On the Mexican Highlands Part 12

Continuing my way homeward, I caught the distant hum of voices and an occasional shout. The sounds grew nearer. Looking down the Prado, I beheld many moving lights. Then a band began to play. A procession was approaching. I paused to watch. First came a band, men in smart uniforms; following these were men on horseback, some in uniform, some in civilian dress. Then came several other bands, and men and boys on foot carrying banners and lanterns and illuminations. A mult.i.tude was marching through the streets. Every now and then they shouted the name "Ma.s.so, Ma.s.so," and broke into _vivas_ and _bravos_. At the Hotel Pasaje they halted and renewed their cheers and cries, the wide street becoming packed with the pressing mob, a cheering crowd, mostly dark-faced. The procession was a demonstration in behalf of Ma.s.so by the followers of the "Ma.s.soista" party. He is the candidate they would elect to the Presidency of the Cuban Republic in opposition to Estrada Palma.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SELLING VEGETABLES--HAVANA]

On the afternoon of the following day, I was riding on the tramway in company with a friend, toward the suburbs on the hill, when a tall and courtly Cuban came toward us. He took a seat next to my friend and after a few moments' conversation, turned to me and said in perfect English that he had noticed me the night before in the box of "_Senora_ General Wood," and, "that he had remarked me for a stranger in Habana." He said that he was shortly to leave the car, and asked whether we would not like to visit an old Cuban mansion, in order to see how people in Cuba lived in the style of the old _regime_.

Knowing the gracious manner of compliment habitual among the Spanish peoples, I was going to thank him for the proffered courtesy and decline; but my American friend, to my surprise, promptly accepted the invitation. We left the car in company with our guide, _Senor_ ----, who belongs to one of the oldest Cuban families of French descent,--and is a lawyer of distinction.

We approached a stately residence built of white marble, a series of high marble pillars before a marble portico running along the front.

We pa.s.sed through a small gate within a larger one in a high, wrought iron fence, through a small glazed door in a large doorway and came into a high, wide drawing room, extending across the front of the house. All was white marble,--the floors, the wainscoting, the doorways;--there was no woodwork anywhere. Handsome rugs lay upon the floor and French rattan furniture of easy shapes was scattered about the room. At one side we entered another lofty chamber, similarly floored and wainscoted, used as a ladies' boudoir, and thence pa.s.sed out across a wide piazza, into a beautiful and well-kept Spanish garden. The walks were carefully laid out, the beds were full of blooming plants--there were many palms of different varieties, and a marble bath house with running water and a large swimming pool. Beyond the flower garden, we entered a vegetable garden, close to which stood a commodious stable; then returning to the house _El Senor_ asked whether we would like also to see the kitchen. We were shown into a big square room, in the center of which stood an octagonal blue-tiled "stove," about ten feet across at the top, and four feet high, a sort of porcelain table, containing many niches wherein to build small charcoal fires, a single fire to cook each separate dish. An old negro servant, a freed slave, was preparing the evening meal. We next entered the large dining room, with old mahogany furniture, a long table for banquets, and at one side a small table already set for the evening meal. There was much handsome silver and cut gla.s.s upon the high, old-fas.h.i.+oned mahogany sideboard. From the dining room we pa.s.sed into a library, the shelves filled with French and Spanish and German and English books. Here the father of my host, an eminent judge, had gathered about him much of the world's choicest literature. Then we came out into the wide _patio_, square and open to the sky, a fountain playing in the middle, and many potted palms and flowering plants set round about. The great house was of one story, and all rooms opened upon the central court. None of the windows were sashed with gla.s.s, and Venetian blinds kept out the light and too much air.

Here, in this sumptuous home lived for half a century one of the distinguished families of Havana; here now were living the grandchildren of those who built it.

Our host then led us up to the wide flat roof, whence stretched out before us a panorama of the city, the bay and the open sea.

My friend, who had long lived in Havana, holding a prominent post in government employ, had never before enjoyed the privilege of inspecting so beautiful a Cuban home. As we parted that evening he turned to me and said, "Perhaps the white duck trousers and blue flannel coat, which were so conspicuous last night in the box of Cuba's Governor General, are to be thanked for this opportunity now come to both of us." _El Senor_ had been pleased to show a courtesy to the guest of the first lady of the Island.

Neither the great cathedral of Havana, nor any of her churches, nor the honored chapel where Columbus' bones are supposed to have lain, nor any of her public buildings, not even the "Palace" of the Spanish Captain Generals, are of so striking and splendid architecture as one sees generally in Mexico. The allurement and dazzling fame of the Empire of Montezuma attracted thither all that was daring and forceful and brilliant in old Spain. Even the wonders of Cuba and the Antilles paled before the tales of fabulous wealth and treasure of the conquest of Cortez. The n.o.ble churches and architecture of Mexico have no rivals among the Cuban cities. Nor is there among the Cubans that picturesqueness in garb, that striking brilliancy of coloring, which one sees upon the streets of the Mexican cities. In Cuba you see no scarlet and green and blue _zerapes_; no purple and blue and pink _rebozos_; no _rancherros_ and _caballeros_ in velvet jackets and tight-fitting trousers, laced and spangled and b.u.t.toned with threads of silver and gold; none of the splendor in coloring and dress of the sixteenth century, which still clings to the street scene in Mexico. Cuba in its outward aspects is distinctly, unromantically modern. The black coat is _de rigueur_; the black hat or the _panama_ is the only covering for the head, and even conventional millinery has begun to drive away the graceful _mantilla_ from the brows of _las senoras_. There is no poetry, no artistic coloring in the life scheme of the Cuban. His face and movements lack the vivacity and alertness inspired by the keen, quickening air of the Mexican Highlands. Even the clothes he wears and the way he wears them bespeak the heavy, sea level atmosphere he breathes. Nor has the language of the Cuban preserved the ancient grace and forcefulness which distinguish the almost cla.s.sic Spanish of the Mexican. The Spanish spoken in Cuba has added to its vocabulary a mult.i.tude of words from the French and English of its neighbors, and from the provincial _patois_ of the formerly numerous Spanish soldiery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CORNER OF THE MARKET--HAVANA]

Another time we rode out to the attractive suburbs of Vendado, where are many fine houses and extensive gardens, the greater part of them built in the old Spanish style, but some of the newer buildings after the fas.h.i.+on of modern American architecture. These last are less attractive than those which the Spaniard has evolved from his centuries of living in the lat.i.tudes of the tropics.

XXI

Cuba--The Fortress of La Cabana

HAVANA, _December 2nd_.

The candle end Captain MacIrvine held in his hand had burned so low that his fingers were scorching. My last match was burned up. We should have to grope our way out. Just at that moment a dim flicker of a distant light gleamed far down the low, narrow tunnelway. It came nearer, it grew larger; a man was there,--a soldier--yes, a Cuban officer, a lieutenant of infantry. With him were two ladies; one older than he, whose face, sweet, but oh, so sad! was furrowed with deep lines. Her hand trembled on her escort's arm. The other woman was younger, quite as young as the lieutenant, and comely to look upon.

"_Si, Senor_," replied the lieutenant to a query, "I do have one box of the match. Take of them one half. Take of them all. I do know the way out." He handed MacIrvine a box of small wax tapers. Tears were streaming down the elder woman's face; the younger gave a sob. The three pa.s.sed on and turned up the steep ascent to the left. We were in the pitch dark again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORTRESS OF LA CABAnA]

"Who is he? Who are they?" I asked. "He is the officer now in command of this fortification; they are his mother and sister," MacIrvine replied, half divining my question. "He is of a prominent Cuban family. They were people of wealth. The family were at dinner one evening. A Spanish guard called at the house, sent in a card to the father, who was an eminent judge. He left the table and went to the door. He was arrested and brought here, hatless and in his slippers.

When the family went to ascertain why he did not come back to finish his coffee, they learned that he had been taken to La Cabana. They never saw him again. The Spanish authorities reported that he had 'escaped.' In fact, he was brought down here into one of these dungeons, and was walled up alive. These loose rock walls you are now looking at, filling these low arches along this pa.s.sageway, all tell the same tale. Behind every one of these walls, one or more Cubans have been immured alive. Their bones still rot there."

When a man was walled in, no record was kept of the dungeon; the guards were subsequently changed and often sent to another fortress.

No one might know the victim's burial place, where he was immured with only a jug of water, a loaf of bread; and the rats robbed him of half of these. Oblivion in life, oblivion in death.

We were in the deepest, darkest dungeonway of the gigantic fortress, La Cabana, which crowns the height across the bay from Havana. The pa.s.sage was about four feet wide. Along one side were narrow, low arches, some three feet in span. Most of these arches were wholly filled with a wall of large loose rock. Air might pa.s.s through between the c.h.i.n.ks, and the rats and lizards could crawl through; an empty rat, not one full-fattened on the dead within. A few of these walls had been torn down, and the scattered bones which sharp teeth had not destroyed had been utterly gathered together and buried in the beautiful cemetery of the city. But most of these walls were yet untouched, the story of their unknown dead forever lost. My foot hit something, I bent down and picked up the tibia of a human arm; the rats had dragged it through the wall. I laid it back gently on a projecting shelf of rock, my soul filled with horror, at the tale of Spanish cruelty it told.

We were a long way from daylight. We had crossed a moat within the giant fortress. We had pa.s.sed many cave-like chambers built into the ma.s.sive masonry--the casemates where soldiers and officers had lived in ease. We had entered a small room with stone seats on either hand.

It was the outer guardroom of the series of dungeons behind. We had pushed open an immense iron grating which swung on rusty hinges like a door. We had come into a vast vaulted chamber, flagged with huge stones, the center of the floor being lower than the sides, making the drain. Along the walls on either hand, all the way, at a height of about seven feet, were heavy iron rings. To these rings the prisoners had been chained. Sometimes the chains were riveted to iron collars welded about the neck. A man might stand on tiptoe in comfort. When his toes gave out the collar pinched his neck; he sometimes died overnight before the jail guard discovered that his toes were weak.

Into this great chamber hundreds of Cuban patriots had been crowded.

No air could enter but through the narrow grated door,--no light could penetrate but the faint glimmering that drifted in through the small outer doorway. Those who might die were brought to the grating by any of their fellow-prisoners whose fetters enabled them to move. The great chamber still stank with the reek of blasted mortality. But this was not all. At the far end of the vast room was yet another grated door, now swung open upon rusting hinges. We pa.s.sed into a second chamber, lower and longer than the first, obscure with perpetual gloom. The faintest gleam of G.o.d's sweet day could be scarcely discerned through the distant door-grating of the first chamber.

Here, too, men had been chained to iron rings at intervals along either side. With our lighted candle end, we scanned the ma.s.sive walls and tried here and there to make out the faintly remaining legend, in faulty Spanish script, of the hapless creature who had graven here his dying word. In this remote dungeon, men were pent up to die of meagre food, of putrid water, of perpetual darkness, and of the foul hot air that crept in from the outer dungeon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ENTRANCE TO LA CABAnA]

I thought surely we should have no further horrors yet to see. But Captain MacIrvine knew the way. He had been among the first American soldiers to enter La Cabana and to discover the mysteries of these unknown and sometime forgotten dungeons. At the far end of the second chamber, he pushed open a heavy solid iron door. He entered a narrow pa.s.sage barely three feet wide and so low that I had to stoop. "Mind where you set your foot. Take care of your head. Go slow," he cried warningly; and we found ourselves going down a steep decline. The air was dank and fetid. My throbbing head was dull and heavy. Before our approach scurried a too venturesome rat. I stepped upon the slimy body of a lizard. My ear detected the retreat of hosts of scorpions as they clicked their c.u.mbrous claws, but I heard the dismal winging of no bats; here was too deadly an atmosphere for even these to live. We came abruptly to a rock-wall, loose, but firmly set in a low arched depression. The pa.s.sage widened and turned at right angles, both right and left. It was here we saw the approaching light and met the Cuban officer and the ladies.

When we found our way out to the clear, sweet suns.h.i.+ne again, and I looked into the blue sky arching over my head, and scented in my nostrils the fragrant breeze which swept up from the sea, and then looked up and beheld floating spotless and resplendent, above me and above La Cabana and above Cuba, now free, my beloved flag, the flag of my own free land, the Stars and Stripes, my heart quickened. I choked a little, and I knew what Cuba and the world had gained through the blood and tears poured out by my country in order that Spanish tyranny should be forever expelled from its last stronghold this side the sea.

Captain MacIrvine and I had met that afternoon near the gateway of the customshouse in Havana, by the water side. We had taken one of the curious, blunt-ended, awning-covered rowboats, which will hold a dozen pa.s.sengers, and which everywhere crowd along the quays. We had hired the old Cuban waterman for the afternoon, and bade him row us to the water stage of La Cabana, set us ash.o.r.e and then meet us at the water gate of El Moro, three hours later in the afternoon. He was brown and withered, with grim square jaw and fine dark eyes. He was a Cuban patriot. He had himself spent nigh two years in the gloomy dungeons of the fortress, his family having long given him up for dead; and all because in his secret heart he dared to love _Cuba Libre_.

La Cabana is the largest Spanish fortification in the New World. It has been several centuries in growing to its immense dimensions.

Crowning the heights across the bay from the city of Havana, its record of compulsory guests is a record of three centuries of the grief and agony of a race. Eighteen to twenty millions of dollars in gold have been spent upon its vast and ma.s.sive walls and ramparts, its moats and fosses. Impregnable was it deemed to be by the Spanish engineers, and the United States did not have to try what its strength might be in fact. Up the narrow, slanting, rock-paved causeway from the water side to the stern stone portals of the single entrance have pa.s.sed a long procession of Cuban patriots--men and women, mere boys and white-haired men; and few are they who ever came out again. They died in the dungeons by scores, and their bodies were buried in trenches, or, borne through the subterranean pa.s.sage to the ramparts of El Moro, were there thrown to the sharks in the open sea. Those of lesser note who dared yet to live, were taken by platoons to a scarred and dented wall and shot to death. This spot is hallowed ground to the free man of to-day. We stood before it with uncovered heads. A little fence stakes it in, a bronze tablet is set against the bullet-battered wall of rock. The gra.s.s before us, so luxuriant, has been drenched with the n.o.blest blood of Cuba's patriots. The Cuban soldier guarding the gateway watched us lift our hats before the sacred and consecrated plot of martyred earth. He bowed to us respectfully as we re-entered, and it seemed to me that there was a deeper, kindlier glitter than casual greeting in his black eye.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE PATRIOTS WERE SHOT--LA CABAnA]

A great garrison of regular troops was always kept in military readiness in La Cabana; now a single company of Cuban infantry occupies the fortress. Cuba free and fifty Cuban soldiers in La Cabana; Cuba a Spanish province and fifty thousand bayonets to garrison and hold Havana down, one single town!

Many ancient guns yet adorn the ramparts of La Cabana, the newer artillery having been removed to Spain, or, some say, sunk in the sea.

The old chapel now serves for a sleeping room for the Cuban guard. The bell which tolled so often for the lost souls of the condemned is now gone. The fount of holy water is a receptacle for junk. The well-worn flight of steps ascending to the roof, no longer responds to the tread of the thousands of feet that used to press them. Right over the chapel, near the place where swung the bell, stood the garrote where, it is said, more than sixty thousand throats have been clasped and crushed by the iron grips. Perhaps nowhere in the world have so many souls been shriven as in the chapel of La Cabana, and nowhere have so many lives gone out as by this dread instrument of death. And yet, as we stood on this high platform, with the balmy air of now free Cuba filling our lungs, and watched the Cuban soldiery pacing their beat in the park below, it seemed, in the serene and restful humor of the day, almost incredible that only three short years ago, at most but four, here had been enacted a daily tragedy of cruelty and horror which no human pen will ever be adequate actually to portray.

Back in the year 1894, when I had bought a few Cuban bonds, and in 1896, when I had raised the Cuban flag on my McKinley pole at Coalburg, I had felt in a dim way that I was doing a thing entirely right; but it was not until I stood upon the ramparts of La Cabana, and considered the monstrous pitilessness of Spanish rule, and saw within the focus of my vision the demonstrated proof of cruelty beyond all conception in the present age,--only then, did I fully realize how G.o.d had guided the hearts and thews of my countrymen in rendering forever impossible the continuance of these iniquities.

From La Cabana we wandered across a stretch of gra.s.sy sward a quarter of a mile, to the parapets of El Moro. Builded upon a profound rock foundation it guards the angle of the land between the open sea and the far sh.o.r.e of Havana Bay. Above it, as above La Cabana, floats the starry flag. Within it resides a st.u.r.dy, clean-cut, trim-built garrison of our own boys in blue. It did me good to see them. Vigorous and businesslike they looked. Young men, well-kept, clear-eyed, expressing in their look and gait the easy mastery of the youthful, giant power whose simple uniform they wear. El Moro was never a prison fortress, although there are said to be dungeons yet undiscovered, dug deep into the rock base on which it stands. Nor is it now a fort which could withstand an attack by modern guns. But in the ancient time it was an impregnable pile, and stands to-day, a fine example of what the military art taught men to build in centuries gone by.

Most of the guns are old and out of date, notably a dozen of immense size known among the soldier boys as the "Twelve Apostles," while just one or two of modern make poke their noses toward the city and the sea.

From El Moro we descended to the water's edge, and finding our boatman, were ferried across to the tranquil city. The sun was sinking behind the highlands in the west; the azure sky had grown to purple all barred with gold and red. The golden light of eventide illumined the city as with an aureole. It seemed to me a hallowing benison over Cuba now forever free.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WRECK OF THE MAINE]

XXII

Cuba--Her Fertile Sugar Lands--Matanzas by the Sea

HAVANA, CUBA, _December 27th_.

A cup of chocolate, a roll, a pat of guava paste, such was my _desayuno_, my breakfast. _Senor_ G----, Superintendent of Civic Training in the Schools of Cuba, had also had his morning coffee, and was awaiting me at the broad portal of the hotel. We call a _cocha_, bade the _cochero_ drive us to the ferry on the bay, and were soon rattling through Havana's narrow, rough-paved streets. It was early, not yet six o'clock. But the people of the tropics rise betimes and the busy life of the day was well begun. We could look right into the courtyards, and even into the living rooms of the houses, so close did our _cocha_ wheel to the open doorways and to the wide-lifted curtains of the gla.s.sless windows. A young mother looked curiously through the iron bars of a window front at the _Americanos_. She held her laughing baby daughter in her arms. A pair of slippered feet, a coral necklace, a friendly smile, and it was clothed for the day. A family sat at a long table, each sipping the clear black coffee. The mother was smoking a huge black cigar, the father a cigar of more moderate size, the children were all smoking cigarettes. Scantily clad peddlers were crying their goods, one his back piled high with tinware. Women were carrying on their heads big baskets of fruit. An ancient jet-black African woman trudged along with a squealing shoat, tied by the four legs and slung to her shoulder. A drove of she-donkeys were standing before an open doorway; their owner was milking one of them, the buyer was standing near so as to be sure that the morning's milk should be the real thing. The shops, however, were not yet open. It was too early for buyers. But the awnings were being spread over the streets, so as to be ready for the sun when it should wax hot.

As we approached the neighborhood of the bay, the press of footfarers in the streets increased. The narrow sidewalks and even the street itself were filled with men and women moving toward the ferry. Our _cochero_ cracked his whip and hallooed at the crowd, and they fled out of the way, quite good-naturedly. I was trying to light my cigar, but the motion of the vehicle blew out the match. I had just struck a third. A woman on the sidewalk saw my fix. She called to the _cochero_ and pointed to me. He stopped his horse upon its haunches.

He waited until my cigar was alight, then he drove on. Such is the custom in a city where every man and woman smokes and _El Segaro_ is the King.

At the long, low-roofed ferry house there was a great crowd, an uncommon press. We paid our _cochero_ a _peseta_ (twenty cents), dismissed him and strode among the thick of the throng.

In its midst were a group of gentlemen in white _panama_ hats and white linen clothes. One of them was short and stout with gray _mustachios_, pointed goatee and flowing gray hair. It was General Ma.s.so, the candidate of the Ma.s.soista Party for President. I had met him the night when he made his great speech to his cheering followers in front of the Hotel Pasaje, and told them all to refrain from voting when the day for elections should arrive, "for were not all the Palmaistas scoundrels and thieves and would-be usurpers of power, backed, too, by Yankee bayonets! What use was it to vote or try to vote against such combinations for wrong and ill? No! let the Ma.s.soistas remain at home, and by the smallness of the vote cast let the world see that the real strength of the Cuban people was not with Palma, the puppet of American power, but with the real people of Cuba, whose day would in the future surely come!" And had not the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude filled the air with shouts of "_Bravo! Viva Ma.s.so!_" With him was Senor Hernandez, candidate for the Vice-presidency of the Ma.s.soista Party, who had also stood on a pile of boxes and stirred the excited mult.i.tude with eloquence even more intemperate. And there was also _Senor_ Gualberto Gomez, the greatest orator of Cuba, short, stout, gray-haired, with gold spectacles--a Spanish mulatto, the real leader of the great, turbulent, Afro-Spanish race; the powerful backer of the Ma.s.soistas, who it is said, had welded the third of Cuba's Negro-Spanish population into a solid political machine, bounden together with the secret ties of occult brotherhood. His impetuous eloquence it was which swept the Const.i.tutional Convention, and carried the plank for universal suffrage triumphantly to victory against predetermined plans of the Conservative leaders. He would now have his following hold the balance of power in Cuba, and so rule the Island as does his race in Hayti and San Domingo! For the present, he would use the Ma.s.soistas and their pro-Spanish propaganda, later he would throw aside the Spanish following and himself rule Cuba through the power of his organized blacks. Young Garcia was there, too, the son of the great leader, discontented with the minor role Palma and the Americans have permitted him to play, and anxious for a Cuba wholly free from the interference of the American as well as the Spaniard. Yes, these leaders were all there, and the great square before the ferry house was packed with a cheering mult.i.tude to bid them good-bye, and Ma.s.so "G.o.d speed" on his journey to his plantation home. When I met these gentlemen before, I enjoyed free and frank talk with them, and they had made no scruple in voicing to me their policies and demands:--their determination to rule or ruin; their policy to refrain from voting and then later rise in armed revolt. This morning they were all gathered here to take a last farewell of their really loved chief, Ma.s.so, a fine old patriot with a famous war record, whom many now think that men more cunning than himself are using for their own selfish ends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SPANISH PARK--MATANZAS]