There, at the end of an avenue of palms, in a nest of shade trees, is a group of white buildings, with a sea of cane fields about it, with one high furnace chimney, pouring out its volume of black smoke. This is a sugar plantation—my first sight of an ingenio; and the chimney is for the steam works of the sugar house. It is the height of the sugar season, and the untiring engine toils and smokes day and night. Ox carts, loaded with cane, are moving slowly to the sugar house from the fields; and about the house, and in the fields, in various attitudes and motions of labor, are the Negroes, men and women and children, some cutting the cane, some loading the carts, and some tending the mill and the furnace. It is a busy scene of distant industry, in the afternoon sun of a languid Cuban day.
Now these groups of white one-story buildings become more frequent, sometimes very near each other, all having the same character—the group of white buildings, the mill, with its tall furnace chimney, and the look of a distillery, and all differing from each other only in the number and extent of the buildings, or in the ornament and comfort of shade trees and avenues about them. Some are approached by broad alleys of the palm, or mango, or orange, and have gardens around them, and stand under clusters of shade trees; while others glitter in the hot sun, on the flat sea of cane fields, with only a little oasis of shade trees and fruit trees immediately about the houses.
I now begin to feel that I am in Cuba; in the tropical, rich, sugar-growing, slave-tilled Cuba. Heretofore, I have seen only the cities and their environs, in which there are more things that are common to the rest of the world. The country life tells the story of any people that have a country life. The New England farmhouse shows the heart of New England. The mansion house and cottage show the heart of Old England. The plantation life that I am seeing and about to see, tells the story of Cuba, the Cuba that has been and that is.
As we stop at one station, which seems to be in the middle of a cane field, the Negroes and Coolies go to the cane, slash off a piece with their knives, cut off the rind and chew the stick of soft, saccharine pulp, the juice running out of their mouths as they eat. They seem to enjoy it so highly, that I am tempted to try the taste of it, myself. But I shall have time for all this at La Ariadne.
These stations consist merely of one or two buildings, where the produce of the neighborhood is collected for transportation, and a which there are very few passengers. The railroad is intended for the carriage of sugar and other produce, and gets its support almost entirely in that way; for it runs through a sparse, rural population, where there are no towns; yet so large and valuable is the sugar crop that I believe the road is well supported. At each station, are its hangers-on of free Negroes, a few slaves on duty as carriers, a few low whites, and now and then someone who looks as if he might be an overseer or mayoral of a plantation.
Limonar, appears in large letters on the small building where we next stop, and I get out and inquire of a squad of idlers for the plantation of Señor C⸺. They point to a group of white buildings, about a quarter of a mile distant, standing prettily under high shade trees, and approached by an avenue of orange trees. Getting a tall Negro to shoulder my bag, for a real, I walk to the house. It is an afternoon of exquisite beauty. How can anyone have a weather sensation, in such an air as this? There is no current of the slightest chill anywhere, neither is it oppressively hot. The air is serene and pure and light. The sky gives its mild assurance of settled fair weather. All about me is rich verdure, over a gently undulating surface of deeply fertile country, with here and there a high hill in the horizon, and, on one side, a ridge that may be called mountains. There is no sound but that of the birds, and in the next tree they may be counted by hundreds. Wild flowers, of all colors and scents, cover the ground and the thickets. This is the famous red earth, too. The avenue looks as if it had been laid down with pulverized brick, and all the dust on any object you see is red. Now we turn into the straight avenue of orange trees—prim, deep-green trees, glittering with golden fruit. Here is the one-story, high-roofed house, with long, high piazzas. There is a high wall, carefully whitewashed, enclosing a square with one gate, looking like a garrisoned spot. That must be the Negroes’ quarters; for there is a group of little Negroes at the gate, looking earnestly at the approaching stranger. Beyond is the sugar house, and
