From flag to flag

In a few days Lamo returned, bringing Zell, whom he summoned to Havana to interpret from English into Spanish; and Ramon, a Chinese, whose term of service on the plantation was drawing to a close, to interpret from Spanish into Chinese; also thirty-five newly imported coolies. The new crowd presented a grotesque appearance. Beardless, and with long pig-tails, loose blouses, and baggy breeches, they looked like women. Stolid, quiet, and undemonstrative as Indians, they tumbled out of the wagon that had been sent to the depot for them. Having been months on the voyage, packed in a coolie-ship, and fed on light rations of tea and rice, they were in no physical condition to work, or to endure the showers that were already beginning to be of daily occurrence; so some light occupation in the vicinity of the house was assigned to them, and when a poor fellow rubbed his stomach, rolled up his eyes, and patted his head, he was forthwith marched to the infirmary and dosed. From long privation on ship, with the stimulation of climatic change, they were so voracious that, if permitted to eat all the food craved, they would have gorged themselves to death.

A moderate allowance was meted out three times daily, which disappeared with marvelous rapidity, leaving them muttering and discontented. Coming as they did from various districts, and speaking different dialects, they could not always communicate intelligibly with each other, and it required under the best of circumstances two interpreters to reach the ear of Lamo.

For many days the Chinese, now giving unmistakable tokens of refractory discontent, were our chief topic of thought and conversation. We could not understand their constant complaints, and so worried along, hoping that time, which heals most things, would adjust matters. Unwilling to allot them any regular occupation, we dared not allow them to saunter at their own sweet will under the mango-trees, now laden with unripe fruit; so, on the whole, life was almost as much of a burden to us, with this new discontented element, as it was to the Chinese themselves.

Long ago formal application had been made, through the grasping captain, for the return of our arms from Matanzas, but without any response. We watched with ever-increasing anxiety the gradual recovery of strength, coupled with angry insubordination, in the new ranks. The climax arrived, as is usually the case, in an unguarded moment. One morning Lamo and Henry, who for weeks had hovered around the house, rode off to visit a neighbor.

Suddenly our ears were assailed by a low, rumbling noise in the distance, which rose rapidly to shouts and unearthly yells. Before I could rise from my seat to make inquiry, Zell rushed in breathless. “Chinese is riz! Don’t be skeered—I’ll git my gun.” And from under his own bed he hastily pulled out an old blunderbuss. The doors and windows of the house were quickly barred, and with a calm self-possession—the thought of which almost makes me turn pale now—I stood outside the rear door. The Chinese were in full rebellion: stripped to the middle, their swarthy bodies glistening in the hot sun, they rushed with savage impetuosity up the road, leaped the low stone fence that surrounded the cluster of plantation-buildings, of which the massive dwelling-house formed the center, brandishing their hoes in a most threatening manner, and yelling like demons, as with hastily grasped rocks from the fences they pelted the retreating overseer. Ramon rushed from his bench at the carpenter-shop, and did his best to stem the tide; but they brushed him by in their determined assault upon the overseer, who, while issuing them full rations, would not yield to their demand for an unlimited supply of food.

When the howling horde had completely invaded the inclosure, and showed no abatement of their frenzy, I called to Ramon to ring the bell. Seizing the rope, he gave it a succession of rapid strokes.

The plantation-bell, weighing nine hundred pounds, and mounted on a high frame, was tolled for all ordinary purposes—calling the hands from the field, changing the watch during sugar-making, marking the hours for meals; but a pealing, rapid ring was the signal of danger, to which not only the district captain but neighbors responded.

Zell headed off the crowd as best he could, but rocky missiles fell thick about the mayoral, frequently striking his frightened horse. Seeing no sign of cessation of hostilities, I called upon Zell to fire! Strange to say, they knew nothing about a gun, and were only afraid of a sword; so the presence of Zell with his blunderbuss had not in the slightest degree intimidated the furious crowd. At my command, he fired at random; but one man received the charge in his hip, and with a wild shriek fell over. This produced some consternation and confusion, in the midst of which the terrified mayoral made good his escape. Lamo and Henry, hearing the alarming peals of the bell, put spurs to their horses and came galloping up. The insurgent rebels, finding the overseer gone, and one of their number wounded, began to quiet down, gradually strolling to the veranda of their own barracoon, where they assembled in groups and fanned themselves, apparently waiting to see what we were “going to do about it.”

The alarm-signal had been heard at the village, and very soon the captain and his merry men made their appearance on the scene. Swords were drawn, and the insurgent army slapped by the glittering blades into line, in short order. The captain asked their complaint, and it required a blow or two from his sword to elicit any response; but in time, through Ramon, they made their grievances known. He then read their contract to them, Ramon repeating it sentence by sentence in Chinese. They stood in a double row—thirty-five of them—sullen but somewhat defiant, straight upright and a bit arrogant. The soldiers with drawn swords, at the order of el capitan, walked up the ranks, taking each by the long pig-tail and with one blow severing it close to the head. How quickly they wilted! how cowed they looked! The captain then prepared to chain them in couples, but Lamo interposed, begging that no further punishment should be inflicted. That official reluctantly yielded, protesting that they did not seem at all submissive, and he was sure he would have to make another visit before they would be content.

Gradually order was restored. Fortunately, the wounded man was only slightly injured, for the blunderbuss was loaded with bird-shot. The valiant mayoral returned and marched the cowed and sullen ranks back to their work in the field. Martha “calkerlated she’d go and gather up all dat har, and sell it to some of dese here señoritas.” She collected a basketful of tightly-braided tails, and hired another darky to clean them. Black as is the hair of a señorita, that of a Chinaman is many shades blacker. Chinese hair, besides, was a drug in the market, and so I think she eventually made a pillow of it.

We commended Zell for his prowess. Lamo, with a sly glance in the direction of the mayoral, said that he felt quite safe to leave Miss ’Liza in his care, for he was no coward. When asked how he happened with a gun when we did not know there was one on the place, he answered: “Soon as dat dar ole captain open his mouf ’bout guns, I know’d what he was arfter dat time, and I jist run in and hid mine and little Mars Henry’s fur back under my bed, I never sed nuthin’ ’tall ’bout it, nudder; I know’d we warn’t safe here stripped of every impliment, so I jist hid a couple, but I didn’t say nuthin’, for I ain’t forgot de trick Mars Jim played on me ’bout dat watch.”

The Chinese were intelligent, and it seems almost incredible that any people could be reduced to such abject poverty as would lead to selling themselves or some member of their family into servitude, but such was the fact. No doubt, however, many of them were felons and dangerous characters; for we heard that numbers were landed in Cuba with only one ear, and some without any, and these were perhaps sold by their own government to the importing company. Even in this low and depraved class it was rare to find one so ignorant as not to be able to read in his own language and keep his slender accounts. Each man, before embarking from China, subscribed to a printed contract, one page in Spanish and the other in Chinese characters, setting forth that Ah Sin (Christian name José), province of Macao, is contracted with his own free-will and consent to—“La Alianza y Co.”—to do field-labor, to be granted one day in seven for rest, two full suits of clothing, one blanket and one overcoat annually, twelve ounces of meat and two and a quarter pounds of vegetables—yams or rice—per day; medical attendance and medicines; comfortable living quarters, and four dollars in gold monthly; the privilege also of complaining to the captain of the partido, in case of non-compliance with these terms. The Spanish law, in regard to the management and treatment of Chinese coolies by the contractors for their labor, was very explicit and generous to the laborers. One of their own race only, or a white man, could oversee their work. No punishment but confinement in the stocks was permitted. If the planter found them insubordinate, and requiring severer discipline, they must be reported to the captain. The Chinese, when once acclimated and accustomed to the routine, were docile and industrious; they could not stand the same amount of exposure as an African, but they were intelligent and ingenious; within-doors, in the sugar factory, in the carpenter-shop, in the cooper-shop, in driving teams, they were superior to the negro. They were orderly and cleanly; the poorest, lowest coolie carried his contract on his person, and never hesitated to assert his rights, but sometimes had to be reminded that the planter also had rights; and it generally happened that each new lot arriving on a plantation had to be interviewed by the captain of the partido two or three times, to reduce them to a proper regard for the discipline of a well-managed estate. After the first season they became acclimated and accustomed to their duties, and when their contract expired their experience rendered them very valuable, and they readily commanded higher wages, though few chose planting as an occupation. Before the insurrection in Cuba there was no restraint placed upon the movements of that class from one domicile to another. They were allowed to flock into cities and villages, where they became wonderful peddlers or small shopkeepers, and readily found employment as brakemen on railroads, or in any occupation other than digging in the ground.

Nostalgia was frequent among the newly imported. Like all diseases of a purely mental and emotional nature, its symptoms varied, usually tending to distressing melancholia, though sometimes to the desperation of suicide. The superstition of the lower classes of Chinese leads to the belief that when felo-de-se is committed without mutilating the body or shedding blood, the spirit is wafted back to the Flowery Kingdom, and we heard of some shocking instances of suicide by hanging and plunging into wells, resulting from this irrational faith.

We had one case of nostalgia which deeply touched our sympathies. Epifanio (they were christened and named by the cargo, upon landing in Cuba, for which the Church received $4.25 for each convert), a tall, well-made, robust Chinaman, gradually faded away to a shadow. Never speaking, or taking any interest in his surroundings, and seemingly without any physical ailments, he was pronounced unfit for active work—daily dragging his reluctant feet and wasted body from the hospital to the infermeria to be examined, and as he had no tangible ailment, to be remanded back—he soon lay flat upon his cot, with the wooden pillow he had brought from home, under his head, unable apparently to rise, abject misery depicted on his every feature, Lamo soon saw that Epifanio would die if something was not done speedily to rouse him. It was during the dull season, when all the hands were in the fields, and quiet reigned about the premises, that my tender-hearted husband had the melancholy creature brought daily under the shed of the sugar-house near the window of our room, and by his bedside, with books and work, we sat a portion of every day. At first he took no notice whatever of our movements and voices; mutely he lay upon the bed, with open eyes and a far-away look upon his pinched face, that was unutterably painful. Unable to persuade or tempt him, we had almost to force him, to swallow a few spoonfuls of soup from time to time. With this patient care, little by little he revived, and by November was able to undertake some light work about the sugar-house; in time he mastered the mysteries of sugar-boiling, and could tell “to a turn” when the bubbling sirup had reached the granulating point and was ready to be thrown into the coolers. Epifanio voluntarily remained at Desengaño long after his term of service had expired, though he had the option of returning to the home for which he had suffered and pined so long.

We had no further trouble with our laborers, who soon saw that we treated them with justice and all proper consideration, and they were intelligent enough to appreciate it. They became expert in the occupations to which they were assigned, and many remained in our employ after their contracts were fulfilled.

Some years later, two of their number, after accumulating what they deemed a competency, returned to their native land, and called on us in New York, to express their kindly feeling, and receive our congratulations on their prosperity.

The negroes, direct descendants of imported Africans, were more or less stupid and stolid, like “dumb-driven cattle.”

The sad experience of our predecessors, the Royos, with small-pox, when they lost forty of their laborers, one year’s entire sugar-crop, and suffered months of complete isolation from quarantine, which precipitated their destruction, already imminent from long years of prodigality and mismanagement, made us anxious to protect ourselves as far as possible from the loathsome disease that ravages Cuba, notwithstanding government precautions. We applied to all the physicians in the neighborhood, but none were licensed to vaccinate; then sent to Havana for virus, but our merchant replied that it could not be procured, as it was in official hands. Not to be baffled in our humane undertaking, some was obtained through a friend in New York, and my brother seemed likely to raise another rebellion when he applied the lancet to every one on the plantation.

Our good-natured doctor was surprised and amused when he called, a short time after, and was shown the array of swollen and scarred arms in the hospital. He said he presumed, as we were foreigners, that we could do as we pleased, but no Cuban would have dared disobey the law. The patients recovered, however, and nothing was said or done about the committal of such a flagrant act.

There is an infinitesimal insect in the tropics that bores into the toe at the very edge of the nail, producing by that action the very slightest sensation of itching; but if the owner of that toe does not employ instanter a pair of keen eyes and a fine needle to extract the vicious insect that is entering the flesh, wo to him! Once under the skin, all sensation of uneasiness ceases, but in a few days the toe becomes inflamed and swollen to twice its normal size, and a sac of matter forms that must be cut open and allowed to discharge. The poor sufferer hobbles around for days, unable to put the injured foot to the floor. Sometimes, neglect of warning leads to fearful results, even lock-jaw supervening. One of our earliest experiences at Desengaño was to stand helplessly by and see a child, twelve years old, die of that surpassingly horrible disease tetanus, utterly unable to account for its cause until a physician’s examination revealed the condition of her feet. Application of coal-oil was considered the best preventive, disagreeable as it is. The care of seventy feet belonging to the Chinese gang, who did not appreciate the danger of neglect, was a worry. Every morning they were marched to the infirmary, their feet examined, and then dipped into a pail of coal-oil. The coal-oil foot-bath is a very simple thing, but, as the oft-referred-to contract did not include that ceremony, it was always attended with remonstrances and threats.