but in the making
of preserves and sweetmeats, which are a considerable
part of the food of the people. There
is also about half a million hogsheads of molasses
exported annually. Add to this, the
coffee, tobacco and copper, and a general notion
may be got of the industry and productions
of the island. Its weak point is the want
of variety. There are no manufactures of
any consequence; the mineral exports are not
great; and, in fact, sugar is the one staple.
All Cuba has but one neck,—the worst wish
of the tyrant.
As to education, I have no doubt that a
good education in medicine, and a respectable
course of instruction in the Roman and Spanish
law, and in the natural sciences, can be obtained
at the University of Havana; and that
a fair collegiate education, after the manner of
the Latin races, can be obtained at the Jesuit
College, the Seminario, and other institutions
at Havana, and in the other large cities; and
the Sisters of the Sacred Heart have a flourishing
school for girls at Havana. But the
general elementary education of the people is
in a very low state. The scattered life of
planters is unfavorable to public day-schools,
nay, almost inconsistent with their existence.
The richer inhabitants send their children
abroad, or to Havana: but the middle and
lower classes of whites cannot do this. The
tables show that of the free white children,
not more than one in sixty-three attend any
school, while in the British West India islands,
the proportion is from one in ten to one in
twenty. As to the state of education, culture
and literary habits among the upper
classes, my limited experience gives me no
of tourists and other writers on Cuba is,
that the habits of the Cuban women of the
upper and middle classes are unintellectual.
To return to the political state and prospects
of Cuba. As for those persons whose political
opinions and plans are not regulated by moral
principle, it may be safely said, that whatever
their plans, their object will not be the good of
Cuba, but their own advantage. Of those
who are governed by principle, each man's
expectation or plan will depend upon the general
opinion he entertains respecting the nature
of men and of society. This is going
back a good way for a test; but I am convinced
it is only going to the source of opinion
and action. If a man believes that human nature
in an unrestrained course, is good, and
self-governing, and that when it is not so, there
is a temporary and local cause to be assigned
for the deviation; if he believes that men, at
least in civilized society, are independent beings,
by right entitled to, and by nature capable
of, the exercise of popular self-government,
exercise, it is because they have been deprived
of it by somebody's fraud or violence, which
ought to be detected and remedied, as we
abate a public nuisance in the highway; if a
man thinks that overturning a throne and
erecting a constitution will answer the purpose;
—if these are his opinions as to men and
society, his plan for Cuba, and for every other
part of the world, may be simple. No wonder
such an one is impatient of the inactivity of
the governed masses, and is in a constant state
of surprise that the fraud and violence of a few
should always prevail over the rights and merits
of the many—when they themselves might
end their thraldom by a blow, and put their
oppressors to rest—by a bare bodkin!
But if the history of the world and the observation
of his own times have led a man to the
opinion that, of divine right and human necessity,
government of some sort there must be,
in which power must be vested somewhere,
and exercised somehow; that popular self-government
is rather of the nature of a faculty
than of a right; that human nature is so constituted
in any place and nation, is, on the whole, the
fair result of conflicting forces of good and
evil—the power being in proportion to the need
of power, and the franchises to the capacity for
using franchises; that autocrats and oligarchs
are the growth of the soil; and that every
people has, in the main, and in the long run,
a government as good as it deserves—If such
is the substance of the belief to which he has
been led or forced, he will look gravely upon
the future of such a people as the Cubans,
and hesitate as to the invention and application
of remedies. If he reflects that of all the
nations of the southern races in North and
South America, from Texas to Cape Horn,
the Brazilians alone, who have a constitutional
monarchy, are in a state of order and progress;
and if he further reflects that Cuba, as a royal
province, with all its evils, is in a better condition
than nearly all the Spanish republican
states,—he may well be slow to believe that,
with their complication of difficulties, and
causes of disorder and weakness,—with their
half million or more of slaves and quarter million
and their divided and hostile races of whites,—
their Spanish blood, and their utter want of
experience in the discharge of any public duties,
the Cubans will work out successfully
the problem of self-government. You cannot
reason from Massachusetts to Cuba. When
Massachusetts entered into the Revolution,
she had had one hundred and fifty years of
experience in popular self-government; under
a system in which the exercise of this power
was more generally diffused among the people,
and extended over a larger class of subjects,
and more decentralized, than had ever been
known before in any part of the world, or at
any period of the world's story. She had been,
all along, for most purposes, an independent
republic, with an obligation to the British Empire
undefined and seldom attempted to be enforced.
The thirteen colonies were ships fully
armed and equipped, officered and manned,
with long sea experience, sailing as a wing of
a great fleet, under the Admiral's fleet signals.
They had only to pass secret signals, fall out
of line, haul their wind, and sail off as a
with the rest of the fleet made chase and
gave battle, it was sailor to sailor and ship to
ship. But Cuba has neither officers trained
to the quarter-deck, nor sailors trained to the
helm, the yard, or the gun. Nay, the ship is
not built, nor the keel laid, nor is the timber
grown, from which the keel is to be cut.
The natural process for Cuba is an amelioration
of her institutions under Spanish
auspices. If this is not to be had, or if the
connection with Spain is dissolved in any
way, she will probably be substantially under
the protection of some other power, or a part
of another empire. Whatever nation may
enter upon such an undertaking as this,
should take a bond of fate. Beside her internal
danger and difficulties, Cuba is implicated
externally with every cause of jealousy
and conflict. She has been called the key to
the Gulf of Mexico. But the Gulf of Mexico
cannot be locked. Whoever takes her is more
likely to find in her a key to Pandora's box.
Close upon her is the great island of Jamaica,
where the experiment of free negro
to her is Hayti, where the experiment of negro
self-government is on trial. And further
off, separated, it is true, by the great Gulf
Stream, and with the neighborhood of the almost
uninhabited and uninhabitable sea-coast
of Southern Florida, yet near enough to furnish
some cause for uneasiness, are the slave-states
of the Great Republic. She is an
island, too; and as an island, whatever power
holds or protects her, must maintain on the
spot a sufficient army and navy, as it would
not do to rely upon being able to throw in
troops and munitions of war, after notice
of need.
As to the wishes of the Cubans themselves,
the degree of reliance they place, or are entitled
to place, on each other, and their opportunities
and capacity for organized action
of any kind, I have already set down all I
can be truly said to know; and there is no
end to assertion and conjecture, or to the
conflicting character of what is called information,
whether received through men or
books.
| CHAPTER XXIII. To Cuba and back. | |