From flag to flag

Summer on a sugar-plantation is what is known in common parlance as the “dead season.” The days are long and hot. Work begins before the dawn, pauses at midday, and ends when it is too dark to see. And the latter is an uncertain hour, for the radiance of the moon in that latitude is quite surprising. The middle of the summer’s day is devoted to rest. From the tap of the great bell at noon, to two taps at 3 P. M., no work is done, everybody eats and sleeps. When it is unusually rainy, and summer is the rainy season, still less work can be accomplished. As the day waxes and the heat becomes so intense that it seems impossible to be hotter, the rain, the blessed rain, descends in torrents, often from a cloudless sky.

We frequently walked fifty yards to the garden, when the sun was glowing with tropical fervor, to enjoy the shade of the umbrageous fruit-trees, and in five minutes there would descend such a flood of rain that we would be drenched before reaching the house.

It was never comfortable or safe to ride on horseback ever so short a distance without umbrella and extra coat—water-proofs they had never heard of. Portable sheds were erected at suitable distances in the fields for refuge from showers that were due at any moment from noon to sunset. Many a time, from the garden, I have seen the laborers in the field, working under the broiling sun, suddenly drop their hoes and run to shelter; it was raining on them, and not where I stood. We frequently looked out from our veranda while all was bright sunshine about us, and, pointing to a gray belt on one side, “It is raining at the Lima,” to a belt on another side, “It is raining at the Josefita”; another belt midway, “Now, see, it rains at Palos,” just as distinct little belts of falling water as though they were gray ribbons stretched from sky to earth, and all around and between a clear blue sky and a blaring sun.

There was a large field near the house that, after years of cultivation, had been pronounced exhausted, and was abandoned to the weeds. Lamo, feeling confident that, with proper treatment, it could be made fruitful, imported from Louisiana subsoil plows, and, with four yoke of heavy oxen to each plow, set about breaking up the land. Horses and mules are not used for plantation purposes. Oxen are the sole beasts of burden. A heavy beam across the nape of the necks, secured by rawhide thongs passing around the horns and across the forehead, attaches the animal to the plow (or cart), and the draught comes upon the head. Lamo’s immense plows were unheard-of innovations, and so at variance with any cultivation ever before seen, that the strongest field-hands could not manage them, and my husband himself had to run a furrow to show what could and must be done. Once thoroughly understanding, the stalwart men, with ebon backs glistening with moisture, drove the plows deep into the earth, the teams were started, and, as the straining oxen slowly moved, furrows of rich earth were rolled up, fully confirming Lamo’s faith in the latent wealth of the soil.

We rode from our fields to see how one of our near neighbors was cultivating, and paused in the shade of a zapote-tree to see Don Fulgencio plow. The old planter said he was eighty-four, and he looked every day of it. His weazened, weather-beaten, tobacco-smoked face was so seamed with thready wrinkles that it scarcely looked human; but Don Fulgencio had some energy, and was plowing the poor, rocky field that he inherited from his father, and that had never known any better cultivation than it was receiving then—a stake that raked the ground producing very little more impression than the broom-stick a boy rides on a dusty road. An ox, attached to the stake by a rope fastened around its horns, walked sleepily along, with scarcely energy enough to switch its tail. Don Fulgencio pushed the primitive plow, while a little blackie ran by the side of the animal, clicking and occasionally poking it in the well-defined ribs with a long stick when it went entirely to sleep. In the distance was the cot of the patriarch, a simple, home-made, palm-thatched cot, with neither chimney nor window, and with dirt floors. Wide-open doors led out to a covered veranda, where his two pretty-faced daughters were sewing, with a half-dozen little naked negroes playing at their feet. The old mother, deaf and almost blind, sat in the doorway and smoked, smoked, smoked strong, home-made cigars till she was perfectly stupid, and dried like a herring. The sons—there were several of them—were probably at a cock-fight or in the nearest bodega. As the aged Don approached with his plow, we exchanged salutations. In his slippered feet and coarse linen shirt hanging outside the pantaloons, he had the graces and courtesies of the most polished gentleman. “Wouldn’t we alight? Wouldn’t we accept a cup of coffee, the day is so warm, or a lemonade? His house, himself, all he owns is at our disposal.” This with a bow and a wave of the toil-stained hand that almost confused us with its lordly style. We were not quite familiar with such high-flown speeches, and simply paused to exchange the courtesies of the day, then rode back to our own well-cultivated fields.

It was a hard task to get comfortably through the first summer at Desengaño. It was an unusually wet season. Sometimes for days we saw the sun only when it rose in ethereal fields of glory, and when it descended amid billows of gorgeous golden and crimson clouds. All day long the rain fell in torrents, and the waters poured and rushed in the furrows through the fields. The negroes huddled under the broad eaves of the sugar-house and other farm-buildings; and Lamo walked restlessly about the dwelling, noting great patches of grass here and there through the fields, that had sprung up like magic since yesterday, choking the tender young cane. It either poured in a deluge or dripped, dripped, with a damp, splashing sound that made one almost shiver, though the atmosphere was hot and musty.

On those days we had to rub mold off the shoes every morning, and wear damp clothes—and sometimes move the table into the parlor, when an unusual down-pour flooded the venetian protected dining-room. On those wet, miserable days, cunning little green lizards crept in from the dripping vines that garlanded the iron-barred windows; ants swarmed in from their flooded nests, and there was unusual visitation of the insect life that crept or flew about us more or less all the time. Milk foamed and seethed like yeast in the pans before the cream had had time to rise to the surface. Meat cooked one day was sour and rancid the next. Oh, those wet, summer days, how long and tedious and uncomfortable they were! In Cuba there are no fireplaces or places for fire in the houses. Cooking is done in small charcoal furnaces set in solid masonry, arranged so as to concentrate the heat beneath the cooking-utensils, and radiate as little as possible. Thus, even the kitchen afforded no facilities for drying clothing or warming one’s self. There was no glass in the windows; when it rained in on one side, we closed the solid wooden shutters, and moved to the other side with our sticky sewing and rusty needles. The table-linen, bedding, books, everything became damp and clammy, with the peculiar odor of mold. There were two weeks of such weather at one stretch, preceded and followed by showery, sunshiny days, when the rains were short, sudden, and partial, so that field-work was not entirely suspended.

In our spring rambles down the avenue and through the fields, Ellie and I picked up a number of dainty little white shells; and Henry returned from his explorations in the woods with pockets full of red and yellow beans, such as are now brought in quantities from Florida, whither they have been borne by the Gulf Stream from the tropical zone, and scattered along the sandy beach.

When that dull, rainy spell set in, we amused ourselves by ornamenting a tall, three-cornered, home-made stand of shelves that was found in the infirmary. A portion of each day was spent gluing the beans and shells in pretty combinations of color and design all over the étagère, as we now called it.

In due time we produced a piece of furniture that was really a beauty; the wood completely covered, so that the entire exterior was a mosaic of odd forms and varied colors. It was proudly moved into a conspicuous corner of the parlor, a few vases and knickknacks arranged upon it, and there it stood, the admiration and wonder of every one that entered the house so long as we remained at Desengaño.

Of the china, pictures, books, etc., sent to various supposed places of safety when our Louisiana home was threatened, nothing could be found, when we had once more an abiding-place, but a box of books. The house where the pictures were stored was robbed in the absence of its owner, and years after I heard that some of our family portraits had been seen in the cabins of neighboring negroes. The china—a wedding anniversary gift, and therefore doubly prized—had never been wholly unpacked; the few sample pieces that were taken out at Arlington were carefully replaced, and the cask sent to my widowed sister’s plantation on Bayou Fordoche. While General Lawlor was in command in the vicinity, the enterprising colonel of a New York regiment “captured” it while passing through the plantation. Some efforts were made for the recovery of the china, but they were unsuccessful, and later my sister was informed that it had been shipped North. When the books arrived, we felt very much like the parson whose hat was passed around and returned to him empty, “thankful that nobody took the hat.” In the general and indiscriminate custom of “appropriating” that prevailed during that exciting period we were thankful that nobody took the books.

Rejoicing to see their dear old faces, we planned a tier of shelves in the parlor for their reception. With the exception of a fine French and Spanish library in the office of our merchant in Havana, ours was the only receptacle for books that I ever saw in Cuba. There were scattered volumes about the houses, but barely enough to make it necessary to provide a place for them. The universal exclamation of visitors, on entering the parlor at Desengaño, was, “Ay! que libros!” (“What a number of books!”) No Cuban woman could understand why we read so much. Her everyday literature consisted of simpering “to be continued” stories in the daily newspapers, which were so completely under government espionage that their news consisted of an editorial laudatory of Spain; a paragraph relating the killing of, perhaps, one insurrectionist and the capture of two others, and a horse, in some engagement of the previous week; some legal notices, arrivals and departures of steamers, notices of funeral services, where any “visiting priest desiring to assist would receive the gratuity of un escudo ($2.12¹⁄₂),” etc. Our private mail, on steamer days, was greater than that of all the neighbors combined; besides numbers of letters, we regularly received papers and periodicals from the States. Twice a week the whole family assembled on the veranda to greet Zell, with the anxiously looked-for mail-bag! American engineers in that vicinity, even miles remote, availed themselves of every opportunity to borrow newspapers from us; apparently caring very little how old the dates, so long as they brought tidings from home. We willingly obliged them, and the courtesy was so thoroughly appreciated that at any time, when accidents to the machinery rendered skilled mechanical labor necessary, we could command the best talent in the partido, often without recompense. In fact, the rumor that the engine at “Los Americanos” had broken down would bring with dispatch volunteer aid for leagues around. Oftentimes persons whom we had never seen, brought their own introductions, and expressed themselves as gratified at being able to make some return for the rare pleasure they had derived from the newspapers and magazines we had so freely circulated.