To Cuba and Back

Cuban passengers; and all the comparisons, hitherto, had been favorable to our country⁠—the style of the vessels, and the manner in which the three boats, the health-boat, the revenue-boat, and the news-boat, discharged their duties. But here was rather a counterset. The strangers saw it in a worse light than we did. We knew it was only a lawless fight for fares, and would end in a few blows, and perhaps the loss of a bag or trunk or two. But in their eyes, it looked like an insurrection of the lower orders. They did not know where it would end. One elderly lady, in particular, with great varieties of luggage, and speaking no English, was in special trepidation, and could not be persuaded to trust herself or her luggage to the chances of the conflict, which she was sure would take place over it.

But it is the genius of our people to get out of difficulties, as well as to get into them. The affair soon calms down; the crowd thins off, as passengers select their coachmen, and leave the boat; and in an hour or so after we touch the wharf, the decks are still, the engine is breathing out its last, the ship has done its stint in the commerce of the world, Bullock and Rodgers are shaken by the hand, complimented and bade adieu to by all, and our chance-gathered household of the last five days, not to meet again on earth or sea⁠—is scattered among the streets of the great city, to the snow-lined hills of New England, and over the wide world of the great West.

Endnotes

1. I have no right to introduce the public to the house of Mr. C⁠⸺. But that has already been done. Many tourists, and last and most unreservedly of all, Miss Bremer, in her Homes of the New World, have already given it such publicity, that I have thought my lighter step would not be felt on the beaten way. ↩

2. While these sheets are in press, the newspapers report that a fire has spread over a section of country between Matanzas and Cardenas, not only destroying the standing cane, but burning up houses, sugar mills, and the sugar and molasses stored for the market. Several lives were lost by the conflagration, which affected, more or less above twenty plantations. ↩

3. Since my return, it has been officially announced that a commission is to be appointed to revise and reduce the tariffs of duties. ↩

Colophon

To Cuba and Back
was published in 1887 by
Richard Henry Dana Jr.

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