CHAPTER XI.

PLANTATION LIFE.

It is only by visiting two or three of the great plantations, of various kinds, that one can form any idea, not only of the agricultural wealth of the island, but of the extraordinary beauty of its flora.

There are plantations and plantations in Cuba, just as there are country houses and country houses in England: some (I am speaking of the island before the present rebellion) are magnificent; others are distinctly rough and tumbledown. The first sugar plantation I had the pleasure of visiting was situated some miles from Havana, and belonged to an American gentleman. The approach to the family residence (_casa de vivienda_) was through handsome iron gates and an apparently interminable avenue of magnificent Royal palms, which, by the way, although they produced a most imposing effect, on account of the exceeding height of the vault of deep green foliage, suspended some eighty to ninety feet above our heads, afforded little or no shade, for their superb trunks are as straight as darts, and as smooth as so many greased poles at an old-fashioned English country fair.

In front of the very large one-storied house was an open space, converted into a garden by our charming hostess, a Bostonian lady, devoted to floriculture. It was, I remember, conspicuous for the number of its immense bushes of flaming hibiscus, then in full and glorious bloom. Hiding modestly in the shade were some homely pale pink roses, which had been imported from New England, and which, I was assured, required the greatest possible care. Their sweetness seemed not a little overpowered by their gorgeous and sturdy rivals, whose vivid flowers were as large as the crown of my Panama hat. The drive up to the house was fenced in by perfect walls of orange trees, whose strongly scented starlike blossoms mingled with the ripe and golden fruit. On either side of the door were the finest banana plants I have ever seen, their velvety leaves being fully ten to fifteen feet in length. At the door stood our host and hostess, eager to welcome us with true American cordiality. Mr G---- insisted upon our taking a cocktail there and then, and a most refreshing and grateful beverage it proved to be, after our long and dusty drive. The hall of this _hacienda_, an enormous apartment, with a highly polished floor, served also for drawing-room and place of general meeting. It was most beautifully furnished, and at every turn the careful supervision of a woman of culture was evident.

Here were immense Chinese vases full of fresh cut flowers, trailing boughs of the golden trumpet vine, huge bunches of the peacock acacia, and other specimens of brilliant tropical bloom, such as my eyes had never rested on before.

"Ah," said our hostess, "you see I always have cut flowers in my rooms, but you will never find them in the house of any Spaniard or Cuban. Even the negroes seem to object to them, and are apt to throw them away as soon as my back is turned. But what I want you to notice, whilst they are getting breakfast ready for us, are some mantis which we caught this morning in the garden;" and here the lady brought forward a box with a glass lid, containing apparently four or five beautiful green leaves, about the size and shape of a poplar leaf. But they were living insects, so cunningly formed by Nature that even the birds disdain to touch them, be they ever so hungry, fully believing them to be tasteless castaway foliage. The manti family is largely represented throughout the whole of the West Indies, from the sly gentleman who looks like a piece of broken brown stick, some four or five inches in length, to the pale green leaf we had just admired, and to yet another species which has all the appearance, and even the indentures and veining, of an autumn-tinted oak leaf, and which, moreover, the better to deceive its enemies, flutters to the ground exactly as if the wind had detached it from the bough of some tall tree.

Everywhere in this fine _hacienda_, all that wealth could procure to increase comfort had been introduced by a lavish and tasteful hand. The lofty bedrooms, I remember, were deliciously clean and airy, and the brass bedsteads--a real luxury in the tropics--were surrounded by the whitest and most impenetrable of mosquito netting. The coloured servants, too, looked sleek and happy, and spotless, in their snowy liveries.

Our host informed us that although since the emancipation of the slaves he paid his ex-slaves a weekly wage, he had purposely kept up the numerous institutions in connection with the plantation which were universal in the slave days, but which many of the native planters had latterly dispensed with, much to the inconvenience and regret of the poor black people, now left, with little or no experience, to their own devices. There was a sort of hospital on this estate, where the sick were looked after, and a nursery, in which the little black gentry were screened from the blazing sun, and carefully watched over by several old ebony and mahogany-tinted ladies deputed for the purpose. At certain hours of the day the mothers were allowed to tend their little ones, and to pass with them a half-hour or so of that supreme bliss which is so dear to every mother's heart.

After a well served and most enjoyable luncheon, and a cigarette, we sallied forth to see the sights of the place.

A sugar-cane field does not present a particularly inviting appearance, not more so than the ordinary cane jungles you so frequently come across in the Genoese Riviera. When green it is pretty enough; but ripe, it has a distinctly disorderly appearance, and is not to be compared with an English wheat field in the golden month of August.

There are two sorts of cane: the _criolla_ or native cane, which, I was told, was first imported from the Canaries by Columbus on his second voyage. It is considered the least excellent in quality, and is not largely cultivated by the planters. They leave it to the negroes, who consume vast quantities of molasses--when they get the chance. The _Otahite_ is the finest cane. It is very thick, and grows to a height of from six to sixteen feet. As in the case of all the cane family, the stem is divided into angular joints, which vary in length as the cane tapers upwards. The moist, soft pith contains the sweet juice, which, when pressed out by machinery, is converted into sugar. The sugar harvest commences late in January, and ends in May, the planting season taking place during the breaks in the wet season, which lasts from June to the end of November. The cane is not grown from seed, as is generally stated, but from slips taken from the top of the plant, the lower leaves of which are stripped off. When stuck in the ground at regular intervals, to a depth of about two inches, the cane slips soon take root, and in about six months grow to maturity, sometimes, but very rarely, attaining a height of twenty feet.

The field we first visited was a very large one, the ripe canes, of a pale green turning to grey, undulating over it to a considerable distance. There must have been some thirty or forty men, women, and children working in this plot, under the supervision of a mounted over-seer. The men cut the cane with a small hatchet, the women gathered it together and tied it into bundles, whilst some of the negroes and most of the children peeled off the leaves, which are good for fodder, or hoisted it on to the high-wheeled carts, each drawn by four prodigiously long-horned oxen, of the breed so dear to the Roman art student.

The sky above was hazy, almost an English grey, and everything was subdued to its tone, whereby for once we avoided that glare which, in warm climates, so often destroys the effect of those soft and fleeting tints of "middle distance." Some dozen carts piled with the silver-grey canes filed off in a slow procession down the white-sanded road towards the _hacienda_, the noble-looking oxen occasionally lifting their heads to give vent to their feelings, and express their opinion of things in general, by a prolonged bellow. Each team was led by a negro, with a wide straw hat on his head, and wearing only a pair of white drawers. Bobbing up and down among the uncut canes we could see the bright turbans of the negresses, and occasionally a little ebony imp would turn an impossible somersault right in front of us, and then drop on his knees in the expectation, promptly realised, of a liberal donation, as the price of his queer antic.

The carts take the cane to the mill, where they are unloaded, and where huge wheels, worked by steam, or latterly by electricity, press the sugar out of them,--the engine never ceasing its evolutions night or day. In the old times, the negroes were worked, as I have elsewhere stated, as many as nineteen and even twenty hours a day, at this, to them, terrible season. Even now, their hours are very long, but they are at liberty to strike for higher wages if they choose, and I am assured they very often do so.

It is very interesting to watch the cane being thrown into the mill, and to observe the great wheels whirling round and round, while the continuous river of pale green syrup flows into its wooden trough-like receptacles, whence it is taken in buckets to the furnaces to be clarified. In its first state it soon turns acid, and consequently has to be boiled and clarified immediately, or else it would be ruined; and this is one of the principal reasons why there is such a press of work during the sugar harvest. It cannot be neglected for a single hour, and relays of hands have to relieve each other constantly, rest being impossible, even on the Sabbath. The juice, after being boiled and clarified, is filtered through vats, which, up to the rim, are filled with bone black and changed every six or eight hours, until the juice turns colour. According to the punctuality and skill with which the bone black is changed, so does the quality of the sugar increase in excellence. This apparently simple process is one of the chief expenses, as well as one of the subtlest arts, of sugar-making. Once clarified, the sugar goes through a variety of mechanical processes--very absorbing to the spectator, but not particularly so to the reader,--until it is eventually converted into moist sugar. Some portion, however, is retained, and sold as molasses, and golden syrup. When duly prepared for exportation, it is tightly packed in wooden cases, which are sealed up and strapped with slips of raw hide, ready for market.

Our first evening on this plantation was delightfully spent. After dinner,--which, by the way, was served as it would have been in an English country house, everybody being in full evening dress,--we had some excellent music. A young Cuban lady and gentleman entertained us by singing some of the national airs, as arranged by YradiA(C). The lady sang with great spirit, and her rendering of _la Paloma_ and of the _Habanera_ from Carmen was simply perfect. I have never heard the latter song sung with greater spirit, except by the famous Madame CalvA(C). Then two negro musicians were ordered to appear and give us a sample of their skill. One of the men, who evidently belonged to some very black and fierce Kaffir tribe, had a melodious baritone voice, and sang several African melodies, which were recalled to my memory some years afterwards, by some of the music so dear to the Asiatics of Constantinople, which is of the same nasal and twangy description, with endless cadences, and a certain absence of tune, which should win the approval of all faithful Wagnerians.

As the night was exceedingly clear, before retiring to rest we went for a stroll in the gardens. It was my first experience of the transcendent beauties of a full moon in the tropics. Even the glories of an Italian moonlight must fade before such radiance as I now admired. The light shed by this southern "orb of night" was almost as golden as that of the sun, and yet the shadows remained quite dark; hence a vigorous contrast of light and shade, such as I have never seen elsewhere. The effect as we passed under the long avenue of palm trees was most striking. We might have been in the nave of some giant Gothic cathedral,--its columns were represented by the grey stems of the towering Royal palms, whose interlaced foliage, high above our heads, suggested the wonderful roof of Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster. Some of the hedgerows in the garden were quite white with the "moon flower," a sort of snowy night-blooming convolvulus, the flowers of which are of immense size, and as flat and thin as a sheet of paper. This flower is an annual; several of its seeds which I carried back with me to England have succeeded very well.

The next sugar plantation we visited was near Matanzas; but although I saw several other sugar estates, they did not particularly interest me, as they were, though perhaps on a larger scale, almost exactly like the first we had inspected. I was, however, delighted with my first coffee plantation: I shall not easily forget its fresh beauty and delightful odour. The coffee berry was introduced into Cuba from Hayti, in 1742, and has flourished greatly, but the trade has of late considerably diminished in importance. Nothing can exceed the beauty of a coffee field. The plants are grown from seed, and are planted in rows sometimes covering a thousand acres. To screen the shrubs from the prodigious heat, they are carefully protected by other plants, such as the banana and the pomegranate tree, under whose shade the shrubs grow freely. Very often the cocoa plant is grown on the same plantation as the coffee shrub. There are three kinds of chocolate-producing plants--the caracas, the pods of which are red; the guayaquil, which bears purple pods, whereas those of the criolla are yellow. The tree is not pretty: it looks too much like a small stunted pear-tree, and the fruit grows in a very odd manner, not in clusters among the leaves, but along the trunk, from the ground upwards, the seeds being protected by thick, heavy pods, which, sticking out as they do at regular intervals, produce a most whimsical appearance. The fruit is ripe for gathering between June and December, at about the same time as the coffee, the blossoms of which are in full glory early in February,--distinctly the best month in which to visit a coffee estate, and enjoy its loveliness to the full.

The _hacienda_ to which the plantation I first visited was attached, belonged to a Cuban gentleman, and was a great contrast to the finely-appointed mansion we had recently left. There was no garden, and the front door was usually encumbered by a noisy group of stark-naked little darkies of both sexes, whom we generally caught tormenting some queer-looking animal which they had caught in the fields--a land tortoise or a baby iguana. They were always sprawling between our feet, but though they sometimes got more kicks than ha'pence, they seemed perfectly happy, and as jolly as sandboys. The entrance-hall was occupied by a double row of rocking-chairs, and by a large deal table, on which our breakfast and dinner were served, invariably without tablecloth or napkins. There were, however, any number of looking-glasses, gorgeous French clocks, artificial flowers under glass shades, and stupendous bronze lamps, such as you buy at the Louvre or the Bon MarchA(C), by way of works of art; there was a collection of framed but extremely primitive chromos, representing scenes in the life of the Blessed Virgin, and others in gay Parisian life, as it appeared at Mabile and at the Bal de l'Opera, in the golden days of MA1/4ger. No books or newspapers were anywhere to be seen; on the other hand, there was a plentiful supply of playing-cards and dominoes, with which we contrived to amuse ourselves during the evening, or, as I ought rather to say, throughout the night, for nobody dreamt of going to bed till two o'clock in the morning. The planter was a very hospitable man, who gave us the best of wines, and we had several very palatable Cuban dishes, the dinner always winding up with the inevitable roast sucking-pig, strongly flavoured with garlic. The SeA+-ora was a very stout lady of forty, who lolled about the house all day long in an old red flannel dressing-gown: when she was not rocking in a chair, she was swinging in a hammock, with four or five negresses in attendance on her. They all seemed on the best of terms, but as they spoke patois, I could not understand their jokes, possibly made at our expense, for they used to look at us slyly, and then burst into roars of ill-suppressed laughter. Be that as it may, the SeA+-ora was a very different personage in the evening from the rather disorderly-looking, middle-aged female, without shoes and stockings, who was so busy doing nothing all day long. By supper-time she was gorgeous, dressed up in the very latest of Parisian toilettes, her magnificent glossy black hair carefully dressed, her podgy fingers blazing with diamond rings, and her face so thickly coated with rice flour that you could scarcely distinguish her features, except her lips, which were painted cherry red, and her eyebrows, which were artificially arched. She had a rather pretty daughter, called Dolores, who spent her days much after her mother's fashion. There was yet another daughter, at a convent in Havana, and a third, about seven years of age, who played with the little niggers on the doorstep. There was a really fine grand piano in one corner of the room, every single note of which was out of tune, and on this delightful instrument the SeA+-orita and a long, thin young German, whose exact position in the family I never could define,--I think he must have been the agent's son,--played airs from Luisa Miller, Ernani, and other pre-historic operas, systematically disarranged for the piano, for four hands, by a certain Signor Campara. They were exceedingly proud of their performance, and, once started, there was no possibility of stopping them until the cards were produced. Then they flew to the table and took a most active interest in a game at "Nap," at which I lost a considerable sum of money the first night, and won it back again the second, to the SeA+-ora's extreme and evident annoyance.

The most extraordinary part about this house was that there were no single bedrooms. They were replaced by two dormitories on opposite sides of the house, one for gentlemen and one for ladies. It was all very odd and amusing, but the hospitality was unbounded. On the last evening of our stay a _baile_ or dance was given in our honour, to which some of the neighbours came, and danced the _creola_, and a very elaborate country-dance in which I was forced to join. I am afraid I did not acquit myself with much grace, for I was perpetually mistaking the figures, which provoked much laughter. The ball ended at about two o'clock in the morning, and most of the company went home on horseback, after a supper at which no less than four infant pigs were consumed. I never saw such a people as the Cubans for pork and sucking-pig,--about the very last dish I should have expected to have come across in those latitudes. We took leave of our friends with no little regret, for though they were primitive and very superficially educated people, their manners were excellent, most courteous, kindly, and well-bred. The SeA+-ora, however, could never keep herself from laughing at our Spanish, and at the evident reluctance with which we endeavoured to make believe we enjoyed certain impossible dishes,--a roast iguana among the number. I did overcome my repugnance to partaking of so unpleasant-looking a reptile, and found it tasted exactly like tough roast chicken.

Whilst we were staying with this amiable family we were initiated into the mysteries of guava jelly-making by a tall mulatress, who acted as cook to the establishment, and who was evidently held in great respect by every member of the community, especially by the darksome urchins, who, although they haunted her kitchen in the hope of purloining titbits, constantly received sharp raps on their woolly pates, from a prodigiously long iron spoon. There was no very great mystery about the guava jelly,--the process is exactly like that of compounding any other fruit-jelly; and as to the paste or cheese, I think that between the making of it and damson cheese there is only the difference which exists between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. However, I frankly admit my devotion to guava paste. And as to the jelly,--the Easterns say we may hope to enjoy in the next world those things which we like best to eat in this,--therefore pray I, that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, I need not relinquish all hope of an occasional treat of guava jelly!

A sketch of Cuba which contained no mention of tobacco would be very much like "Hamlet" without the Prince of Denmark. The name of the dusky chief whom Christopher Columbus found inhaling the fragrant leaf of the _tabaco_, as he called it, should have lived even to our days. But, like that of many another unknown hero, his title is unrecorded, and probably neither Columbus nor his savage friend ever imagined the prodigious results that were to grow out of the conversation, in the course of which the Indian instructed the discoverer of the New World as to the value and properties of the strange weed, the soothing properties of which he seemed so greatly to enjoy. Little did they foresee that within a hundred years a Mahommedan Kaliph and a Christian Pope were both to fulminate excommunication against such of their followers as ventured to indulge a taste they deemed unworthy and unclean. The aboriginal Indians did not smoke tobacco after our present fashion. They inhaled the fumes through a forked cane, the two prongs of which they applied to their nostrils, whilst the longer end was plunged among the burning leaves. Such implements are still used, I am assured, by the negroes in Cuba, and elsewhere, when they desire to forget their sorrows in the dreamy sleep thus artificially produced.

Like the vine, tobacco depends for its quality on certain peculiarities of soil and climatic influences, which have hitherto baffled investigation. Thus the Cuban tobacco grown in the Vuelta Abajo district is the finest in the world; and, though the plant grows luxuriantly in other parts of the island,--as at San Juan dos Remedeos and at Rematos,--its quality never attains the perfection of that which ripens in the immense fertile plain which extends westward from Havana. This part of Cuba is known as the Vuelta Abajo, or "lower valley," in contradistinction to the upper end of the island called Vuelta Arriba, or "higher valley." Fortunately for the tourist, the best tobacco plantations in the island are within an easy journey from the capital, and close to a village called Guanajay, some twelve miles from the sea, and accessible by train. It is situated in the midst of very pretty scenery, of an essentially sylvan character, the numerous tobacco fields being dotted with magnificent palms and tropical trees. Few tobacco plantations exceed a size of thirty acres. Each is provided, as a rule, with a dwelling-house, some cattle-sheds, and a few drying-houses. The processes of growing and preparing the plant are of the simplest character, and do not require any special machinery. The tobacco is not sown in the open field, but in small prepared plots, whence the seedlings are transplanted when they are a few inches high, and set out at regular distances in the fields. The Nicotiana,--now common in most English gardens,--grows taller in Cuba than in this country, usually reaching a height of from 6 to 8 feet. Each plant is carefully tended until it is ready for harvesting. All superfluous and ill-shaped leaves must be removed, and the greatest care taken to protect the plants from the _vivijagua_, a very large and malicious ant, which is quite capable of destroying a whole crop within a few hours. The field hands employed in this cultivation are almost all blacks, who possess an instinctive knowledge of the needs of each plant, and gather the leaves with an astonishing delicacy of touch, and absence of over-handling. When the harvesting and curing time arrives, the leaves are gathered into bundles of from thirty to forty each, for the best, and from twenty to thirty, for the second quality.[19] Some eighty to a hundred of these bundles, when pressed and tied together, form a tercio or bale, weighing about 200 lbs., in which form the tobacco is transported, on muleback, to Havana. A tobacco plantation is a very pretty sight, and the fragrance is delightful, for a certain number of plants in each plot are allowed to flower for seeding purposes. The sowing-time lasts from June to October; the harvest begins in December and goes on till May.

Some idea of the importance of the tobacco trade is conveyed by the fact that one hundred million cigars, valued at about two million sterling, are annually imported into England alone. The earliest shipments take place in June and July, and are mostly sold to Germany; the British market being supplied in October and November, when the tobacco is thoroughly mellowed.

Almost all the Cuban tobacco planters are Spaniards, and the trade, with few exceptions, is entirely in their hands. Two great foreign firms, however, stand out prominently. The first, that of Messrs Bock & Co., is English, and world renowned; the second is German, Messrs Behrens & Co., who are the owners of the cigar connoisseur's latest "pet," the brand "Sol." With hardly any exception, all the other brands of any renown--the Flor de Cuba, Corona, Villa y Villa, Flor de J. S. Murias, Pedro Murias--are in the hands of the Spaniards. It is a curious fact that hitherto no American firm has risen to exceptional renown among the cigar manufacturers of the world, although the neighbouring isle of Key West has lately sprung into prominence as a tobacco land of much promise, and several important firms have been established there with a fair measure of success. The true Havana cigar is made in Havana only. Some of the large firms, such as Bock & Co., employ from three to five thousand hands, almost all Spaniards and Cubans, white labour being preferred, on account of the delicate processes through which the tobacco has to pass before it is converted into a cigar. Although there are certainly more than a hundred cigar manufacturers in Havana, only two or three of the factories are really worth visiting. The _Corona_ is perhaps the most striking, because it is located in what was until quite recently the gorgeous palace of the Aldama family, in the Campo Marte. The magnificent marble staircases and saloons, with their splendidly frescoed ceilings, are now turned "to viler purposes," the tesselated pavements are trodden by the _zapatos_ of the cigar makers, and the Court of Olympus, in the vaulted roof of the state ballroom, looks down upon busy groups of tobacco sorters and cigar makers. Each cigar maker sits before a low table. He begins operations by taking the tobacco leaf and spreading it smoothly before him. Then he cuts out certain hard fibres which might interfere with the shape of the cigar. Next he rolls up the leaf into the correct shape, and if he be a skilful workman he will do this without further recourse to knife or scissors. The cigars vary in length according to the brand: they were made much longer formerly than they are at present. Some used to measure eight inches, but now four inches is the most usual length. Prices vary from thirty to one thousand dollars per thousand cigars.

No women are employed in the manufacture except for arranging the cigars in boxes and pasting down the lids with their well-known and brilliantly printed labels. The boxes, which are made of cedar wood, form another important branch of Havanese industry. The Cubans themselves never smoke cigars: they all use cigarettes, which most of them make and roll, with a delicacy and grace peculiar to themselves. It is somewhat remarkable that although the Cubans literally live with a cigarette between their lips--they begin smoking the first thing in the morning, and continue until they go to bed--they seem absolutely impervious to any form of nicotine poisoning. May not its prevalence in European countries be the result of smoking inferior and dirty tobacco? I was much struck, when visiting the various tobacco factories in Havana, with the scrupulous cleanliness everywhere observed. The cigar makers are obliged to wash their hands constantly all through the day, and no dust or dirt is tolerated anywhere.