To Cuba and Back Part 2

His Excellency regrets not having seen me the day before, and invites me to dinner at three o'clock, to meet three or four gentlemen, an invitation which I accept with pleasure.

I am too late for the ma.s.s, or any other religious service, as all the churches close at ten o'clock. A tepid, soothing bath, at "Los banos publicos," round the corner, and I spend the morning in my chamber. As we are at breakfast, the troops pa.s.s by the Paseo, from the ma.s.s service. Their gait is quick and easy, with swinging arms, after the French fas.h.i.+on. Their dress is seersucker, with straw hats and red c.o.c.kades: the regiments being distinguished by the color of the cloth on the cuffs of the coat, some being yellow, some green, and some blue.

Soon after two o'clock, I take a carriage for the bishop's. On my way out I see that the streets are full of Spanish sailors from the men-of-war, ash.o.r.e for a holiday, dressed in the style of English sailors, with wide duck trousers, blue jackets, and straw hats, with the name of their s.h.i.+p on the front of the hat. All business is going on as usual, and laborers are at work in the streets and on the houses.

The company consists of the bishop himself, the Bishop of Puebla de los angeles in Mexico, Father Yuch, the rector of the Jesuit College, who has a high reputation as a man of intellect, and two young ecclesiastics. Our dinner is well cooked, and in the Spanish style, consisting of fish, vegetables, fruits, and of stewed light dishes, made up of vegetables, fowls and other meats, a style of cooking well adapted to a climate in which one is very willing to dispense with the solid, heavy cuts of an English dinner.

The Bishop of Puebla wore the purple, the Bishop of Havana a black robe with a broad cape, lined with red, and each wore the Episcopal cross and ring. The others were in simple black ca.s.socks. The conversation was in French; for, to my surprise, none of the company could speak English; and being allowed my election between French and Spanish, I chose the former, as the lighter infliction on my a.s.sociates.

I am surprised to see what an impression is made on all cla.s.ses in this country by the pending "Thirty Millions Bill" of Mr. Slidell. It is known to be an Administration measure, and is thought to be the first step in a series which is to end in an attempt to seize the island. Our steamer brought oral intelligence that it had pa.s.sed the Senate, and it was so announced in the Diario of the day after our arrival, although no newspaper that we brought so stated it. Not only with these clergymen, but with the merchants and others whom I have met since our arrival, foreigners as well as Cubans, this is the absorbing topic. Their future seems to be hanging in doubt, depending on the action of our government, which is thought to have a settled purpose to acquire the island. I suggested that it had not pa.s.sed the Senate, and would not pa.s.s the House; and, at most, was only an authority to the President to make an offer that would certainly be refused. But they looked beyond the form of the act, and regarded it as the first move in a plan, of which, although they could not entirely know the details, they thought they understood the motive.

These clergymen were well informed as to the state of religion in the United States, the relative numbers and force of the various denominations, and their doctrinal differences; the reputations of Brownson, Parker, Beecher, and others; and most minutely acquainted with the condition of their own church in the United States, and with the chief of its clergy. This acquaintance is not attributable solely to their unity of organization, and to the consequent interchange of communication, but largely also to the tie of a common education at the Propaganda or St. Sulpice, the catalogues of whose alumni are familiar to the educated Catholic clergy throughout the world.

The subject of slavery, and the condition and prospects of the Negro race in Cuba, the probable results of the coolie system, and the relations between Church and State in Cuba, and the manner in which Sunday is treated in Havana, the public school system in America, the fate of Mormonism, and how our government will treat it, were freely discussed. It is not because I have any reason to suppose that these gentlemen would object to all they said being printed in these pages, and read by all who may choose to read it in Cuba, or the United States, that I do not report their interesting and instructive conversation; but because it would be, in my opinion, a violation of the universal understanding among gentlemen.

After dinner, we walked on the piazza, with the n.o.ble sunset view of the unsurpa.s.sed panorama lying before us; and I took my leave of my host, a kind and courteous gentleman of Old Spain, as well as a prelate, just as a few lights were beginning to sprinkle over the fading city, and the Morro Light to gleam on the untroubled air.

Made two visits in the city this evening. In each house, I found the double row of chairs, facing each other, always with about four or five feet of s.p.a.ce between the rows. The etiquette is that the gentlemen sit on the row opposite to the ladies, if there be but two or three present.

If a lady, on entering goes to the side of a gentleman, when the other row is open to her, it indicates either familiar acquaintance or boldness. There is no people so observant of outguards, as the Spanish race.

I notice, and my observation is supported by what I am told by the residents here, that there is no street-walking, in the technical sense, in Havana. Whether this is from the fact that no ladies walk in the streets--which are too narrow for comfortable or even safe walking--or by reason of police regulations, I do not know. From what one meets with in the streets, if he does not look farther, one would not know that there was a vice in Havana, not even drunkenness.

VII.

HAVANA: Belen and the Jesuits

Rose before six, and walked as usual, down the Paseo, to the sea baths.

How refres.h.i.+ng is this bath, after the hot night and close rooms! At your side, the wide blue sea with its distant sails, the bath cut into the clean rock, the gentle was.h.i.+ng in and out of the tideless sea, at the Gulf Stream temperature, in the cool of the morning! As I pa.s.s down, I meet a file of coolies, in Chinese costume, marching, under overseers, to their work or their jail. And there is the chain-gang! clank, clank, as they go headed by officers with pistols and swords, and flanked by drivers with whips. This is simple wretchedness!

While at breakfast, a gentleman in the dress of the regular clergy, speaking English, called upon me, bringing me, from the bishop an open letter of introduction and admission to all the religious, charitable, and educational inst.i.tutions of the city, and offering to conduct me to the Belen (Bethlehem). He is Father B. of Charleston, S. C. temporarily in Havana, with whom I find I have some acquaintances in common, both in America and abroad. We drive together to the Belen. I say drive; for few persons walk far in Havana, after ten o'clock in the morning. The volantes are the public carriages of Havana; and are as abundant as cabs in London. You never need stand long at a street door without finding one. The postilions are always Negroes; and I am told that they pay the owner a certain sum per day for the horse and volante, and make what they can above that.

The Belen is a group of buildings, of the usual yellow or tawny color, covering a good deal of ground, and of a thoroughly monastic character.

It was first a Franciscan monastery, then a barrack, and now has been given by the government to the Jesuits. The company of Jesus here is composed of a rector and about forty clerical and twenty lay brethren.

These perform every office, from the highest scientific investigations and instruction, down to the lowest menial offices, in the care of the children; some serving in costly vestments at the high altar, and others in coa.r.s.e black garb at the gates. It is only three years since they established themselves in Havana, but in that time they have formed a school of two hundred boarders and one hundred day scholars, built dormitories for the boarders, and a common hall, restored the church and made it the most fully attended in the city; established a missionary work in all parts of the town, recalled a great number to the discipline of the Church, and not only created something like an enthusiasm of devotion among the women, who are said to have monopolized the religion of Cuba in times past, but have introduced among the men, and among many influential men, the practices of confession and communion, to which they had been almost entirely strangers. I do not take this account from the Jesuits themselves, but from the regular clergy of other orders, and from Protestants who are opposed to them and their influence. All agree that they are at work with zeal and success.

I met my distinguished acquaintance of yesterday, the rector, who took me to the boys' chapel, and introduced me to Father Antonio Cabre, a very young man of a spare frame and intellectual countenance, with hands so white and so thin, and eyes so bright, and cheek so pale! He is at the head of the department of mathematics and astronomy, and looks indeed as if he had out.w.a.tched the stars, in vigils of science or of devotion. He took me to his laboratory, his observatory, and his apparatus of philosophic instruments. These I am told are according to the latest inventions, and in the best style of French and German workmans.h.i.+p. I was also shown a collection of coins and medals, a cabinet of sh.e.l.ls, the commencement of a museum of natural history, already enriched with most of the birds of Cuba, and an interesting cabinet of the woods of the island, in small blocks, each piece being polished on one side, and rough on the other. Among the woods were the mahoganies, the iron-wood, the ebony, the lignum vitae, the cedar, and many others, of names unfamiliar to me, which admit of the most exquisite polish. Some of the most curious were from the Isla de Pinos, an island belonging to Cuba, and on its southern sh.o.r.e.

The sleeping arrangement for the boys here seemed to me to be new, and to be well adapted to the climate. There is a large hall, with a roof about thirty feet from the floor, and windows near the top, to give light and ventilation above, and small portholes, near the ground, to let air into the pa.s.sages. In this hall are double rows of compartments, like high pews, or, more profanely, like the large boxes in restaurants and chop-houses, open at the top, with curtains instead of doors, and each large enough to contain a single bed, a chair, and a toilet table.

This ensures both privacy and the light and air of the great hall. The bedsteads are of iron; and nothing can exceed the neatness and order of the apartments. The boys' clothes are kept in another part of the house, and they take to their dormitories only the clothes that they are using.

Each boy sleeps alone. Several of the Fathers sleep in the hall, in curtained rooms at the ends of the pa.s.sage-ways, and a watchman walks the rounds all night, to guard against fire, and to give notice of sickness.

The boys have a playground, a gymnasium, and a riding-school. But although they like riding and fencing, they do not take to the robust exercises and sports of English schoolboys. An American whom I met here, who had spent several months at the school, told me that in their recreations they were more like girls, and like to sit a good deal, playing or working with their hands. He pointed out to me a boy, the son of an American mother, a lady to whom I brought letters and kind wishes from her many friends at the North, and told me that he had more pluck than any boy in the school.

The roof of the Belen is flat, and gives a pleasant promenade, in the open air, after the sun is gone down, which is much needed, as the buildings are in the dense part of the city.

The brethren of this order wear short hair, with the tonsure, and dress in coa.r.s.e ca.s.socks of plain black, coming to the feet, and b.u.t.toned close to the neck, with a cape, but with no white of collar above; and in these, they sweep like black spectres, about the pa.s.sage-ways, and across the halls and court-yards. There are so many of them that they are able to give thorough and minute attention to the boys, not only in instruction, both secular and religious, but in their entire training and development.

From the scholastic part of the inst.i.tution, I pa.s.sed to the church. It is not very large, has an open marble floor, a gallery newly erected for the use of the brethren and other men, a sumptuous high altar, a sacristy and vestry behind, and a small altar, by which burned the undying lamp, indicating the presence of the Sacrament. In the vestry, I was shown the vestments for the service of the high altar, some of which are costly and gorgeous in the extreme, not probably exceeded by those of the Temple at Jerusalem in the palmiest days of the Jewish hierarchy.

All are presents from wealthy devotees. One, an alb, had a circle of precious stones; and the lace alone on another, a present from a lady of rank, is said to have cost three thousand dollars. Whatever may be thought of the rightfulness of this expenditure, turning upon the old question as to which the alabaster box of ointment and the ordained costliness of the Jewish ritual "must give us pause," it cannot be said of the Jesuits that they live in cedar, while the ark of G.o.d rests in curtains; for the actual life of the streets hardly presents any greater contrast, than that between the sumptuousness of their apparel at the altar, and the coa.r.s.eness and cheapness of their ordinary dress, the bareness of their rooms, and the apparent severity of their life.

The Cubans have a childish taste for excessive decoration. Their altars look like toyshops. A priest, not a Cuban, told me that he went to the high altar of the cathedral once, on a Christmas day, to officiate, and when his eye fell on the childish and almost profane attempts at symbolism--a kind of doll millinery, if he had not got so far that he could not retire without scandal, he would have left the duties of the day to others. At the Belen there is less of this; but the Jesuits find or think it necessary to conform a good deal to the popular taste.

In the sacristy, near the side altar, is a distressing image of the Virgin, not in youth, but the mother of the mature man, with a sword pierced through her heart--referring to the figurative prediction "a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." The handle and a part of the blade remain without, while the marks of the deep wound are seen, and the countenance expresses the sorest agony of mind and body. It is painful, and beyond all legitimate scope of art, and haunts one, like a vision of actual misery. It is almost the only thing in the church of which I have brought away a distinct image in my memory.

A strange, eventful history is that of the Society of Jesus! Ignatius Loyola, a soldier and n.o.ble of Spain, renouncing arms and knighthood, hangs his trophies of war upon the altar of Monserrate. After intense studies and barefoot pilgrimages, persecuted by religious orders whose excesses he sought to restrain, and frowned upon by the Inquisition, he organizes, with Xavier and Faber, at Montmartre, a society of three.

From this small beginning, spreading upwards and outwards, it overshadows the earth. Now, at the top of success, it is supposed to control half Christendom. Now, his order proscribed by State and Church alike and suppressed by the Pope himself, there is not a spot of earth in Catholic Christendom where the Jesuit can place the sole of his foot.

In this hour of distress, he finds refuge in Russia, and in Protestant Prussia. Then, restored and tolerated, the order revives here and there in Europe, with a fitful life; and, at length, blazes out into a glory of missionary triumphs and martyrdoms in China, in India, in Africa, and in North America; and now, in these later days, we see it advancing everywhere to a new epoch of labor and influence. Thorough in education, perfect in discipline, absolute in obedience--as yielding, as indestructible, as all-pervading as water or as air!

The Jesuits make strong friends and strong enemies. Many, who are neither the one nor the other, say of them that their ethics are artificial, and their system unnatural; that they do not reform nature, but destroy it; that, aiming to use the world without abusing it, they reduce it to subjection and tutelage; that they are always either in dangerous power, or in disgrace; and although they may labor with more enthusiasm and self-consecration than any other order, and meet with astonis.h.i.+ng successes for a time, yet such is the character of their system that these successes are never permanent, but result in opposition, not only from Protestants, and moderate Catholics, and from the civil power, but from other religious orders and from the regular clergy in their own Church, an opposition to which they are invariably compelled to yield, at last. In fine, they declare, that, allowing them all zeal, and all ability, and all devotedness, their system is too severe and too unnatural for permanent usefulness anywhere--medicine and not food, lightning and not light, flame and not warmth.

Not satisfied with this moderated judgment, their opponents have met them, always and everywhere, with uniform and vehement reprobation. They say to them--the opinion of mankind has condemned you! The just and irreversible sentence of time has made you a by-word and a hissing, and reduced your very name, the most sacred in its origin, to a synonym for ambition and deceit!

Others, again, esteem them the nearest approach in modern times to that type of men portrayed by one of the chiefest, in his epistle: "In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering; ... by honor and dishonor; by evil report and good report; as deceivers and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

VIII.

MATANZAS

As there are no plantations to be seen near Havana, I determine to go down to Matanzas, near which the sugar plantations are in full tide of operation at this season. A steamer leaves here every night at ten o'clock, reaching Matanzas before daylight, the distance by sea being between fifty and sixty miles.

Took this steamer to-night. She got under way punctually at ten o'clock, and steamed down the harbor. The dark waters are alive with phosph.o.r.escent light. From each s.h.i.+p that lies moored, the cable from the bows, tautened to its anchor, makes a run of silver light. Each boat, gliding silently from s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p, and sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, turns up a silver ripple at its stem, and trails a wake of silver behind; while the dip of the oar-blades brings up liquid silver, dripping, from the opaque deep. We pa.s.s along the side of the two-decker, and see through her ports the lanterns and men; under the stern of one frigate, and across the bows of another (for Havana is well supplied with men-of-war); and drop leisurely down by the Cabana, where we are hailed from the rocks; and bend round the Morro, and are out on the salt, rolling sea. Having a day of work before me, I went early to my berth, and was waked up by the letting off of steam, in the lower harbor of Matanzas, at three o'clock in the morning. My fellow-pa.s.sengers, who sat up, said the little steamer tore and plunged, and jumped through the water like a thing that had lost its wits. They seemed to think that the Cuban engineer had got a machine that would some day run away with him. It was, certainly, a very short pa.s.sage.

We pa.s.sed a good many vessels lying at anchor in the lower harbor of Matanzas, and came to anchor about a mile from the pier. It was clear, bright moonlight. The small boats came off to us, and took us and our luggage ash.o.r.e. I was landed alone on a quay, carpet-bag in hand, and had to guess my way to the inn, which was near the water-side. I beat on the big, close-barred door; and a sleepy Negro, in time, opened it. Mine host was up, expecting pa.s.sengers, and after waiting on the very tardy movements of the Negro, who made a separate journey to the yard for each thing the room needed, I got to bed by four o'clock, on the usual piece of canvas stretched over an iron frame, in a room having a brick floor, and windows without gla.s.s closed with big-bolted shutters.

After coffee, walked out to deliver my letters to Mr.----, an American merchant, who has married the daughter of a planter, a gentleman of wealth and character. He is much more agreeable and painstaking than we have any right to expect of one who is served so frequently with notice that his attentions are desired for the entertainment of a stranger.

Knowing that it is my wish to visit a plantation, he gives me a letter to Don Juan Chartrand, who has an ingenio (sugar plantation), called La Ariadne, near Limonar, and about twenty-five miles back in the country from Matanzas. The train leaves at 2.30 P.M., which gives me several hours for the city.

Although it is not yet nine o'clock, it is very hot, and one is glad to keep on the shady side of the broad streets of Matanzas. This city was built later and more under foreign direction than Havana, and I have been told, not by persons here however, that for many years the controlling influences of society were French, English, and American; but that lately the policy of the government has been to discourage foreign influence, and now Spanish customs prevail--bull-fights have been introduced, and other usages and entertainments which had had no place here before. Whatever may be the reason, this city differs from Havana in buildings, vehicles, and dress, and in the width of its streets, and has less of the peculiar air of a tropical city. It has about 25,000 inhabitants, and stands where two small rivers, the Yumuri and the San Juan, crossed by handsome stone bridges, run into the sea, dividing the city into three parts. The vessels lie at anchor from one to three miles below the city, and lighters, with masts and sails, line the stone quays of the little rivers. The city is flat and hot, but the country around is picturesque, hilly, and fertile. To the westward of the town, rises a ridge, bordering on the sea, called the c.u.mbre, which is a place of resort for the beauty of its views; and in front of the c.u.mbre, on the inland side, is the deep rich valley of the Yumuri, with its celebrated cavern. These I must see, if I can, on my return from the plantation.

In my morning walk, I see a company of coolies, in the hot sun, carrying stones to build a house, under the eye of a taskmaster who sits in the shade. The stones have been dropped in a pile, from carts, and the coolies, carry them, in files, to the cellar of the house. They are naked to the waist, with short-legged cotton trousers coming to the knees. Some of these men were strongly, one or two of them powerfully built, but many seemed very thin and frail. While looking on, I saw an evident American face near me, and getting into conversation with the man, found him an intelligent s.h.i.+pmaster from New York, who had lived in Matanzas for a year or two, engaged in business. He told me, as I had heard in Havana, that the importer of the coolies gets $400 a head for them from the purchaser, and that the coolies are ent.i.tled from the purchaser to four dollars a month, which they may demand monthly if they choose, and are bound to eight years' service, during which time they may be held to all the service that a slave is subject to. They are more intelligent, and are put to higher labor than the Negro. He said, too, it would not do to flog a coolie. Idolaters as they are, they have a notion of the dignity of the human body, at least as against strangers, which does not allow them to submit to the indignity of corporal chastis.e.m.e.nt. If a coolie is flogged, somebody must die; either the coolie himself, for they are fearfully given to suicide, or the perpetrator of the indignity, or some one else, according to their strange principles of vicarious punishment. Yet such is the value of labor in Cuba, that a citizen will give $400, in cash, for the chance of enforcing eight years' labor, at $4 per month, from a man speaking a strange language, wors.h.i.+pping strange G.o.ds or none, thinking suicide a virtue, and governed by no moral laws in common with his master--his value being yet further diminished by the chances of natural death, of sickness, accident, escape, and of forfeiting his services to the government, for any crime he may commit against laws he does not understand.

The Plaza is in the usual style--an enclosed garden, with walks; and in front is the Government House. In this spot, so fair and so still in the noonday sun, some fourteen years ago, under the fire of the platoons of Spanish soldiers, fell the patriot and poet, one of the few popular poets of Cuba, Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdez. Charged with being the head of that concerted movement of the slaves for their freedom which struck such terror into Cuba, in 1844, he was convicted and ordered to be shot. At the first volley, as the story is told, he was only wounded.

"Aim here!" said he, pointing to his head. Another volley, and it was all over.

The name and story of Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdez are preserved by the historians and tourists of Cuba. He is best known, however, by the name of Placido, that under which he wrote and published, than by his proper name. He was a man of genius and a man of valor, but--he was a mulatto!

IX.