We Now And Then Met The _Monteros_ Themselves Scudding Along On Their
Little Horses, In That Pace Which We Call A Rack.
Their dress was a Panama
hat, a shirt worn over a pair of pantaloons, a pair of rough cowskin
shoes, one of which was armed with a spur, and a sword lashed to the left
side by a belt of cotton cloth.
They are men of manly bearing, of thin
make, but often of a good figure, with well-spread shoulders, which,
however, have a stoop in them, contracted, I suppose, by riding always
with a short stirrup.
Forests, too, we passed. You, doubtless, suppose that a forest in a soil
and climate like this, must be a dense growth of trees with colossal stems
and leafy summits. A forest in Cuba - all that I have seen are such - is a
thicket of shrubs and creeping plants, through which, one would suppose
that even the wild cats of the country would find it impossible to make
their way. Above this impassable jungle rises here and there the palm, or
the gigantic ceyba or cotton-tree, but more often trees of far less
beauty, thinly scattered and with few branches, disposed without symmetry,
and at this season often leafless.
We reached San Antonio at nine o'clock in the morning, and went to the inn
of La Punta, where we breakfasted on rice and fresh eggs, and a dish of
meat so highly flavored with garlic, that it was impossible to distinguish
to what animal it belonged. Adjoining the inn was a cockpit, with cells
for the birds surrounding the inclosure, in which they were crowing
lustily. Two or three persons seemed to have nothing to do but to tend
them; and one, in particular, with a gray beard, a grave aspect, and a
solid gait, went about the work with a deliberation and solemnity which to
me, who had lately seen the hurried burials at the Campo Santo, in Havana,
was highly edifying. A man was training a game-cock in the pit; he was
giving it lessons in the virtue of perseverance. He held another cock
before it, which he was teaching it to pursue, and striking it
occasionally over the head to provoke it, with the wing of the bird in his
hand, he made it run after him about the area for half an hour together.
I had heard much of the beauty of the coffee estates of Cuba, and in the
neighborhood of San Antonio are some which have been reputed very fine
ones. A young man, in a checked blue and white shirt, worn like a frock
over checked pantaloons, with a spur on one heel, offered to procure us a
_volante_, and we engaged him. He brought us one with two horses, a negro
postillion sitting on one, and the shafts of the vehicle borne by the
other. We set off, passing through fields guarded by stiff-leaved hedges
of the ratoon-pine, over ways so bad that if the motion of the volante
were not the easiest in the world, we should have taken an unpleasant
jolting. The lands of Cuba fit for cultivation, are divided into red and
black; we were in the midst of the red lands, consisting of a fine earth
of a deep brick color, resting on a bed of soft, porous, chalky limestone.
In the dry season the surface is easily dispersed into dust, and stains
your clothes of a dull red.
A drive of four miles, through a country full of palm and cocoanut trees,
brought us to the gate of a coffee plantation, which our friend in the
checked shirt, by whom we were accompanied, opened for us. We passed up to
the house through what had been an avenue of palms, but was now two rows
of trees at very unequal distances, with here and there a sickly
orange-tree. On each side grew the coffee shrubs, hung with flowers of
snowy white, but unpruned and full of dry and leafless twigs. In every
direction were ranks of trees, prized for ornament or for their fruit, and
shrubs, among which were magnificent oleanders loaded with flowers,
planted in such a manner as to break the force of the wind, and partially
to shelter the plants from the too fierce rays of the sun. The coffee
estate is, in fact, a kind of forest, with the trees and shrubs arranged
in straight lines. The _mayoral_, or steward of the estate, a handsome
Cuban, with white teeth, a pleasant smile, and a distinct utterance of his
native language, received us with great courtesy, and offered us
_cigarillos_, though he never used tobacco; and spirit of cane, though he
never drank. He wore a sword, and carried a large flexible whip, doubled
for convenience in the hand. He showed us the coffee plants, the broad
platforms with smooth surfaces of cement and raised borders, where the
berries were dried in the sun, and the mills where the negroes were at
work separating the kernel from the pulp in which it is inclosed.
"These coffee estates," said he, "are already ruined, and the planters are
abandoning them as fast as they can; in four years more there will not be
a single coffee plantation on the island. They can not afford to raise
coffee for the price they get in the market."
I inquired the reason. "It is," replied he, "the extreme dryness of the
season when the plant is in flower. If we have rain at this time of the
year, we are sure of a good crop; if it does not rain, the harvest is
small; and the failure of rain is so common a circumstance that we must
leave the cultivation of coffee to the people of St. Domingo and Brazil."
I asked if the plantation could not be converted into a sugar estate.
"Not this," he answered; "it has been cultivated too long. The land was
originally rich, but it is exhausted" - tired out, was the expression he
used - "we may cultivate maize or rice, for the dry culture of rice
succeeds well here, or we may abandon it to grazing.
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