Foot-prints of Travel by Maturin Murray Ballou (buy e reader TXT) 📖

the opposite horizons at the same time, the constellation on our port side (left-hand), and the North Star on the starboard side. Each day at noon the captain and his officers determine the exact position of the ship by "taking the sun," as it is termed. When the sun reaches the meridian, that is, the point directly overhead, the exact moment is indicated by the nautical instrument known as a quadrant, adjusted to the eye of the observer. The figures marked on the quadrant give the latitude of the ship at the moment of meridian. The ship's time is then made to correspond,--that is to say, it must indicate twelve o'clock noon,--after which it is compared with an exact timepiece called a chronometer, which keeps Greenwich (English) time, and the difference enables the observer to determine the longitude. As fifteen miles are allowed to the minute, there will be nine hundred miles to the hour. Thus, by means of the chronometer and the quadrant, the sailing-master is enabled to designate his exact situation upon the ocean chart.

Soon after passing the remarkably sheltered port of Guantanamo, which was for nearly a century the most notorious piratical rendezvous in the West Indies, the famous castle of Santiago is seen. It is called Moro Castle, but it is older than the better-known Moro of Havana, by nearly a hundred years. This antique, yellow, Moorish-looking stronghold, which modern gunnery would destroy in ten minutes or less, is picturesque to the last degree, with its crumbling, honey-combed battlements, and queer little flanking towers. It is built upon the face of a lofty, dun-colored rock, upon whose precipitous side the fortification is terraced. Its position is just at the entrance of the narrow river leading to the city, six or eight miles away, so that in passing up the channel one can speak from the ship's deck to any one who might be standing on the outer battlement of the Moro.

The winding channel which leads from the sea to the harbor passes through low hills and broad meadows covered with rank verdure, cocoanut groves, and fishing hamlets. Thrifty palms and intensely green bananas line the way, with here and there upon the pleasant banks a charming country-house in the midst of a garden fragrant with flowers. So close is the shore all the while that one seems to be navigating upon the land, gliding among trees and over greensward rather than upon blue water. Steaming slowly up the Santiago River, we presently pass a sharp angle of the hills, leading into a broad sheltered bay, upon whose banks stands the rambling old city of Santiago de Cuba, built on a hillside like Tangier, in Africa, and it is almost as Oriental as the capital of Morocco. The first and most conspicuous objects to meet the eye are the twin towers of the ancient cathedral, which have withstood so many earthquakes.

This city, once the capital of the island of Cuba, was founded by Velasquez, and is now gray with age and decay. The many-colored, one-story houses are ranged in narrow streets, which cross each other at right angles with considerable regularity, though the roadways are in an almost impassable condition. They were once paved with cobblestones, but are now dirty and neglected, a stream of offensive water flowing through their centres, in which little naked children, blacks and whites, are at play. No wonder that such numbers die here annually of yellow fever. The surprise is that it does not prevail all the year round.

Santiago dates back to the year 1514, making it the oldest city in the New World, next to San Domingo. From here Cortez sailed in 1518 to invade Mexico. Here has been the seat of modern rebellion against the arbitrary and bitterly oppressive rule of the home government of Spain. The city contains over forty thousand inhabitants, and is situated six hundred miles southeast of Havana; after Matanzas, it comes next in commercial importance, its exports reaching the annual aggregate of eight millions of dollars. After climbing and descending these narrow, dirty streets of Santiago, and watching the local characteristics for a few hours, one is glad to go on board ship again, and leave it all behind.

To reach Cienfuegos, our next destination, we take water conveyance, the common roads in this district being, if possible, a degree worse than elsewhere on the island. It is necessary to double Cape Cruz and make a coasting voyage along the southern shore of the island, for a distance of four hundred miles. This is really delightful sailing in any but the hurricane months; that is, between the middle of August and the middle of October.

Cienfuegos has some twenty-five thousand inhabitants, a large percentage of whom speak English, nine-tenths of its commerce being with this country. It was in this immediate neighborhood, as Columbus tells us, on the occasion of his second voyage from Spain, that he saw with astonishment the mysterious king who spoke to his people only by signs, and that group of men who wore long white tunics like the monks of mercy, while the rest of the people were entirely naked. The town is low and level, occupying a broad plain. The streets are wide and clean, while the harbor is an excellent and spacious one. It is pitiful to behold such an array of beggars, and it is strange, too, in so small a city. Here the maimed, the halt, and the blind meet us at every turn. Saturday is the harvest day for beggars in Cuban cities, on which occasion they go about by scores from door to door, carrying a large canvas bag. Each well-to-do family and shop is supplied on this day with a quantity of small rolls of bread, one of which is almost invariably given to any beggar who calls, and thus the mendicant's bag presently becomes full of rolls. These, mixed with a few vegetables, bits of fish, and sometimes meat and bones, are boiled into a soup which at least keeps soul and body together in the poor creatures until another Saturday comes round.

Cienfuegos is in the centre of a great sugar-producing district. Sugar-cane is cultivated much like Indian corn, which it also resembles in appearance. It is first planted in rows and weeded until it gets high enough to shade its roots, after which it is left pretty much to itself until it reaches maturity. This refers to the first laying out of a plantation, which will afterwards continue to throw up fresh stalks from the roots, with a little help from the hoe, for several years. When ripe the cane is of a light golden yellow, streaked here and there with red. The top is dark green, with long narrow leaves depending,--very much like those of corn,--from the centre of which shoots upward a silvery stem fifteen or eighteen inches in height, and from the tip grows a white-fringed plume. The effect of a large field at maturity lying under a torrid sun, and gently yielding to the breeze, is very fine.

Though the modern machinery for crushing, grinding, and extracting the sugar from the cane as lately adopted on the Cuban plantations is expensive, still the result obtained is so much superior to that of the old methods, that small planters are being driven from the market. The low price of sugar and the great competition in its production renders economy in the manufacture quite necessary, especially now that slave labor is abolished.

The delightful climate is exemplified by the abundance and variety of fruits and flowers. Let us visit a private garden in the environs of the city. Here the mango with its peach-like foliage is found, bending to the ground with the weight of its ripening fruit; the alligator-pear is wonderfully beautiful in its blossom, suggesting in form and color the passion-flower; the soft, delicate foliage of the tamarind is like our sensitive plant; the banana-trees are in full bearing, the deep green fruit (it is ripened and turns yellow off the tree), being in clusters of nearly a hundred, tipped at the same time by a single, pendent, glutinous bud nearly as large as a pineapple. Here we see also the star-apple-tree, remarkable for its uniform and graceful shape, full of green fruit, with here and there a ripening specimen. The zapota, in its rusty coat, hangs in tempting abundance. From low, broad-spreading trees hangs the grape fruit, as large as a baby's head and yellow as gold; while the orange and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, and green and ripening fruit all together, serve to charm the eye and to fill the garden with rich fragrance.

Let us examine one of these products in detail, selecting the banana as being the most familiar to us at the north. It seems that the female banana-tree (for we must remember that there are sexes in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom), bears more fruit than the male, but not so large. The average clusters of the former comprise about one hundred, but the latter rarely bears over sixty or seventy distinct specimens of this finger-shaped fruit. The stem grows to about ten feet in height; from the centre of its broad leaves, which gather palm-like at the top, there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone-like bud hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the night dews, the sheltering leaf drops off, and another unfolds, exposing its little brood of fruit; and so the process goes on until six or eight rings of young bananas are started, which gradually develop to full size. The banana is a plant which dies down to the ground after fruiting, but it annually sprouts again from the same roots.

We will continue our journey towards Havana by way of Matanzas, crossing the island so as to penetrate at once into a section of luxuriant tropical nature, where we see the cactus in great variety, flowering trees, and ever-graceful palms, with occasional trees of the ceba family grown to vast size. Vegetation here, unlike human beings, seems never to grow old, never to falter in productiveness; crop succeeds crop, harvest follows harvest; it is an endless cycle of abundance. Miles upon miles of the bright, golden sugar-cane lie in all directions; among the plantations here and there is seen the little cluster of low buildings constituting the laborers' quarters, and near by is the tall, white chimney of the sugar-mill, emitting its thick volume of smoke, like the funnel of a steamship. A little on one side stands the planter's house, low and white, surrounded by shade-trees and flower-plats. Scores of dusky Africans give life to the scene, and the overseer, on his little Cuban pony, dashes hither and thither to keep all hands advantageously at work. One large gang is busy cutting the ripe cane with sword-like knives; some are loading the stalks upon ox-carts; some are driving loads to the mill; and some are feeding the cane between the great steel crushers, beneath which pours forth a continuous jelly-like stream which is conducted by iron pipes to the boilers. Men, women, and children are spreading the refuse to dry in the sun, after which it will be used as fuel beneath the boilers. Coopers are heading up hogsheads full of the manufactured article, and other laborers are rolling up empty ones to be filled. Formerly the overseers were never seen without the long-lashed whip, but slavery no longer exists as an institution. The negroes are free, though they work for very small wages.

Occasionally in the trip across the island we