Cuba is a paradise for those who are too lazy to do anything but exist, as one can live there without labor. The tall, straight palm-tree, of which the poorer houses are built, can be split from end to end with wedge and axe, the pith easily removed, and the crescent-shaped sides, weighted down with heavy rocks upon the ground, will dry as flat as planks. The trunk, split half in two, makes excellent troughs and gutters, the feathery branches thatch their dwellings, the berries furnish food for their hogs, and the core of the pinnacle is as delicious as cauliflower. One palm-tree will furnish material for a guajiro’s house complete, sides, roof, door, and eaves-troughs included.

The jicory, a large gourd that the guira-tree bears not only on its branches but its trunk from the very ground up, makes all the table-ware necessary for the modest palm hut; divided in twain, and the mossy interior removed, then slowly dried in the shade, it furnishes plates and bowls; with only one small aperture at the stem-end, it is a jug; and if a coarse netting of the strong, fibrous aloe is knotted about it, behold a demijohn (of one or two gallons capacity), that can be easily slung over the shoulder and carried about! The cordage, ropes, and bridles of pita caruja are strong and durable; oftentimes the latter are very ingeniously and elaborately braided and twisted. Any guajiro can make the rude pottery required in their cooking, for which clay is always easily procured, immense amounts being used in the manufacture of certain low grades of white sugar; none of the indigenous fruits and vegetables require more cultivation than the machete affords, and those most generally prized and used, have only to be replanted at intervals of years. Very little clothing is required, and that of the thinnest and lightest material. In the country, children run about au naturel until they are eight or ten years of age. Even in cities, with well-to-do families, a child, until it walks, wears but one thin, short covering, and that, in order to afford more freedom to the limbs, is often knotted around the waist.

I have more than once alluded to a family of guajiros, who lived near us, and were somewhat dependent on Desengaño. They owned an acre or two of land, planted in sweet-potatoes, melangas, and other edible roots. Their simple dwellings consisted of one or two rooms each, and were shaded by a few palms and a clump of banana-trees.

The aged mother and one unmarried son occupied the principal hut, and it was surrounded by those of three married sons with their wives and hosts of dusky little black-eyed children; here they had lived “even unto the third and fourth generation,” probably not one of them ever having been out of the partido. The men were employed in hauling our produce to the depot for shipment from December until May; the remainder of the year they did nothing but attend to their own patches, and one man could easily have done all that and had time to spare. During the summer, when pressed for plowmen, we made frequent tempting overtures to them, which were invariably refused. The women raised chickens, but none for sale; fattened hogs, but they were for home consumption; and braided a few Panama hats for their husbands and sons. We paid each man seventeen dollars in gold, and an arrobe (twenty-five pounds) each of rice and tasajo a month, while they worked for us, and were in the way of continuing the rations, to a limited extent, during the idle season, if there was sickness or want with them. If Panchito came to tell me his mama was sick, I sent her some rice; and if Pio or Manuel, the two boys who were Henry’s attendants on his jutia-hunts, had a mal de cabeza (headache), Henry was sure to think a little tasajo would make him feel better, and it generally did. Per contra, when they heard—which they were sure to do, for some one of them dropped in at Desengaño every day—that Ellie was not well, or Lamo had a twinge of rheumatism, immediately Pio would present himself with a chicken or a few eggs tied up in a listado handkerchief, with the compliments of his mama. Once when Panchito, in awkward handling of a hogshead of sugar, received a hurt, I rode over to their sitio with Henry to express in person our regret at the accident, and to take him a cup of jelly. I so often rode in their direction without crossing the boundary, that my appearance produced no commotion until I had gained the center hut and offered to dismount. The scattering of the children of all ages and sexes to the friendly shelter of the banana-bushes, and behind the coffee-sack curtains that hung at the doors, was amusing.

They were entirely naked, but one by one, as they gained the assistance of their mammas, they appeared arrayed in the thinnest of muslin slips, the merest shadow of an excuse for a covering.

One of the women was braiding a hat in one piece. She began the work at the center of the crown with several very narrow strips of palma téa, gradually adding more strips as it increased in circumference, until the top of the crown was complete, then shaping the sides and brim. It was amazing to see the precision and dexterity with which her slender fingers accomplished the intricate work. I became so interested, that several subsequent visits were made to learn the art. Though the woman was painstaking and patient in her endeavor to teach, she failed to impart the mysterious skill she so deftly exhibited. The hats Ellie and I made were long strands of braided palmetto sewed into shape; those of Carlota had the appearance of imported Panamas. That family was a fair type of innocent, harmless, kindly peasantry, sufficiently numerous to constitute a marked domestic feature peculiar to the island. They were law-abiding, and in their humble way useful, but with scarcely a spark of enterprise. Panchito wanted to marry, but the little patch of land they jointly owned was not sufficient to support a fourth family, so he traded his interest to his brothers for a horse with aparejo (saddle, etc.), two oxen, and a wagon, the creak of whose clumsy wooden wheels could be heard rods off, and prepared to emigrate to the adjoining partido, perhaps ten miles away; but the captain refused to issue him a permit to change his domicile, therefore he could not go. About that time military exactions, of which I have made mention, drove Panchito and his brothers to the desperate resolve to sit down in abject idleness.

The families of the wealthy planters spent so little time on their estates that, for a large portion of the year, we were deprived of their pleasant society, and soon learned to take interest in the occasional entertainments of our more humble neighbors, who were always courteous and friendly. Don Pedro’s four pretty daughters, though lacking in education and cultivation, and quite unused to the best urban society, were amiable, sprightly girls, who talked agreeably, danced gracefully, and played by ear on the piano or guitar the pretty Cuban danzas that, by reason of the peculiar accentuation, are so difficult to learn by note. Several times they had proposed to Ellie, of whom they were very fond, to accompany them to a guajiro ball in the village of Cabezas. One day Félicia called with her father to urge me to chaperon the whole party, as their mother was unable to accompany them. I consented, simply to oblige, and at dusk the four girls and papaito (as they affectionately called Don Pedro) arrived on horseback, followed by an attendant with a pack-horse carrying their wardrobe in hampers. Ellie and I, already dressed for the occasion, seated ourselves in the volante, our escort mounted a horse, and we drove rapidly off. A volante, the most unique of vehicles, is a chaise-body swung low on leather braces between and a little in advance of two enormous wheels—the peculiar construction giving it a swinging motion seemingly independent of the propelling one, that makes the riding exceedingly easy and comfortable. One horse is harnessed between the very long shafts, and the other, the “near” horse, outside, hitched by stout traces to the body of the vehicle. The calisero rides the trace horse and leads the other by the bridle, and on every occasion, except a funeral, proceeds at full gallop. The picturesque volante, the only style of vehicle equally suited to the city streets and the rugged country roads (for it is impossible to upset it), and the graceful mantilla, so well adapted to that voluptuous climate, have gradually yielded to the encroachments of the clumsy cab and the hideous bonnet.

Arrived at Cabezas, we followed the Don to a friend’s house, where the señoritas proposed to unpack the hampers and array themselves in full evening dress. Ellie and I with the gentlemen of our party, and a few of the villagers who sauntered in and out as freely and unrestrainedly as if the house was their own, waited until the young ladies were ready, then we adjourned en masse to the ball. It was given in a building especially designed for the purpose. Besides the ball-room proper, was one adjoining, used as a retreat for the duennas to smoke a cigarette and take a gossipy cup of coffee, and for the young mothers who had not graduated to the position of wall-flowers, to retire and nourish the babies that were apparently about as numerous and demonstrative as any other class of guests; then a third apartment, where the caballeros occasionally vanished to enjoy a roast rib of pork and a glass of red wine or aguadiente, and whence cigarettes and coffee were dispatched to their respective señoras. The Dons did not have to withdraw to smoke; many of them danced with cigars in their lips. Each of these rooms had long windows; and the heavy bars, extending from top to bottom, were availed of by the guests as hitching-posts for their horses, thus giving the equines ample opportunity to gaze upon the scene.

As the younger ladies were mostly sought for partners, I found myself relegated to the back tier of seats, and the captain’s faded wife came out from the nursery with an invitation for me to join the coterie of gossips. Although I neither smoked, nursed, nor talked, my presence was no manner of restraint on the other occupants of the room, who pursued these various diversions with perfect abandon and innocent composure.

The assembly was thoroughly representative of Cuban rustic life, and, though occupying different grades of social rank, mingled freely and unreservedly in conversation and in the dance. Ellie soon discovered that a formal introduction was not considered necessary to assure her every attention from the beaux, but she was able to decline the solicitation of numerous aspirants on the score of ignorance of the danza. I imagine Don Pedro’s exceedingly pretty daughters were the crême de la crême, but there were others, in low russet-leather shoes and plain listado dresses (a striped linen worn by the poorer classes), with escorts resplendent in cotton-velvet jackets and gorgeous chains and pins, who were the most willowy and graceful dancers. All the danzas peculiar to Cuba are slow and gliding, the quintessence of voluptuous ease and grace. The music is pianissimo, well accentuated, and the animated throng keep exquisite time, and are untiring. The violins were replaced by a banduria—a small guitar of native construction—and the ball concluded with a pas-de-deux: a couple in listado and cotton-velvet appeared in a typical Cuban dance, “El Zapateado”—a most graceful, courtly, and symmetrical measure, that perfectly illustrated the betwitching poetry of motion.

It was almost morning when we stepped into our own rooms again, fresh from our first and only experience at a guajiro ball. For days we talked about it, recalling the many unique and amusing incidents of the occasion, none of which impressed us more fully than the thoughtful courtesy and perfect decorum that prevailed during the entire evening. Not a loud or noisy voice was heard; not the slightest indication of undue exhilaration from the frequent visits to the roast pig and red wine, nor a single occurrence to remind us that we were witnessing the festivities of an abused and down-trodden peasantry who had no opportunity or hope of rising above the humble station that had been their lot for generations.

Don José Brito lived on the mountain. The lines of his plantation joined ours; and my husband always thought him the best manager in the partido, from his careful supervision of many important matters not appertaining to the one absorbing industry of sugar-making. He had a rope-walk, and manufactured from the aloe all the cordage and rope used on his place; besides, he had better pasturage, and therefore finer stock, than any one else.

Don José was genial and sociable, and the gentlemen of the two families exchanged occasional visits. He was a representative of rural Cuban grandeur, rare even then, and now entirely passed away. His favorite steed was a large, milk-white Andalusian mule, with shaved tail terminating in a little tuft of hair tied with a bright ribbon, and cropped mane; the equipment was an elaborate russet-leather Spanish saddle with cantle almost as high as the back of a chair, and huge holsters on each side of the pommel, from which gold-mounted pistols projected. A broad crupper extended from the saddle to the switch-like tail, and a band of variegated leather and fringe hung in a graceful festoon across the breast of the animal from side to side. All this leather-work was richly embossed, stitched in brilliant colors, and glittering with silver mountings, wherever a place could be found for them. A superb Toledo blade, full thirty-two inches long (the regulation length of a Toledo), in an ornamented scabbard, completed the equestrian outfit of this gorgeous gentleman. Don José was stout and swarthy, with a most gracious and winning manner, and a pleasant smile, revealing magnificent teeth. His small brown hands sparkled with numerous jeweled rings, and two heavy gold chains crossed his breast, both attached to watches which nestled in the pockets of his spotless white vest. A more friendly, accommodating neighbor we could not have found in any land. With all this love of display, he was thoroughly practical; and long experience with the small details of plantation-work, that are generally so irksome to the average Cuban planter as to be avoided altogether, made Don José’s advice and counsel valuable, and he was so obliging that we often feared we were imposing on his good-nature. Although there were other neighbors more accessible, Don José Brito’s horse (the Andalusian mule was for festive occasions) was the first one seen approaching when the peals of our bell announced fire or other danger at Desengaño. La Señora, his wife, was so obese that she was afraid to descend the steep mountain-road in her volante, so was unable—as her genial husband told us again and again—to extend to us the courtesy of a visit; but she was very neighborly in her feelings, frequently sending us little bowls of delicious dulces of her own make, and kept Ellie abundantly supplied with cascarilla, a powder made of egg-shells, for the complexion, and universally used by the Cuban ladies, to whose olive faces it imparts a chalky, ghastly tint.

We became greatly attached to Don José’s nephew, the “little doctor,” as we called him. He was such a diminutive specimen of manhood, that the embroidered shirt-bosoms and dainty, perfumed handkerchiefs he exhibited seemed quite appropriate; not so the massive watch-chains and charms, which were better fitted to a man twice his size. Don Tomas was such a genial, whole-souled gentleman, and was so cultivated and refined, that we were always glad to see him enter and deposit his formidable pistols and sword-belt on the parlor-table; it was the signal of a bright, entertaining visit. Ellie and I often wondered why we never met him at any of the social gatherings; and he rarely called on us, unless sent for professionally. As he had never married, and always seemed confused and uncomfortable when bantered on the subject of being a bachelor, I found myself weaving romances in which he figured as the disappointed lover.

One day Don José, arrayed in all his elegance, paused on his way home from the paradero (railroad-station) to tell us that Don Tomas would return on the morrow, and then to us was revealed the kindly little doctor’s heart-story. When a young student, in Matanzas, he became enamored of a pretty señorita, who reciprocated his love, and they were to be married after he had graduated in his profession; but a dashing Spanish officer appeared upon the scene as a rival, and the young girl was forced by her parents to accept what appeared to them the most advantageous offer. After a short honeymoon, the officer announced that he had received an unexpected summons to Spain, and proposed that his wife remain with her mother during his temporary absence.

Intelligence reached them, after his departure, that he already had a family in his native country! In Cuba, both by civil and ecclesiastical law, she was still a wife, and such she must remain so long as the deceiver lived. As it is not comme il faut for a married woman to participate in society unattended by her husband, her life became one of entire seclusion. The heart-broken young doctor withdrew to the country, and lived on a plantation with his uncle, in the utmost retirement, refusing all social pleasures, and devoting himself exclusively to his profession. “Now,” added Don José, with a radiant smile, “after seventeen years of waiting, news has arrived from Spain of the death of that officer, and Don Tomas has gone to Matanzas to marry the only woman he ever loved.” In due time we called upon the new señora, and were presented to a faded, shy little body, with a daughter taller than herself. She was not particularly attractive, and her manner was somewhat constrained, as would naturally be the case with one who had lived years under anomalous and grievous repression; but she was all the world to the faithful little doctor.

One of our neighbors was a marquis. He was in the habit of visiting his plantation once a year, and then he entertained in a most lavish and hospitable manner. My husband had made his acquaintance in Havana, and shortly after we arrived at Desengaño he called to welcome us, in a superb volante with prancing white horses, whose harnesses glittered with elaborate silver ornaments. The calisero and outriders in livery, wearing (in lieu of the conventional knee-boots of other lands) low black slippers with enormous silver buckles, and glittering spurs of the same metal. No one else in all that partido moved about in such royal state, for no one else could display such a gorgeous crest as that proud hidalgo of Spain. On one occasion, when his house was filled with city guests, he came in person to invite us to what he called in his quaint English a “peek-a-neek.” We were promised a déjeûner à la fourchette in a grove, to be followed by the ascent of a mountain, from whose summit a view of unrivaled extent could be obtained. Ellie and I were charmed to accept a gracious invitation that promised such an attractive episode in our monotonous lives. When we arrived at the rendezvous, which was the marquis’s lawn, other guests were already assembled in volantes and on horseback. A brilliant cavalcade we presented on the route to the grove, which was located on the side of a dashing stream of clear water. Here an arbor covered with fresh palm-branches had been improvised to shelter us from the sun’s rays. And in this shade the banquet was spread, a right royal feast of wild Guinea-fowls garnished with olives, quails served with raisins, roast ribs of fresh pork, and bananas cooked in a variety of tempting and delicate ways; salads, garlic, and unlimited fruit dulces, any quantity of Spanish wines, and stronger Cuban drinks made of cane-juice and bitter-orange peel—all sumptuously served, and partaken of with a relish that invariably attends an out-door feast. Nothing was omitted by our titled host that could add to the perfection of the occasion. What a happy time Ellie and I had! We did not understand all that was said, everyone talked with so much volubility and gesture, and often we detected a perplexed look in bright and kindly faces when one of us ventured a remark that from defective idiom or pronunciation blundered into incoherence. No matter if the courtly marquis himself failed in his attempt to read “Hamlet” to Ellie from an English edition of Shake-es-pere, and she did not understand a word. It was all delightful, and gave us ample theme for thought and conversation for many a quiet hour. The marquis, who spoke English “as she is spoke,” acquired his pronunciation from an Ollendorf or something worse; but, confident of his fluency in the language, of which theoretically he was a master, he was by no means timid, though often making most ludicrous mistakes. Notwithstanding we were in a foreign land, and floundering through the embarrassment of making ourselves intelligible in a language we had not learned even from books, we were, at times almost forced to turn aside and smile at his absurd mistakes.

His native Castilian, which was pure and free from the idioms that abound in many Spanish-speaking countries, we could perfectly well understand. A thorough education and extended travel, as befits a wealthy nobleman of proud Spain, had greatly improved a naturally good intellect; and, being a gentleman of elegant leisure, he was able to devote much time to the translation of English and French classics into his native tongue. I am informed that his published translation of Shakespeare’s dramas, notably “Hamlet,” evinced marked ability.

After the feast came the walk up the mountain; and, to provide for occasional refreshment as we paused to admire the distant landscape, we were followed by a pack-horse, with hampers of green cocoanuts, and juicy, ripe pineapples; the first universally used in its immature state, when a dexterous stroke of a knife makes an aperture into a sphere of limpid water, clear and sparkling, possessing a slightly sweet and slightly saline taste, mingled to perfection and wonderfully cool and refreshing. The pineapple, easily stripped of its rough coat, is rich and succulent, with an indescribably luscious flavor. In Cuba a single ripe one fills a whole house with its incomparable fragrance.

We mounted by winding paths through a never-ending bower of dense foliage, with blossoming shrubs and vines on every side, and, when the apex of the monte was reached, stood on such an elevation that a magnificent panorama opened upon our vision.

A broad plain of waving cane, broken by towering palms and dotted by plantation-houses, lay at our feet. In the remote distance, clusters of white and yellow buildings surrounding tiny church-spires and crosses, indicated the two neighboring hamlets of Palos and Cabezas. Away and beyond were woods and fields on either side, stretching far as the eye could reach; and at the very horizon were narrow threads of sparkling blue, which the marquis assured us were the Caribbean Sea on the one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. We lingered to rest, and admire a scene so grand and beautiful, until warned by brilliant clouds and freshening breezes that the day was almost spent; then turned our backs on the lovely vision and reluctantly descended.

It was during this expedition that Ellie saw the haunts of the veiled owl, a rare and handsome bird with a dusky shimmer over its white plumage, like a gossamer web. The gallant host eagerly offered to secure her a pair of young ones for pets, little dreaming, perhaps, how difficult the task—their nests being constructed in such inaccessible and inhospitable places that even a maja or jutia (the serpent and the mammoth rat) would scarcely venture to intrude.

It was night, and the moon was flooding the whole landscape with a brilliant light, that made visible every inequality in the narrow road that led to Desengaño, when we bade our courteous host adios; and, while he gallantly raised the broad top of the volante so as to exclude all the light possible, charged us to be careful not to “receive de moon.” On one occasion he “did receive de moon, and it turn de features of his face quite a—round.”

Ellie and I with difficulty restrained our merriment over the quaint conceit, until we were quite beyond the hearing of the marquis, who stood on the veranda watching the volante until it vanished from sight. But Zell, our calisero, assured us that it was really very dangerous to expose one’s self to the direct rays of that luminary. “Why, I am keerful to kiver over my hog-pens dese nights, I is. If a hog even lays in de moon all night, next mornin’ his snout is turned clean ’round under one ear! No, I never seed one dat way, but dat’s what dey tell me; and, ef you notis, you never see no animal ’bout here laying ’sleep in de moon; oven de lizards, dey creeps under de leaves and in de rocks. Don’t you ’member dat time in Havana, when Captin-Gin’ral Mansano went to dat big dinner down to Marianao, and stayed eatin’ and drinkin’ till ’most mornin’, den he rid home in a open kerridge, and dropped dead de very next day? Well, dat was fur ridin’ in de moon.”

The marquis long since retired to his native Spain. Oppressive taxation, together with extravagant habits and luxurious tastes, overwhelmed him, and the carelessly managed “peek-a-neek” plantation was sold for debt. He used to say, “My engine walk well.” It walked out of his possession years ago, and not even a Hamlet’s ghost of all his Cuban wealth remains to mock him.