At the chief stations on the road, there are fruit-sellers in abundance, with fruit fresh from the trees: oranges, bananas, sapotes, and cocoas. The cocoa is eaten at an earlier stage than that in which we see it at the North, for it is gathered for exportation after it has become hard. It is eaten here when no harder than a melon, and is cut through with a knife, and the soft white pulp, mixed with the milk, is eaten with a spoon. It is luscious and wholesome, much more so than when the rind has hardened into the shell, and the soft pulp into a hard meat.
A little later in the afternoon, the character of the views begins to change. The ingenios and cane fields become less frequent, then cease altogether, and the houses have more the appearance of pleasure retreats than of working estates. The roads show lines of mules and horses, loaded with panniers of fruits, or sweeping the ground with the long stalks of fresh fodder laid across their backs, all moving towards a common centre. Pleasure carriages appear. Next comes the distant view of the Castle of Atares, and the Príncipe, and then the harbor and the sea, the belt of masts, the high ridge of fortifications, the blue and white and yellow houses, with brown tops; and now we are in the streets of Havana.
It seems like coming home; and I feel as if I had been an age away, when it is only eight days since I first saw Cuba. Here are the familiar signs—Por mayor y menor, Posada y Cantina, Tienda, Panadería, Relojería, and the fanciful names of the shops, the high pitched falsetto cries of the streets, the long files of mules and horses, with panniers of fruit, or hidden, all but their noses and tails, under stacks of fresh fodder, the volantes, and the motley multitude of whites, blacks, and Chinese, soldiers and civilians, and occasionally priests—Negro women, lottery ticket vendors, and the girl musicians with their begging tambourines.
The same idlers are at the door of Le Grand’s; a rehearsal, as usual, is going on at the head of the first flight; and the parrot is blinking at the hot, white walls of the court yard, and screaming bits of Spanish. My New York friends have got back from the country a day before me. I am installed in a better room than before, on the housetop, where the sun is hot, but where there is air and a view of the ocean.
XVII
At Havana—Dr. Howe—Trial of Señor Maestri—Music of the contradanza.
The warm bath round the corner, is a refreshment after a day’s railroad ride in such heat; and there, in the front room, the man in his shirt sleeves is serving out liquor, as before, and the usual company of Creoles is gathered about the billiard tables. After a dinner in the handsome, airy restaurant of Le Grand’s, I drive into the city in the evening, to the close streets of the Entramuros, and pay a visit to the lady whom I failed to see on my arrival. I am so fortunate as to meet her, and beside the pleasure to be found in her society, I am glad to be able to give her personal information from her attached and sympathizing friends, at the North.
While I am there, a tinkling sound of bells is heard in the streets, and lights flash by. It is a procession, going to carry the viaticum, the last sacrament, to a dying person.
From this house, I drove towards the water side, past the Plaza de Armas, the old Plaza de San Francisco, with its monastery turned into an almazen (a storehouse of merchandise), through the Calle de los Officios, to the boardinghouse of Madame Almy, to call upon Dr. and Mrs. Howe. Mr. Parker left Havana, as he intended, last Tuesday, for Santa Cruz. He found Havana rather too hot for his comfort, and Santa Cruz, the most healthful and temperate of the islands, had always been his destination. He had visited a few
