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 Conception 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!
XI
Railroad from Matanzas—Views of interior of Cuba—Trees, flowers, fruits, and cane fields—Sugar estates—Slaves laboring—Ingenio, La Ariadne.
Took the train for Limonar, at 2:30 p.m. There are three classes of cars, all after the American model, the first of about the condition of our first-class cars when on the point of being condemned as worn out; the second, a little plainer; and the third, only covered wagons with benches. The car I entered had “Davenport & Co., makers, Cambridgeport, Mass.,” familiarly on its front, and the next had “Eaton, Gilbert & Co., Troy, N. York.” The brakemen on the train are Coolies, one of them a handsome lad, with coarse, black hair, that lay gracefully about his head, and eyes handsome, though of the Chinese pattern. They were all dressed in the common shirt, trousers and hat, and, but for their eyes, might be taken for men of any of the Oriental races.
As we leave Matanzas, we rise on an ascending grade, and the bay and city lie open before us. The bay is deep on the western shore, under the ridge of the Cumbre, and there the vessels lie at anchor; while the rest of the bay is shallow, and its water, in this state of the sky and light, is of a pale green color. The lighters, with sail and oar, are plying between the quays and the vessels below. All is pretty and quiet and warm, but the scene has none of those regal points, that so impress themselves on the imagination and memory in the surroundings of Havana.
I am now to get my first view of the interior of Cuba. I could not have a more favorable day. The air is clear, and not excessively hot. The soft clouds float midway in the serene sky, the sun shines fair and bright, and the luxuriance of a perpetual summer covers the face of nature. These strange palm trees everywhere! I cannot yet feel at home among them. Many of the other trees are like our own, and though, tropical in fact, look to the eye as if they might grow as well in New England as here. But the royal palm looks so intensely and exclusively tropical! It cannot grow beyond this narrow belt of the earth’s surface. Its long, thin body, so straight and so smooth, swathed from the foot—in a tight bandage of tawny gray, leaving only its deep-green neck, and over that its crest and plumage of deep-green leaves! It gives no shade, and bears no fruit that is valued by men. And it has no beauty to atone for those wants. Yet it has more than beauty—a strange fascination over the eye and the fancy, that will never allow it to be overlooked or forgotten. The palm tree seems a kind of lusus naturae to the northern eye—an exotic wherever you meet it. It seems to be conscious of its want of usefulness for food or shade, yet has a dignity of its own, a pride of unmixed blood and royal descent—the hidalgo of the soil.
What are those groves and clusters of small growth, looking like Indian corn in a state of transmigration into trees, the stalk turning into a trunk, a thin soft coating half changed to bark, and the ears of corn turning into melons? Those are the bananas and plantains, as their bunches of green and yellow fruits plainly enough indicate, when you come nearer. But, that sad, weeping tree, its long yellow-green leaves drooping to the ground! What can that be? It has a green fruit like a melon. There it is again, in groves! I interrupt my neighbor’s tenth cigarrito, to ask him the name of the tree. It is the cocoa! And that soft green melon becomes the hard shell we break with a hammer. Other trees there are, in abundance, of various forms and foliage, but they might have grown in New England or New York, so far as the eye can teach us; but the palm, the cocoa, the banana and plantain are the characteristic trees you could not possibly meet with in any other zone.
Thickets—jungles I might call them—abound. It seems as if a bird could hardly get through them; yet they are rich with wild flowers of all forms and colors, the white, the purple, the pink, and the blue. The trees are full of birds of all plumage.
