Part 15

In the evening we visited the large Reform School for boys, which has been established by the military authorities of our government for the care of waifs whom the cruel _reconcentrado_ policy of Weyler deprived of kith and kin. The children looked well-fed and content, and the courteous Governor, a major in the army, assured us that they throve and learned, gave little trouble, and bade fair to become good men and citizens. It is in this sort of thing, the Home for the little boys near Matanzas, the charity of Miss Edwards at Mariel in caring for the motherless little girls, the charity of our government in providing so generously for these boys, that is seen the difference in spirit of American civilization from the hard and callous pitilessness of Spain. The Spaniard and the Cuban care for their own with tenderness, but they look with indifference upon the suffering of others, nor do they comprehend why they should lift a finger to help anyone beyond the narrow circle of their own family or social set.

We have also called upon a big, gaunt, sunnyfaced man who is devoting his life to these people as a missionary of the Congregational Church. He is from Massachusetts, a man of education who preaches fluently in Spanish, and whose labors have met extraordinary success among the Cuban population of Key West. He has now been transferred to Guanajay, and already is creating a profound impression in a community which has never before known aught but an indifferent Roman priest.

The religious conditions of Cuba are peculiar, I am told. The Bishops and Priesthood of the Roman Church have been supplied by old Spain from time immemorial. The black sheep of the Church have found asylum here. Drawing their salaries, fretting in exile, these ne’er-do-wells of the motherland have cared little, and done less, for the spiritual welfare of their flocks. Guanajay is reputed to be a community among the most spiritually darkened of all Cuba. Hence, it is with no little wonderment that the active, enlightening methods of Mr. Frazier are viewed by those among whom he now ministers. The women come to him for solace and advice, the children flock to his singing school, and the Sunday-school in the afternoon is filled with old folks and young, who come to him after the hours of Mass. Even the local _padre_ himself finds this strange heretic so pleasant a companion that he frequently drops in to share a cigar and gossip of the times. If Americans are to make impression spiritually upon this Latin-Catholic population of Cuba, they will do it only through such intelligent personal and sympathetic methods as are here employed. Mere perfunctory Protestant ecclesiasticism makes no impression upon these Latin-Catholic peoples.

Sunday morning we arose while the stars yet blazed, found a cup of coffee for our _desayuno_ at a little restaurant across the street, and at five o’clock were in the cars again traveling toward Havana.

The country we have been looking on is quite as beautiful as the more flat-lying, but not more fertile region about Matanzas, and I have felt that the many Americans we have met everywhere, all looking for land to buy and to abide upon, are in happy quest. They are entering into one of the veritable garden places of the earth and many more of my fellow-countrymen will surely follow them.

XXIV

Steamer Mascot

STEAMER _Olivette_, BETWEEN HAVANA AND KEY WEST, _December 31st_.

One learns to rise early in these tropical lands. The midday _siesta_ here affords the rest which we are wont to claim for the early morning hours. I have readily acquired the habit. To lie abed is become a burden. I stir abroad betimes as do all others. And I am sleepy also toward midday, and quite inclined to take a nap when the heat is most intense. I recall that two years ago when coming home from France, the only stateroom I could obtain upon the _Wilhelm der Grosse_, was already partly taken by a gentleman from Mexico. I doubted whether it would be pleasant to chum with a stranger, but I had no choice, so made the best of it. He had the upper berth, I slept below. But although we were a week upon the sea, I never saw him, and I do not to-day know who he was. I was asleep before he turned in. I was still asleep when, at break of dawn, he passed out to pace the decks. He took his midday _siesta_ when I was enjoying the midday sun, or resting upon my sea-chair. I then wondered at the persistent habit which drove him from a comfortable bed almost before the night was spent. Now I comprehend his ways, and if I were to voyage seaward to-morrow, I should be rising with the dawn. Yesterday morning I had risen at four o’clock, and had taken my _desayuno_ at an hour when those at home are sunk in sleep.

Overnight a great storm has arisen. I tried to find out at the hotel about the weather, but in Havana weather reports are unknown. The Spanish clerk at the hotel smiled at me most condescendingly for asking so silly a question as, “Is a storm likely to be coming from the North or the South, or anywhere; and what sort of a day are we likely to have to-morrow?” Bowing politely, he spoke in sneering undertone to his Spanish companion, and then in broken English said to me, “I never hear even an American ask a question like that, _Señor_. How we know what the weather is to be? God makes the weather _Señor_, not you or I.” And they both smiled upon me with supercilious contempt. They took me for a fool. Only a fool would pretend to ask what Providence might have in store. So much for the Weather Bureau and the yet mediæval Spaniard!

When we left the harbor a few hours later, a great sea was tossing gigantic breakers above the ramparts of El Moro. We plunged into the fury of a Norther, which turned out to be one of the wildest gales of the midwinter. I might have put off departure a day or two if I had known of it, but Spanish ignorance sent me out in a small and laboring boat to make the dangerous ninety miles across the straits in the face of such a storm.

After my breakfast, a Spanish hall-boy of the hotel had struggled down the successive stairways with my valise. Ordinarily, we would have taken the new electric elevator, but the American company which recently installed it had recalled their experts, and the Spaniard supposed to run it in their place had promptly put the machine out of order. The cage now hung fast about half-way up the shaft awaiting American skill to set it moving.

One of the many _cochas_ drawn up before the _loggia_ of the hotel was soon carrying me to the Caballerio Pier, there to have my trunks and bags stamped with the certificates of the health officers of the port, and checked through for the journey to Tampa. And then I went up to a little bird shop on Calle Obispo, and took charge of a clever parrot, for which I had arranged the day previous,--a bird brought from the Isle of Pines, with green body, white head, pink throat. She is named Marie, and yesterday she talked to me long and loud in Spanish. Along with her I purchased also a pair of pretty love birds. Perhaps I may tell you that the Marie with which we reached Florida could talk no Spanish, and the pair of pretty parakeets, instead of being loving mates, turned out to be two fighting males. But all of this I only learned when many leagues distant from the soft-eyed _señora_ who sold them to me in the little shop on the Calle Obispo.

Our boat was named the _Mascot_, and well was it so christened, for the fierce billows tried her seaworthiness to the limit. The Norther which broke its fury upon the coasts of Yucatan did not arouse so angry a sea as that which fought the currents of the Florida Strait.

The greater number of our passengers were Cubans going across to work in the tobacco factories at Key West. It was apparently their first experience of the sea. They filled the forward decks, and gay and lively was their company as they waved their _adios_ to their shouting friends ashore. The tempestuous waters caught us before we even left the bay. We were steaming out dead in the teeth of the gale, and the little boat pitched until she almost stood on end, and rolled as though her gunwales would be every time awash. Our Cubans soon lost their speech and then their breakfasts, and were at last filled with fear alone. They were scarcely recovered when we made fast to the long pier at Key West, and did not regain their cheerfulness until their legs were firmly set upon the land.

Key West boasts a larger Cuban-Latin population than native American, and sonorous Spanish speech falls more frequently upon my ear than th-i-th-ing- s-i-s-sing- English; yet I behold the Stars and Stripes floating above me and know myself at home.

My journey through Mexico and Cuba is at an end, and I am returned to the United States. I now experience again the same shock of transition which so moved me when a few weeks ago I crossed the Rio Grande and entered Mexico. For many days have I beheld and felt the puissant tenacity of a civilization older than my own; a civilization once world-dominant and still haughty and assertive, which begat arrogant war-lord and subservient slave, which exalted the few and crushed the many, and which to-day while it applauds and assumes the outward habiliments of democracy, yet underneath retains the flesh and blood of despotic individualism; a civilization, nevertheless, marked by the highest appreciation of all that appeals to the finer senses in splendor of religious ritual, in sensuousness in art, and in the graceful and the ornate in architecture; in music and in belles-lettres.

For the masterful rule of Diaz I had come prepared, but of the numerous well-ordered and well-built Mexican cities I had no thought. The discovery that here had been successfully applied the principles of municipal ownership of public utilities centuries before Chicago, San Francisco, and New York had debated their problems, came to me as a revelation, and when I beheld the noble cities of Mexico, of Toluca, of Morelia, of San Louis Potosí, of Monterey, and many others, giving for three hundred years free water and free illumination to their people, and throughout these centuries adorned with well-kept parks where flowers bloomed, artistic fountains flowed, and music played, for the free enjoyment of the poorest peon as well as the millionaire grandee, I was fain to bethink me whether the practical, money-getting American might not after all take lessons from his Latin brother of the South.

The romance of Mexico’s early history, the travail and triumph of Montezuma and Malinche, of Pagan teocali and Christian cross, stirred my imagination and aroused my interest to highest pitch, while the present progressiveness of Mexico’s people, the enlightenment of her leaders, the noble efforts she has made, and is now making to keep step with the procession of human progress, excited my sympathy.

Nor have I ceased to marvel at the extraordinary geographic and climatic gifts which nature has so lavishly bestowed upon this favored land; a country where every climate from the heats of Yucatan to the cool airs of Quebec are brought together within the compass of a journey of a single day; where teeming tropics and fertile highlands alike pour out their fruitfulness for the use of man; where alone upon the North American Continent has beneficent nature presented conditions which made it possible for mankind to develop an indigenous civilization of advancing type;--upon these plateaus existed well-built stone-and-mortar cities centuries before Cortez and the Spaniard set foot upon her shores; here successful agriculture has prevailed in uninterrupted continuity for a thousand years; here precious metals have been dug and worked by man for unnumbered centuries; and upon these salubrious highlands more than a mile above the sea, beneath the shadows of her snow-capped Sierras, man has developed, and may yet develop, the highest energy of the temperate zones.

I confess that despite a general knowledge, I yet entered Mexico ignorant, sadly ignorant, of one of the most splendid portions of the earth’s domain, and while my glimpses of this great country have necessarily been limited and partial, yet I have seen enough of her mineral and agricultural wealth, the solidity and comfort of her cities, the vigor and intelligence of her people, to assure me that the Republic of Mexico is destined to be no puny factor in promoting the advancement of the world, as well as the further increase in riches and power of the sister Republic wherein I dwell.

Nor has my transitory glimpse of Cuba, “Pearl of the Antilles,” as she is, caused me the less to marvel at the abounding fertility which constitutes her a veritable garden, and the charm of her climate, free of all frosts, yet temperate enough, amidst the cooling breezes of the all-surrounding seas, to make her the home of white races which hold fast to their primitive energies although within the tropics. While in imagination I behold her, at no distant date, taking her proud place among the galaxy of States of the great Republic of the North and vying with the most splendid of them in opulence and power.

INDEX

ACAMBARO, 46-87 ACAPULCO, HIGHWAY TO, 99 ALAMO, THE, 41 ANAHUAC, VALLEY OF, 52 ARIO, 107 ARRIVE AT CITY OF MEXICO, 54 AZTECA MINES, 135

BALSAS, THE RIO, 152 BOYS, THE LITTLE STOLEN, ETC., 214 BUENA VISTA, BATTLEFIELD OF, 46 BULL FIGHT, A, 75

CABAÑA LA, THE FORTRESS, 236 CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO, 61 CHARLESTON-KANAWHA, LEAVING, 15 CHOCOLATE, A CUP OF, 159 CHURCH, ROMAN, 61-63-178 CHURUMUCO, 155 CIMA, LA, 52 COMMENTS ON MUNICIPAL METHODS, 172 COPPER INDUSTRY AND UTENSILS, 102 COTTON LANDS OF MISSISSIPPI, LOUISIANA, TEXAS, 21-40-43 CROSSING FLORIDA STRAIT, 273 CRUELTY OF THE SPANISH BLOOD, 118 CRUELTY, SPANISH, BURYING ALIVE, 237 CUBAN, A MANSION, 232 CUERNAVACA, 188 CUYACO, THE HACIENDA LA, 123 CUYACO, THE RANCHO, 159

DESCENDING LA CHINA MINE, 137

EL PADRE, 95-187 ENGLISH, SPREAD OF THE LANGUAGE IN MEXICO, 174

FIESTA OF OUR LADY OF GUADALOUPE, 165-185 FONDA DILIGENCIA, 97 FRENCH MARKET, NEW ORLEANS, 31 FRENCH QUARTER, THE VIEUX CARRÉ, 30

GARCIA, SEÑOR DON LICÉNCIADO VICENTE GARCIA, 170 GUADALOUPE, FIESTA OF OUR LADY OF GUADALOUPE, 165 A GUEST OF “SEÑORA GENERAL” WOOD, 228 GULF OF MEXICO, CROSSING THE, 212

HABANA, 220 HAVANA, A PRIVATE HOUSE IN, 231 HAVANA, MARKETS OF, 225 HAVANA, THE OPERA HOUSE, 228 HOTEL CONCORDIA, 93 HOTEL ITURBIDE, 55 HOTEL JARDIN, MEXICO CITY, 264 HOTEL JARDIN, MORELIA, 181 HOTEL METROPOLITÁN, 204 HOTEL MORELLOS, 114 HOTEL PASAJE, 221 HOTEL ST. CHARLES, 25

INCIDENTS IN LAND OF HEAT, 161 INGURAN MINES, 117 ITALIANS IN MISSISSIPPI, ETC., 22 IZTACCIHUATL, VOLCANO OF, 53 IZUS HERNANDES, OUR MOZO, 95

JACKSON SQUARE, REFLECTIONS ON HISTORY OF, 29 JEFE POLITICO, A, 109 JESUITS IN MORELIA, 180 JORULLO, VOLCANO OF, 122

KENTUCKY, PASSING THROUGH, 17

LAKES-- CHALCO, 53-69 CUITZEO, 88 PATZCUARO, 88-99 TEZCOCO, 53-69 XOCHIMILCO, 53-69 LLANOS, CROSSING THE, 143 LAREDO, 43 LAWYER, A LAWYER OF ARIO, 115

MILITARY MACAWS, 131 MANTILLAS, BUYING, 202 MARIEL, 264 MASONIC BOND, STRENGTH OF IN MEXICO, 50 MASSO, GENERAL, AND THE REVOLUTION, 249 MATANZAS, 254 MEMPHIS, 21 MEXICO CITY, FIRST IMPRESSION OF, 56 MEXICO CITY, CHARACTERISTICS OF, 65 MEXICAN TRAVELERS, 160 MICHOACAN, THE CONGRESS OF THE STATE OF, 168 MINING, ANTIQUE METHODS OF, 129 MINA LA CHINA, THE CHINA MINES, 136 MINA LA CHINA, DESCENDING THE, 137 MINA EL PUERTO, 145 MINES, THE INGURAN, 117 MISSISSIPPI, TRAVERSING STATE OF, 23 MONTEREY, 45 MONTEREY, PASSING THROUGH, 45 MOONLIGHT, BRILLIANCY OF, 100 MORELIA, 89 MORELIA, DESCRIPTION OF, 172 MORELIA, LIFE IN, 176

NEW ORLEANS, LIFE AND COLOR OF, 25 NEW ORLEANS, WATER TRAFFIC, 37 NORIA MINES, 134-150 NUEVO LAREDO, 44

ORIZABA, VOLCANO OF, 203 ORPHANS FROM THE RECONCENTRADO CAMPS, 255 OROPEO, HACIENDA DE, 132

PATZCUARO, LAKE, 88 PATZCUARO, TOWN, 91 POMPANO, EATING A, 27 POPOCATEPETL, VOLCANO OF, FIRST SIGHT OF, 53 PRADO, THE, HAVANA, 222 PROGRESSO, YUCATAN, 212 PROVINCIAL DESPOT, A, AND HIS RESIDENCE, 107 PULQUE, 70 PULQUE, ORIGIN OF LEGEND, 73

RANCHO NUEVO, 120 RAVENS, 103 READY FOR REVOLUTION, 250 RESTAURANTS IN MEXICO CITY, REMARKS ON, 57 REVOLUTION, READY FOR IN CUBA, 250

SALTILLO, PASSING NEAR, 46 SAM, “MR. SAM,” OF VERA CRUZ, 205 SAVING THE CHILDREN, MATANZAS, 255 SAVING THE CHILDREN, MARIEL, 265 SANTA CLARA, 106 SAVING THE CHILDREN, GUANAJAY, 267 SAN NICHOLAS, COLLEGE OF, 180 SAN LUIS POTOSI, 48 SAN PEDRO, RANCHO, 126 SCORPIONS, 154 SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY, 39 SAN ANTONIO, 41 SUGAR CANE, LOUISIANA, 23-39 SUGAR CANE, CUBA, 252

TAME VULTURES OF VERA CRUZ, 206 TAYLOR, INCIDENT REGARDING GOVERNOR, 20 TENOCHTITLAN, 53 THEATERS, MEXICO, 199 TIO, 93 TITIAN, A PICTURE BY, LEGEND OF, 91 TOBACCO LANDS OF GUANAJAY, CUBA, 262 TOLUCA, 181 TOLUCA, LIFE IN, 183 TORTILLAS, MAKING, 132

VENDETTAS OF KENTUCKY, 17 VERA CRUZ TO CUBA, 210 VIEUX CARRÉ, NEW ORLEANS, 26

YUCATAN, 216 YUCATAN, STRAIT OF, 217 YUCATAKA, SENATOR, 208

WALLED UP ALIVE, 241 WATER-FOWL ON LAKES, 88 WATER TO CITIES AND TOWNS, 108

MAP, 284