Chapter 4

Most of the official descriptions of the flora of Cuba appear to be copied from Robert T. Hill's book, published in 1898. As nothing better is available, it may be used here. He says: "The surface of the island is clad in a voluptuous floral mantle, which, from its abundance and beauty, first caused Cuba to be designated the Pearl of the Antilles. In addition to those introduced from abroad, over 3,350 native plants have been catalogued. The flora includes nearly all characteristic forms of the other West Indies, the southern part of Florida, and the Central American seaboard. Nearly all the large trees of the Mexican _Tierra Caliente_, so remarkable for their size, foliage, and fragrance, reappear in western Cuba. Numerous species of palm, including the famous royal palm, occur, while the pine trees, elsewhere characteristic of the temperate zone and the high altitudes of the tropics, are found associated with palms and mahoganies in the province of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Pines, both of which take their name from this tree. Among other woods are the lignum-vitae, granadilla, the coco-wood, and the _Cedrela Odorata_ (fragrant cedar) which is used for cigar boxes and the lining of cabinet work."

In quoting the number of native plants, Mr. Hill uses a report somewhat antiquated. Later estimates place the number as between five and six thousand. Flowers are abundant, flowers on vines, plants, shrubs, and trees, tall stalks with massive heads, and dainty little blossoms by the wayside. Brilliant flowering trees are planted to line the roadsides. Among all the tree-growths, the royal palm is notable. Scoffers have likened it to "a feather duster stood on end," but it is the prominent feature in most of Cuba's landscape, and it serves many purposes other than that of mere decoration. From its stem the Cuban peasant builds his little cottage which he roofs with its leaves. Medicinal qualities are claimed for its roots. From different parts of the tree, a wide variety of useful articles is made, plates, buckets, basins, and even a kettle in which water may be boiled. The huge clusters of seeds are excellent food for animals, and I have heard it said, though without proper confirmation, that "a royal palm will keep a hog." Almost invariably, its presence indicates a rich soil, as it rarely grows in areas of poor land. The forest area of the island is not known with exactness, and is variously estimated at from about six thousand square miles to about sixteen thousand. The difference probably represents the opinion of individual investigators as to what is forest. About one-third of the total is reported as in Oriente, another third in Camaguey, and the remainder scattered through the four remaining provinces. A part of it is "public land," that is, owned by the central government, but a greater part is of private ownership under old Spanish grants. Much of it is dense jungle through which a way can be made only by hacking, almost foot by foot. A good deal of it has already been cut over for its most valuable timber. Most of the woods bear names entirely unfamiliar to us. Some are used as cabinet woods, and some for tanning, for oils, dyes, gums, or fibres.

Cuba has few four-footed native wild animals. There are rabbits, but their nativity is not quite certain. There are deer, but it is known that their ancestors were brought from some other country. There are wild dogs, wild cats, and wild pigs, but all are only domestic animals run wild.

Perhaps the only animal of the kind known to be native is the _jutia_, sometimes spelled, as pronounced, _hutia_. Some observers have referred to it as a rat, but it climbs trees and grows to the size of a woodchuck, or groundhog. It is sometimes eaten and is said to be quite palatable. Reptiles are fairly common, but none of them is dangerous. The best known is the _maja_, a snake that grows to a length, sometimes, of twelve or fifteen feet. The country people not infrequently make of it a kind of house pet. When that is done, the reptile often makes its home in the cottage thatch, living on birds and mice. They are dull and sluggish in motion. While visiting a sugar plantation a few years ago one of the hands asked if I should be interested by their _maja_. He dipped his hand into a nearby water-barrel in the bottom of which two of them were closely coiled. He dragged out one of perhaps ten or twelve feet in length and four or five inches in diameter, handling it as he would the same length of hawser. He hung it over the limb of a tree so that I could have a good chance for a picture of it. The thing squirmed slowly to the ground and crawled sluggishly away to the place from which it had been taken. Of bird-life there is a large representation, both native and migratory. Among them are some fifty species of "waders." In some parts of the island, the very unpleasant land-crab, about the size of a soup-plate, seems to exist in millions, although thousands is probably nearer the actual. The American soldiers made their acquaintance in large numbers at the time of the Santiago campaign. They are not a proper article of food. They have a salt-water relative that is most excellent eating, as is also the lobster _(langosta)_ of Cuban waters. In the swamp known as the Cienega de Zapata are both alligators and crocodiles, some of them of quite imposing dimensions.

The insect life of the island is extensive. From personal experience, particularly behind the search-light of an automobile that drew them in swarms, I, should say that the island would be a rich field for the entomologist. There are mosquitos, gnats, beetles, moths, butterflies, spiders, and scorpions. The bites of some of the spiders and the stings of the scorpions are, of course, uncomfortable, but they are neither fatal nor dangerous. With the exception of an occasional mosquito, and a perhaps more than occasional flea, the visitor to cities only is likely to encounter few of the members of these branches of Cuban zoology. There is one of the beetle family, however, that is extremely interesting. That is the _cucullo_, which Mr. Hazard, in his book on Cuba, calls a "bright peripatetic candle-bearer, by whose brilliant light one can not only walk, but even read." They are really a kind of glorified firefly, much larger than ours, and with a much more brilliant light. I do not know their candle-power, but Mr. Hazard exaggerates little if at all in the matter of their brilliancy.

While those referred to in the foregoing are the most notable features in this particular part of the Cuban field, there are others, though of perhaps less importance, to which reference might be made. Among them would be the sponge fisheries of the coast in the neighborhood of Batabano, and the numerous mineral springs, some of them really having, and others supposed to have, remarkable curative qualities. A half century or so ago, a number of places not far from Havana were resorts to which rich and poor went to drink or to bathe in springs hot or cold or sulphurous or otherwise, for their healing. Among these were the baths at San Diego, near the Organ Mountains in Pinar del Rio; Santa Rita, near Guanabacoa in Havana Province; others near Marianao, on the outskirts of the city; and San Antonio, also in Havana Province. Most of these places now appear to have lost their popularity if not their medicinal virtues. Some, like those at Madruga, not far from Havana, still have a considerable patronage. Something may also be said of earthquakes and hurricanes. The former occur, on a small scale, more or less frequently in Oriente, and much less frequently and of less severity in Havana. The latter come from time to time to work disaster to Cuban industries and, sometimes but not frequently, to cause loss of life and the destruction of buildings. They rarely occur except in the late summer and the autumn.

Nearly a hundred years ago, Alexander Humboldt, a traveller and a scientist, wrote thus of the island of Cuba: "Notwithstanding the absence of deep rivers and the unequal fertility of the soil, the island of Cuba presents on every hand a most varied and agreeable country from its undulating character, its ever-springing verdure, and the variety of its vegetable formations."

IV

_THE OLD HAVANA_

Among the many pictures, stored away in the album of my memory, there are two that stand out more vividly than any others. The subjects are separated by half the world's circumference. One is the sunsets at Jolo, in the southern Philippines. There the sun sank into the western sea in a blaze of cloud-glory, between the low-lying islands on either hand with the rich green of their foliage turned to purple shadows. The other is the sunrise at Havana, seen from the deck of a steamer in the harbor. The long, soft shadows and the mellow light fell on the blue and gray and green of the buildings of the city, and on the red-tiled roofs, with the hills for a background in one-half of the picture, and the gleaming water of the gulf in the background of the other half. I had seen the long stretch of the southern coast of the island, from Cape Antonio to Cape Maisi, while on an excursion with a part of the army of occupation sent to Porto Rico in the summer of 1898, and had set foot on Cuban soil at Daiquiri, but Havana in the morning light, on January 2, 1899, was my first real Cuban experience. It remains an ineffaceable memory. Of my surroundings and experiences aside from that, I have no distinct recollection. All was submerged by that one picture, and quickly buried by the activities into which I was immediately plunged. I do not recall the length of time we were held on board for medical inspection, nor whether the customs inspection was on board or ashore. I recall the trip from the ship to the wharf, in one of the little sailboats then used for the purpose, rather because of later experiences than because of the first one. I have no purpose here to write a history of those busy days, filled as they were with absorbing interest, with much that was pathetic and not a little that was amusing. I have seen that morning picture many times since, but never less beautiful, never less impressive. Nowadays, it is lost to most travellers because the crossing from Key West is made in the daytime, the boat reaching Havana in the late-afternoon. Sometimes there is a partial compensation in the sunset picture, but I have never seen that when it really rivalled the picture at the beginning of the day.

The visitor to Cuba, unfamiliar with the island, should take it leisurely. It is not a place through which the tourist may rush, guide book in hand, making snapshots with a camera, and checking off places of interest as they are visited. Picturesqueness and quaintness are not at all lacking, but there are no noble cathedrals, no vast museums of art and antiquity, no snow-clad mountains. There is a charm of light and shade and color that is to be absorbed slowly rather than swallowed at a single gulp. It is emphatically a place in which to dawdle. Let those who are obliged to do so, work and hurry; the visitor and the traveller should take it without haste. It is far better to see Havana and its vicinity slowly and enjoyably, and look at pictures of the rest of the country, than it is to rush through the island merely for the sake of doing so. In his essay on _The Moral of Landscape_, Mr. Ruskin said that "all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity." Nowhere is that more true than it is in Cuba. There is very little in all the island that cannot be seen in Havana and its immediate vicinity. It is well to see the other places if one has ample time, but they should not be seen at the expense of a proper enjoyment of Havana and its neighborhood. In Havana are buildings as old and buildings as beautiful as any in the island. In its vicinity are sugar plantations, tobacco fields, pineapples, cocoanuts, mangoes, royal palms, ceibas, peasants' homes, typical towns and villages, all the life of the people in the city and country. The common American desire to "see it all" in a few days, is fatal to the greatest enjoyment, and productive mainly of physical fatigue and mental confusion. It is the misfortune of most travellers that they carry with them only the vaguest of ideas of what they want to see. They have heard of Cuba, of Havana, the Morro, the Prado, of a sunny island in the midst of a sapphire sea. While it is true that almost everything in Cuba is worth seeing, it is best to acquire, before going, some idea of the exhibition. That saves time and many steps. The old city wall, La Fuerza, and La Punta, are mere piles of masonry, more or less dull and uninteresting unless one knows something of their history. The manners and customs of any country become increasingly interesting if one knows something about them, the reason for them.

It is only a short trip to the Castillo del Principe, the fortress that crowns the hill to the west of the city. From that height, the city and the harbor are seen below, to the eastward. Across the bay, on the heights at the entrance, are the frowning walls of Morro Castle surmounted by the towering light-house, and the no less grim walls of La Cabaña. The bay itself is a sprawling, shapeless body of water with a narrow neck connecting it with the Florida Straits. Into the western side of the bay the city thrusts itself in a shape that, on a large map, suggests more than anything else the head and neck of an over-fed bulldog. Into this bay, in 1508, came Sebastian Ocampo, said to be the first white man to visit the spot. He entered for the purpose of careening his little vessels in order to remove the barnacles and accumulated weed-growth. It is possible that the spot was discovered earlier, but there is no record of the discovery if such was made. Ocampo gave it the name of Puerto de Carenas. The next record is of its occupation, in 1519. Four years earlier, Diego Velasquez had left a little colony near what is now called Batabano, on the south coast. He gave the place the name of San Cristobal de la Habana, in memory of the illustrious navigator and discoverer. Habana, or Havana, is a term of aboriginal origin. It proved to be an uncomfortable place of residence, and in 1519 the people moved across the island to the Puerto de Carenas, taking with them the name given to the earlier settlement, and substituting it for the name given by Ocampo. After a time, all was dropped except the present title, Habana, or more commonly by English-speaking people, Havana. It was not much of a place for a number of years, but in 1538 it was sacked and burned by a French pirate, one of the many, of different nations, who carried on a very lively buccaneering business in those and in later years in West Indian waters. Hernando de Soto was then governor of the island, with headquarters at the then capital city, Santiago de Cuba. He proceeded at once to the scene of destruction. On his arrival, he ordered the erection of a fortress. Some of the work then done still remains in the old structure near the Palace, at the foot of Calle O'Reilly, known as La Fuerza. A few years before this time, Hernan Cortes had conquered Mexico, then called New Spain, and a business between Old Spain and New Spain soon developed. The harbor of Havana made a convenient halting-place on the voyages between the two, and the settlement assumed a steadily increasing importance. A new governor, Gonzales Perez de Angulo, who arrived in 1549, decided to make it his place of residence. The year 1552 is generally given as the time of the creation of Havana as the capital city. It was at that time made the residence city of the Governors, by their own choice, but it was not officially established as the capital until 1589. The fortress erected by order of de Soto proved somewhat ineffective. In 1554, another French marauder attacked and destroyed the town. The principal industry of those early days was cattle-raising, a considerable market being developed for export to Mexico, and for the supply of vessels that entered the harbor for food and water.

The continuance of incursions by pirates made necessary some further provision for the defence of the city. In 1589, La Fuerza was enlarged and strengthened, and the construction of Morro Castle was begun. To this work was added La Punta, the little fortress on the western shore of the entrance, at the point of the angle now formed by the Prado and the Malecon. These ancient structures, of practically no value whatever in modern warfare, are now among the most picturesque points of interest in the neighborhood. Another, in the same class, of which only a little now remains, is of a later time. This is the old city wall, the construction of which was begun in 1671. Following the simile of the bull-dog's head, a tract of land, formerly known as the Arsenal yard, and now the central railway station, lies tucked away immediately under the animal's jaw. From there to a point on the north shore, near La Punta, in a slightly curving line, a high wall was erected for the purpose of defence on the western or landward side. The old city lay entirely in the area defined by this western wall and the shore of the harbor. At intervals, gates afforded exit to the country beyond, heavy gates that could be closed to exclude any possible attacking party. The fortifications erected from time to time were supposed to afford a system of effective defence for the city. They are now little else than picturesque features in the landscape, points of interest for visitors. Taking the chain in its order, El Morro stands on the point on the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor. Just beyond it is La Cabaña. About a half a mile to the east of this was the stone fort on the hill of San Diego. Three miles east of the Morro, on the shore at Cojimar, is a small and somewhat ancient fortification. This group constituted the defence system on the east. At the head of the bay, on an elevation a little to the south of the city, stands El Castillo de Atares, begun in 1763, immediately after the capture and occupation of the city by the British. This is supposed to protect the city on the south, as Castillo del Principe is supposed to defend it on the west. This stands on a hill on the western outskirts, a somewhat extensive structure, begun in 1774 and completed about twenty years later. A little further to the west, at the mouth of the Almendares river, stands a little fort, or tower, called Chorrera, serving as a western outpost as Cojimar serves as an eastern outpost. Both were erected about the year 1650. On the shore generally north of Principe was the Santa Clara battery, and between that and La Punta, at the foot of the Calzada de Belascoain, stood the Queen's battery. From any modern point of view, the system is little more than military junk, better fitted for its present use as barracks, asylums, and prisons than for military defence. But it is all highly picturesque.

In the beginning, most of the buildings of the city were doubtless of wood, with palm-thatched roofs. In time, these gave place to rows of abutting stone buildings with tiled roofs. Most of them were of one story, some were of two stories, and a few "palaces" had three. The city within the wall is today very much as it was a century and more ago. Its streets run, generally but not accurately, at right angles, one set almost due east and west, from the harbor front to the line of the old wall, and the other set runs southward from the shore of the entrance channel to the shore of the inner harbor. Several of these streets are practically continuous from north to south or from east to west. But most of them are rather passage-ways than streets. The houses come to their very edges, except for a narrow strip hardly to be classed as a sidewalk, originally left, presumably, only for the purpose of preventing the scraping of the front of the building by the wheels of passing carts and carriages. It is a somewhat inconvenient system nowadays, but one gets quite used to it after a little, threads the narrow walk a part of his way, takes to the street the rest of the way, and steps aside to avoid passing vehicles quite as did the carriageless in the old days. One excellent way to avoid the trouble is to take a carriage and let the other fellow step aside. Riding in the _coche_ is still one of the cheapest forms of convenience and entertainment in the city, excepting the afternoon drive around the Prado and the Malecon. That is not cheap. We used to pay a dollar an hour. My last experience cost me three times that.

Much of the old city is now devoted to business purposes, wholesale, retail, and professional. But there are also residences, old churches, and old public buildings. On the immediate water-front, and for many years used as the custom house, stands the old Franciscan convent, erected during the last quarter of the 16th Century. It is a somewhat imposing pile, dominated by a high tower. I have not visited it for a number of years and do not know if its interior is available for visitors without some special introduction, but there is much worth seeing inside its walls, the flying buttresses of the super-structure, some old and interesting frescoes, and a system of dome construction that is quite remarkable. To the latter, my attention was first called by General Ludlow, a distinguished engineer officer of the United States Army, then acting as governor of the city. To him belongs, although it is very rarely given, the credit for the cleansing of Havana during the First Intervention. He frequently visited the old convent just to see and study that interior dome construction. Immediately behind the Palace is the old convent of the Dominicans, less imposing but of about the same period as the Franciscan structure. It is now used as a high-school building. The Cathedral, a block to the northward of the Dominican convent building, is of a much later date, having been begun as recently as 1742. It was originally the convent of the Jesuits, but became the Cathedral in 1789. Many have believed, on what seems to be acceptable evidence, that here for more than a hundred years rested the bones of Christopher Columbus. He died in Valladolid in 1506, and was buried there. His remains were removed to the Carthusian Monastery, in Seville, in 1513. From there they are said to have been taken, in 1536, to the city of Santo Domingo, where they remained until 1796, when they were brought to Havana and placed in a niche in the walls of the old Cathedral, there to remain until they were taken back to Spain in 1898. There is still an active dispute as to whether the bones removed from Santo Domingo to Havana were or were not those of Columbus. At all events, the urn supposed to contain them was in this building for a hundred years, below a marble slab showing a carving of the voyager holding a globe, with a finger pointing to the Caribbean. Beneath this was a legend that has been thus translated:

OH! REST THOU, IMAGE OF THE GREAT COLON, THOUSAND CENTURIES REMAIN, GUARDED IN THE URN, AND IN THE REMEMBRANCE OF OUR NATION.