MATANZAS

As there are no plantations to be seen near Havana, I determine to go down to Matanzas, near which the sugar plantations are in full tide of operation at this season. A steamer leaves here every night at ten o’clock, reaching Matanzas before daylight, the distance by sea being between fifty and sixty miles.

Took this steamer to-night. She got under way punctually at ten o’clock, and steamed down the harbor. The dark waters are alive with phosphorescent light. From each ship that lies moored, the cable from the bows, tautened to its anchor, makes a run of silver light. Each boat, gliding silently from ship to ship, and shore to shore, turns up a silver ripple at its stem, and trails a wake of silver behind; while the dip of the oar-blades brings up liquid silver, dripping, from the opaque deep. We pass along the side of the two-decker, and see through her ports the lanterns and men; under the stern of one frigate, and across the bows of another (for Havana is well supplied with men-of-war); and drop leisurely down by the Cabana, where we are hailed from the rocks; and bend round the Morro, and are out on the salt, rolling sea. Having a day of work before me, I went early to my berth, and was waked up by the letting off of steam, in the lower harbor of Matanzas, at three o’clock in the morning. My fellow-passengers, who sat up, said the little steamer tore and plunged, and jumped through the water like a thing that had lost its wits. They seemed to think that the Cuban engineer had got a machine that would some day run away with him. It was, certainly, a very short passage.

We passed a good many vessels lying at anchor in the lower harbor of Matanzas, and came to anchor about a mile from the pier. It was clear, bright moonlight. The small boats came off to us, and took us and our luggage ashore. I was landed alone on a quay, carpet-bag in hand, and had to guess my way to the inn, which was near the water-side. I beat on the big, close-barred door; and a sleepy Negro, in time, opened it. Mine host was up, expecting passengers, and after waiting on the very tardy movements of the Negro, who made a separate journey to the yard for each thing the room needed, I got to bed by four o’clock, on the usual piece of canvas stretched over an iron frame, in a room having a brick floor, and windows without glass closed with big-bolted shutters.

After coffee, walked out to deliver my letters to Mr.  , an American merchant, who has married the daughter of a planter, a gentleman of wealth and character. He is much more agreeable and painstaking than we have any right to expect of one who is served so frequently with notice that his attentions are desired for the entertainment of a stranger. Knowing that it is my wish to visit a plantation, he gives me a letter to Don Juan Chartrand, who has an ingenio (sugar plantation), called La Ariadne, near Limonar, and about twenty-five miles back in the country from Matanzas. The train leaves at 2.30 P.M., which gives me several hours for the city.

Although it is not yet nine o’clock, it is very hot, and one is glad to keep on the shady side of the broad streets of Matanzas. This city was built later and more under foreign direction than Havana, and I have been told, not by persons here however, that for many years the controlling influences of society were French, English, and American; but that lately the policy of the government has been to discourage foreign influence, and now Spanish customs prevail bull-fights have been introduced, and other usages and entertainments which had had no place here before. Whatever may be the reason, this city differs from Havana in buildings, vehicles, and dress, and in the width of its streets, and has less of the peculiar air of a tropical city. It has about 25,000 inhabitants, and stands where two small rivers, the Yumuri and the San Juan, crossed by handsome stone bridges, run into the sea, dividing the city into three parts. The vessels lie at anchor from one to three miles below the city, and lighters, with masts and sails, line the stone quays of the little rivers. The city is flat and hot, but the country around is picturesque, hilly, and fertile. To the westward of the town, rises a ridge, bordering on the sea, called the Cumbre, which is a place of resort for the beauty of its views; and in front of the Cumbre, on the inland side, is the deep rich valley of the Yumuri, with its celebrated cavern. These I must see, if I can, on my return from the plantation.

In my morning walk, I see a company of coolies, in the hot sun, carrying stones to build a house, under the eye of a taskmaster who sits in the shade. The stones have been dropped in a pile, from carts, and the coolies, carry them, in files, to the cellar of the house. They are naked to the waist, with short-legged cotton trousers coming to the knees. Some of these men were strongly, one or two of them powerfully built, but many seemed very thin and frail. While looking on, I saw an evident American face near me, and getting into conversation with the man, found him an intelligent shipmaster from New York, who had lived in Matanzas for a year or two, engaged in business. He told me, as I had heard in Havana, that the importer of the coolies gets $400 a head for them from the purchaser, and that the coolies are entitled from the purchaser to four dollars a month, which they may demand monthly if they choose, and are bound to eight years’ service, during which time they may be held to all the service that a slave is subject to. They are more intelligent, and are put to higher labor than the Negro. He said, too, it would not do to flog a coolie. Idolaters as they are, they have a notion of the dignity of the human body, at least as against strangers, which does not allow them to submit to the indignity of corporal chastisement. If a coolie is flogged, somebody must die; either the coolie himself, for they are fearfully given to suicide, or the perpetrator of the indignity, or some one else, according to their strange principles of vicarious punishment. Yet such is the value of labor in Cuba, that a citizen will give $400, in cash, for the chance of enforcing eight years’ labor, at $4 per month, from a man speaking a strange language, worshipping strange gods or none, thinking suicide a virtue, and governed by no moral laws in common with his master his value being yet further diminished by the chances of natural death, of sickness, accident, escape, and of forfeiting his services to the government, for any crime he may commit against laws he does not understand.

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 Concepcion 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!