From flag to flag

From that band of Chinese, one with a good countenance and neat appearance was selected for a cook. It is surprising how quickly and accurately the Chinese imitate. Before Ciriaco could understand the language, he had already learned to cook quite well. A cloth, some ashes, and a rub or two from Martha, explained that “cleanliness was next to godliness,” and that we delighted in clean pots and pans. Martha made a pot of soup; solemnly and silently he watched every ingredient and every motion; the next day he made soup, and the only mistake was a seasoning of dog-fennel which he mistook for parsley! He was given a portable grate once used to heat flat-irons. Martha measured the coffee into the pan, tempered the heat, and showed him with a stick how to stir the coffee till it was properly roasted. To the last day at Desengaño that fellow three times a week put the grate in the same spot, measured the coffee into the same pan, stirred it with the identical stick, and I doubt not gave it the same number of stirs each time. I never saw any servant so systematic, so methodical, so quiet, so solemn, so intent, so clean. During the eight years he was in the kitchen, there was not an hour in the day when Ciriaco could not be found. He brought his wood from behind the sugar-house at the same hour every afternoon, drew the water from the cistern with the same regularity, carrying it Chinese fashion in pails swung at each end of a pole.

The meals were always promptly served. He was like a machine wound up when he kindled the morning fire, and run down when he turned the key in the court at night.

There was a large area on the mountain planted in yams, malangas, bananas, and other vegetables for plantation use. Wagon-loads were brought to the store-room daily, to be weighed out to the cooks, of which there were three—one for the house, one for the Chinese, and one for the negroes. Green bananas of a very large and coarse variety, such as are rarely seen in the United States, roasted in ashes, and a thick mush, called funcha, made of yellow-corn meal, were the universal substitutes for bread, and thousands, both white and black, in Cuba never had any other. We ground corn daily in such a mill as Sarah used when Abraham bade her “to make ready quickly three measures of meal and make cakes”—i. e., a big stone worn hollow by the operation of grinding: the upper stone is grasped by both hands, and the weight of the body brought down upon it as it moves over the lower stone, producing golden meal of excellent flavor, that was daily very acceptable on our table in varied forms. Cuba is no corn country, though there is no month in the year when green corn can not be had; but the stalks are low and spindling, the ear small, somewhat tasteless, and invariably yellow. We planted white corn of various kinds obtained from both the Northern and Southern States; experimented with broom-corn and pop-corn; but never succeeded in producing an ear from any other seed than the native yellow corn of the island. We endeavored to introduce a change of diet among our hands by making a portion of the meal into bread to vary the regular rations of mush, but neither negroes nor Chinamen relished it. More success, however, attended our importation of navy-bread from the States for the same purpose.

Rice of a cheap grade was imported from India, and frequently issued to the Chinese in place of mush. The meat used was tasajo (jerked beef) cut in great slabs a half-inch thick, and sun-dried on the elevated table-lands of South America—baled like skins, tied with rawhide ropes, and sent to Cuba by ship-loads. It is cut into chips and stewed. Hashed very fine and prepared with tomatoes, it makes an appetizing diet, found on every table. Flour was from seventeen to twenty-five dollars a barrel, and always of inferior quality. Large bakeries in the cities supplied the inhabitants with crusty little rolls; but I was unable to procure yeast, or any preparation of yeast-powders or cakes that would keep in that climate. Ciriaco sometimes succeeded in making an eatable though tasteless loaf of bread, by a mixture of new milk, flour, salt, and sugar, fermented in the sun. Bread made with this yeasty preparation, and also “raised” by a couple of hours’ exposure to the sun, was “fair to look upon,” and in lieu of better, we ate it. One enterprising member of the family electrified us on several occasions by presenting buckwheat-cakes of marvelous lightness for breakfast. The secret of the “raising” power that produced the delicacy was strictly kept; even Ciriaco, who had the honor of cooking them, was not initiated into the mystery of their preparation. When the sedlitz-powders gave out, the secret was “out” too! The first attempt at these buckwheat-cakes caused a great laugh. We had been prepared for a feast, the nature of which was kept a profound secret; but Ciriaco baked the batter and served it in a pudding-dish!

Besides granting small patches of land to the negroes, where a few thrifty ones cultivated tobacco, and such vegetables as they desired, they were permitted to raise hogs. A piece of ground was set apart for that purpose directly behind their barracoon. Each negro had his own pen, and during the year fattened his animals, and every facility was afforded him for an advantageous sale. But such arrant rogues were they, that frequently they stole each other’s hogs during the night, carrying them off on Lamo’s horses! So we had to appoint, every night, two of their number to watch the pens, and one to watch the horses.

Even then, whenever a tired and blown horse was found in the morning, it was prima facie evidence that a hog had disappeared from the pen during the night. We could not, with all our endeavors, find watchmen equal to coping with the thieves.

Holiday afternoons the negroes were permitted to dance on the hard and firm patio in front of their barracoon. Their music consisted of two tombos—hollow logs with skins stretched tightly over one end, somewhat like a drum.

The heavy instrument is suspended by a strap from the neck of the player, who strides and beats upon it with the flat palms of his hard black hands, occasionally scratching variations with the tough thumb-nail. The two tombos make a mournful, monotonous thrumming, beating time in regular cadence, and are accompanied by a dry bladder containing a few shells or stones, which is rattled by an old, tattooed African woman, whose cracked voice adds a melancholy wail, producing a peculiarly penetrating repetition of the same dull sound, that lingers in the ear long after the vibrations have ceased.

The musicians ready, and the circle formed, a woman glides into the arena, and, catching her flowing train with each hand, sways round and round with a shuffling, half-sliding motion, turning her face from side to side, and sweeping the long dress clear of the ground at every step.

After making the circuit once or twice, one of the men bounds into the circle and follows her from side to side with outstretched arms, as though offering her an embrace. She deftly eludes the advance, casting backward glances from the corners of her eyes to tempt him on. Occasionally he falls, first upon one knee, then upon the other, throwing himself into the most amazing attitudes, sometimes falling prone upon the ground and rolling over, to catch the hem of her dress as she passes, both dancers with every step and gesture keeping wonderful time with the weird tum-tum of the tombos; when fatigued, or another ambitious couple step forward, they retire. The same performance was repeated and repeated; the same sliding, shuffling, and postulating in rhythm to the atrabilious noise, that often drove me with aching nerves to the far end of the avenue of palms, and there, long after the tap of the bell—a signal that the dance must be over—the diabolical tombo beat a devil’s tattoo in my head.

The Chinese did not mingle with the negroes, either in their work or socially, though subject to the same rules and regulations in regard to their hours of labor and hours of rest. On Sundays they would array themselves in clean clothes, add the ornamentation of a string of tweezers and ivory tooth-picks around their necks, and in groups of twos and threes saunter about in a listless manner, scarcely pausing to see the Africans dancing, and often giving little evidence of animation save the perpetual use of large fans. In their own barracoon they were inveterate gamblers, and, if two or more were seen squatting together, they were surely at their besetting vice. If one “lay out” or “outfit,” or whatever it may be called, was taken from them, another was quickly substituted.

They gambled with a few little sticks, or grains of rice, or lemon-seeds. And frequently, Monday morning, a Chinaman presented himself to work clad in a coffee-sack, the scamp having risked and lost the very clothes off his back; and it was next to impossible to make him tell which one of his countrymen had won the garments.