As We Passed Along The Harbor I Remarked An Extensive, Healthy-Looking
Orchard Of Plantains Growing On One Of Those Tracts Which They Call
_Diente De Perro_.
I could see nothing but the jagged teeth of whitish
rock, and the green swelling stems of the plantain, from ten to fifteen
feet in height, and as large as a man's leg, or larger.
The stalks of the
plantain are juicy and herbaceous, and of so yielding a texture, that with
a sickle you might entirely sever the largest of them at a single stroke.
How such a multitude of succulent plants could find nourishment on what
seemed to the eye little else than barren rock, I could not imagine.
The day after arriving at Matanzas we made an excursion on horseback to
the summit of the hill, immediately overlooking the town, called the
Cumbre. Light hardy horses of the country were brought us, with high
pommels to the saddles, which are also raised behind in a manner making it
difficult to throw the rider from his seat. A negro fitted a spur to my
right heel, and mounting by the short stirrups, I crossed the river Yumuri
with my companions, and began to climb the Cumbre. They boast at Matanzas
of the perpetual coolness of temperature enjoyed upon the broad summit of
this hill, where many of the opulent merchants of the town have their
country houses, to which the mosquitoes and the intermittents that infest
the town below, never come, and where, as one of them told me, you may
play at billiards in August without any inconvenient perspiration.
From the Cumbre you behold the entire extent of the harbor; the town lies
below you with its thicket of masts, and its dusty _paseo_, where rows of
the Cuba pine stand rooted in the red soil. On the opposite shore your eye
is attracted to a chasm between high rocks, where the river Canimar comes
forth through banks of romantic beauty - so they are described to me - and
mingles with the sea. But the view to the west was much finer; there lay
the valley of the Yumuri, and a sight of it is worth a voyage to the
island. In regard to this my expectations suffered no disappointment.
Before me lay a deep valley, surrounded on all sides by hills and
mountains, with the little river Yumuri twining at the bottom. Smooth
round hillocks rose from the side next to me, covered with clusters of
palms, and the steeps of the southeastern corner of the valley were
clothed with a wood of intense green, where I could almost see the leaves
glisten in the sunshine. The broad fields below were waving with cane and
maize, and cottages of the _monteros_ were scattered among them, each with
its tuft of bamboos and its little grove of plantains. In some parts the
cliffs almost seemed to impend over the valley; but to the west, in a soft
golden haze, rose summit behind summit, and over them all, loftiest and
most remote, towered the mountain called the _Pan de Matanzas_.
We stopped for a few moments at a country seat on the top of the Cumbre,
where this beautiful view lay ever before the eye. Round it, in a garden,
were cultivated the most showy plants of the tropics, but my attention was
attracted to a little plantation of damask roses blooming profusely. They
were scentless; the climate which supplies the orange blossom with intense
odors exhausts the fragrance of the rose. At nightfall - the night falls
suddenly in this latitude - we were again at our hotel.
We passed our Sunday on a sugar estate at the hospitable mansion of a
planter from the United States about fifteen miles from Matanzas. The
house stands on an eminence, once embowered in trees which the hurricanes
have leveled, overlooking a broad valley, where palms were scattered in
every direction; for the estate had formerly been a coffee plantation. In
the huge buildings containing the machinery and other apparatus for making
sugar, which stood at the foot of the eminence, the power of steam, which
had been toiling all the week, was now at rest. As the hour of sunset
approached, a smoke was seen rising from its chimney, presently pufis of
vapor issued from the engine, its motion began to be heard, and the
negroes, men and women, were summoned to begin the work of the week. Some
feed the fire under the boiler with coal; others were seen rushing to the
mill with their arms full of the stalks of the cane, freshly cut, which
they took from a huge pile near the building; others lighted fires under a
row of huge cauldrons, with the dry stalks of cane from which the juice
had been crushed by the mill. It was a spectacle of activity such as I had
not seen in Cuba.
The sound of the engine was heard all night, for the work of grinding the
cane, once begun, proceeds day and night, with the exception of Sundays
and some other holidays. I was early next morning at the mill. A current
of cane juice was flowing from the mill in a long trunk to a vat in which
it was clarified with lime; it was then made to pass successively from one
seething cauldron to another, as it obtained a thicker consistence by
boiling. The negroes, with huge ladles turning on pivots, swept it from
cauldron to cauldron, and finally passed it into a trunk, which conveyed
it to shallow tanks in another apartment, where it cooled into sugar. From
these another set of workmen scooped it up in moist masses, carried it in
buckets up a low flight of stairs, and poured it into rows of hogsheads
pierced with holes at the bottom. These are placed over a large tank, into
which the moisture dripping from the hogsheads is collected and forms
molasses.
This is the method of making the sugar called Muscovado.
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