From flag to flag

We rode to Don Francisco Ruano’s coffee estate, hoping to hire a few hands from him to tide over the unexpected rush of work. The Don, with his octogenarian mother, had lived many years on a small and neatly managed cafetal, whose boundaries touched Desengaño. The Don never ventured farther from home than the depot or nearest village; and the aged señora su madre had not been beyond the limits of her domain for so long that she—like many others of advanced life in that voluptuous land—had lost all desire to move. The avenue to the house was bordered with straggling, rough-barked cocoa-palms, loaded at all seasons with the valuable nuts that grew, ripened, and rotted in great bunches on the trees year after year. A coffee estate is necessarily a fruit-farm also. Coffee is a delicate plant, requiring heat tempered with shade, and, as it grows in long rows of detached shrubs on the cleanly kept ground, tall, broad-spreading avenues of fruit-trees shelter it from the direct rays of the scorching sun.

A well-kept cafetal—and it has to be well kept, else it goes rapidly to ruin—is like a beautiful, symmetrical garden, planted with utmost precision.

The foliage is a light green; the leaves are small, and grow along the straight, slender branches in clusters; while the broad-spreading boughs of the towering trees, of a darker and richer green, cast their refreshing shade over all. Coffee is of slow and delicate growth. The plant is four to six years old before it begins to bear fruit. Once matured, it continues to increase in value and capacity for, perhaps, fifteen or twenty years before it deteriorates, and the necessity of renewal is apparent. In the late spring the shrubs are thickly sprinkled with a shower of white blossoms, somewhat resembling in form and fragrance those of the orange. When the petals of these flowers strew the ground, tiny green buds appear in great profusion the whole length of the slender branches, turning red like holly-berries as they increase rapidly in size, bending the boughs down with their weight. These transformations take place during the rainy season, and through that period a cafetal is wonderfully beautiful and fragrant.

The first clear days in October, the berries, then the size of small hazel-nuts, are carefully harvested in immense flat baskets and spread upon a broad paved court to dry in the sun, protected from chance showers during the day and drenching dews at night by being heaped into piles under sheds or covered with heavy cloths. Any moisture during the drying process rots and ruins the berry. At Don Ruano’s the drying patio was under his mother’s supervision, and the old lady found occupation in watching the coffee, seeing that it was frequently stirred so that each grain received its due proportion of sun and heat, and that it was also protected from dampness.

All through the country coffee is sold in the hull, which contains two grains laid face to face, covered with a brown, dry husk, from which it is easily separated.

The door of every country-house, be it dwelling or bodega, is ornamented by the unattractive but useful coffee-mortar with its clumsy wooden pestle, and a sieve made of pita caruja hangs by its side, in which the contents of the mortar are tossed in the wind and the light husks blown away, leaving the firm, hard berry.

One of the sights that arrests the eye of a stranger in Cuba is the multitude of bags hanging at the door of every little shop and for sale at every step in the country as well as in the towns—bags of coarse red flannel, fitted with a hoop around the top and terminating in a point at the bottom; bags of every size, from those that would contain only a pint to others with the capacity of many gallons. These are the coffee-pots of Cuba, from which come the most delicious draughts of that much-prized and much-disparaged beverage. Half filled with finely pulverized coffee and suspended from a hook on the wall, cold water is gently poured on from time to time till the whole mass is saturated. The first drops which fall into the receiver placed beneath the bag are thick and black. One spoonful in a cup of boiling milk yields a draught of coffee that is deliciousness itself, such as is not to be found in any other land. The red bag hangs day and night, and the process of dripping coffee is ceaseless. All classes and ages offer and drink it freely as we do water. The wealthiest banker in his gilded palace and the poorest peasant in his scanty hut use the same red flannel bag and drink the same coffee. It is quite as rich and delicious served in coarse pottery in the bodegas about the market-places, where the workmen assemble in the early dawn, as in the dainty Sèvres at “El Louvre” or “La Dominica,” where the élite tarry the night away. So universal is its use that the mayorals, boyeros, cartmen, and, indeed, every class of white laborers on plantations, exact their cup of coffee before they begin the work of the day.

After the harvest, the coffee-plants which were not disturbed during the summer are carefully weeded, the decayed and decaying fruit removed, and the ground kept cleanly swept. Mamey, marmocillo, zapote, and aguacate trees are by reason of their splendid shade the chosen growth of a cafetal. The fruit of all is rich, juicy, and greatly prized in the cities, while in the country the abundance is in many instances a nuisance and an expense. While Don Ruano had men employed in carrying off baskets of fruit to be cast away and we had barrow-loads of lemons wheeled from our garden, no way was provided by which this superabundance could be transported to a market. The cities received their supplies entirely through private enterprise, either by trains of pack-horses or by small vessels from one port to another, whose traffic, always hampered, was now almost suspended by military espionage and exactions. Therefore tropical fruits were often more expensive in Havana than in many interior cities of the United States.

With a railroad, connecting Havana with Matanzas and Union, passing so near that the smoke of the engine could always be seen and the rattle of the passing train often heard from his door-step, there were no facilities for Don Ruano to ship his fruit. We occasionally made the attempt to send Don Anastasio (our invalid merchant) a basket of zapotes; but, no matter how well secured and sealed or carefully dispatched, the basket invariably reached its destination with diminished contents. As freight on small packages must be prepaid, and no guarantee was given by the railroad company (then under military control), of course there could be no reclamation. I presume that Don Ruano never dreamed of patronizing the road at such risks.

The Don had a comfortable, simple country home. All the cots and bed-room furnishings were sunning by the side of the house as we entered. The old señora, in a low-neck, almost sleeveless muslin garment, too infirm and obese to rise from her chair without great effort, received us most cordially, and ordered la mulata, as she called her chocolate attendant, to pass me the cigars and a taper. Every morning it was her devoted son’s first duty to make, with his own fingers, cigars for his mother’s use during the day. They were long and thick, dark and strong, but limited in number to six. The señora mentioned, as though it were an indication of praiseworthy self-denial, that she never allowed herself to exceed that number. Don Ruano, with his white linen shirt starched stiff as pasteboard and glistening with polish, the skirt hanging in unyielding drapery over his pantaloons, was as courtly and gracious as a dancing-master. A sugar-planter’s harvest begins after that of a cafetero ends, and from the latter the planter recruits the extra workmen required. From this neighbor we hired all the extra laborers we needed for our busy season, and in any emergency he cheerfully increased the number for a limited time. With Henry’s aid he was informed of our urgent need of any workmen he could spare for a month, and we were assured, with hand on his immaculate shirt-bosom and a thousand protestations of undying friendship, that we not only could command all the laborers he had, but his house and all its contents were also at our disposal!