CHAPTER XIX.

CUBA.

When day dawned we had rounded Caybo San Antonio, and were running along the northern shore of Cuba.

I was up early, by eight bells--or a little after four A.M.--for I had the morning watch; and with deep interest I surveyed the coast of that beautiful island, which lay about ten miles distant,--the first and now the _last_ portion of that vast empire beyond the seas which Columbus bequeathed to Castile and Leon.

"Dat is mi country, senor," said Antonio, who was at the wheel; and this remark, with the repulsive aspect of the Spaniard and his mysterious character, served to dissipate my momentary enthusiasm.

"That is Caybo Bueno Vista,--and the breakers on the weather-bow," he continued, "mark the Collorados, a long reef of rocks. The blue sharks are as thick there as the stars in the sky."

We were now in the Gulf of Florida.

The sky was cloudless and blue; and now it seemed as if the welkin above and the almost waveless sea below were endeavoring to outvie each other in calmness, in beauty, and in the glory of their azure depths. The wind was off the land and rather a-head; but the sails were trimmed to perfection, and we ran through the Gulf on a taut bowline.

I have so much more to narrate than my limited space permits me to give in full detail, that I must compress into one chapter all that relates to my visit to Matanzas.

Our run through the Gulf was delightful; and on the 29th of January, just as a rosy tint was stealing over all the sea and the rocky shore of Cuba, after the sun had set beyond the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we saw Havana light, bearing south by west, and distant about fourteen miles. So we passed in the night the wealthy capital of Cuba, so famed in the annals of our victories--_La Habana_, or the harbor--of which, from our being so far to seaward, we could see nothing but the great revolving light, which burns so brightly on the high rock of the Morro, or Castello de los Santos Reyes; and before dawn we descried the light of Santa Cruz on our weather-bow.

Weston drew my attention to it, adding "that is the beacon which so scared me when it shone through the stern windows of the empty polacca brig."

Next day, the 29th, after encountering a head wind, against which we tacked frequently between the Pan de Matanzas and the wooded point of Sumberella, at ten in the morning, a Spanish mulatto pilot came on board and took the brig in charge.

We ran safely into the harbor, and by eleven o'clock came to anchor at a place recommended by Antonio, half a cable's length from the castle of St. Severino. In half an hour after, the sails were all unbent and stowed below, and preparations were made for "breaking bulk,"--to unload the vessel, whose cargo, I have stated, consisted of steam machinery and coals for the sugar and coffee mills.

Gangs of Spanish mulattoes, negro porters, and lumpers, in red shirts and white drawers, with broad straw hats, and nearly all with rings in their ears, came on board in quest of employment; and then all was confusion, garlic, dirt, jabbering in Spanish and Congo, singing, swearing, and smoking cigaritos.

I was now at liberty to go ashore, and after the first bustle was over, Weston left Hislop in charge of the brig and accompanied me. Matanzas presented nothing new to him, but I surveyed with interest, not unmixed with wonder, the New World in which I found myself.

The city of Don Carlos de Matanzas occupies a gentle eminence between the rivers San Juan and Yumuri, which roll into the bay from the mountainous ridge that traverses all Cuba. Its name, Matanzas, signifies the place of murder, because in that bay some of the Spaniards of Columbus were slain by the native Indians.

Most of the houses are built of good stone, but have all their windows iron-barred without and barricaded within, for the population (of which our shipmate Antonio was a striking specimen) consists of about thirty thousand olive-skinned Spaniards, and double that number of slaves and free mulattoes, all loose, reckless, fiery, and apt to use their knives on trivial occasions.

There was not a ship lying there for England, or any other craft by which Weston could have sent me home. A Spanish steam-packet was on the eve of departing for Cadiz; but being wearied by the monotony of my long voyage, I was scarcely in a mood for the sea again, and wished to spend a little time on shore instead of leaving with her.

However, I wrote to my family by the Spanish mail, acquainting them of my safety--with the strange accident which had so suddenly torn me from them, and adding that I would return by the first ship bound for any part of England; if possible, with the _Eugenie_, which would probably be freighted for London.

After the packet sailed with my letter in her capacious bags, I experienced an emotion of greater happiness and contentment than I had ever done since leaving home; for the sorrow which I knew all there must have suffered, and would still be suffering, hung heavily on my heart.

As we were returning to the brig, which had now been warped alongside the mole, when passing through the street which contains the great hospital, we heard the sound of trumpets, and saw the glittering of lances with long streamers above the heads of a dense crowd of people of all shades of color, black, yellow, and brown; and we had to doff our hats with due respect as they passed, for in the midst, surrounded by a staff of officers, epauletted and aiguletted, their breasts sparkling with medals and crosses, and each of them riding with a cocked hat under his right arm, came the present Captain-General of Cuba, a marshal of the Spanish army, Don Francisco Serrano de Dominguez, attended by an escort of mulatto lancers, all mounted on Spanish horses.

He was a fine-looking man, and though aged, had all the bearing of what he was, or I should say _is_--a grandee of Old Castile.

On returning to the _Eugenie_ we found Antonio, the Cuban, working among the crew as lustily and actively as any man on board. Weston now offered him remuneration for the time he had been with us, with a hint that he might find a berth elsewhere; but our castaway evinced the greatest reluctance to leave the brig, and begged that he might be permitted to remain on board, as three of our best hands had been sent ashore sick to the hospital.

So short-sighted is man, that Captain Weston, despite the dislike of the crew, and the advice of Marc Hislop, ordered that the name of Antonio be entered on the ship's books as a foremast-man.

Three weeks after our arrival, the brig was careened to starboard, when clear of all the cargo, and had her copper scraped and cleaned, an operation which the constant rains of the season greatly retarded.

There was much in Cuba to feed an imaginative mind, and mine was full of the voyages, the daring adventures, and the vast discoveries of Columbus, with the exploits of the buccaneers, whose haunts were amid these wild, and, in those days, savage shores.

I thought of the gaily plumed and barbarously armed caciques whom Columbus had met in their fleet _piroguas_, or had encountered in the dense forests which clothe the Cuban mountains--forests, old, perhaps, as the days of the deluge--of the yellow-skinned women with their long, flowing black hair, and with plates of polished gold hanging at their ears and noses, of the fierce warriors streaked with sable war-paint, and armed with cane arrows shod with teeth or poisoned fish-bones, that fell harmless from the Spanish coats of mail; of the wild Caribs who devoured their prisoners--with whom a battle was but a precursor of a feast; and of the famous fighting women--the terrible Amazons of Guadaloupe.

I thought of the story of Columbus writing the narrative of his wonderful discoveries, his perils and adventures, on a roll of parchment, which he wrapped in oil-cloth covered over with wax, inclosed in a little cask, and then cast into the sea, with a prayer, and the hope that if _he_ and his crew perished, this record of their achievements might be cast by the ocean on the shore of some Christian land.

As I sat by the sounding sea that rolled into the bay of Matanzas, what would I not have given to have seen the waves cast that old cask, covered with weeds and barnacles, at my feet!

But now the plodding steam-tug and the rusty merchant trader ploughed the waters of the bay, instead of the gilded Spanish caravels, or the long war-piroguas of the Indian warriors; and where they fought their bloodiest battles on the wooded shore, or in the green savanna, where the painted cacique and the mailed Castilian met hand to hand in mortal strife, the smoke of the steam-mill, grinding coffee, or boiling sugar, darkened the sky, and the songs of the negroes were heard as they hoed in the plantations, or in gangs of forty trucked mahogany logs, each drawn by eight sturdy oxen, to the sea.

And so, in a creek of the bay--the same place where the Dutch Admiral Heyn sunk the Spanish plate fleet--I was wont to sit dreamily for hours, with the murmur of the waves in my ears, with the buzz of insects, and the voice of the mocking-birds among the palmettoes, while watching the sails that glided past the headlands of the bay, on their way to the Bahama Channel, or the great Gulf of Florida.

This was my favorite resort. A wood of cocoa-nut and other trees shaded the place, and made it so dark that I have seen the fire-flies glance about at noon. The cocoas are about the height of Dutch poplars, and are covered with oblong leaves, which, when young, are of a pale red. As spring drew on, the branches became covered with scarlet and yellow flowers.

Over these, the vast coral-tree spread its protecting foliage, whence the Spaniards, in their beautiful language, name it La Madre del Cocoa, the smallest of which has at times a thousand lovely scarlet blossoms.