BOOKS.
DANA'S RIIN TO CUBA.* IT was on a dull, dark day of February in the present year that our excellent friend, the author of " Two Years before the Mast," left behind him the mud, snow, and ice of New York, and six days afterwards he was off the coast of Cuba2 land of perpetual summer. The vessel arrived in the evening, 1.11 view of Havana, one of the grandest of sites, where city, sea, and shore unite as al- most nowhere else on earth; and it was a happy accident for an observer so sensitive as Mr. Dana to the charms of nature that the hour was too late for admission into the port.
• " Slowly and reluctantly the ship turns her head off to seaward. The engine breathes heavily, and throws its one arm leisurely up and down ; we rise and fall on the moonlit sea; the stars are near to us, or we are raised nearer to them ; the Southern Cross is just above the horizon ; and all night long two streams of light lie upon the water, one of gold from the Morro, and of silver from the moon. It is enchantment. Who can regret our delay, or wish to exchange this scene for the common,:close anchorage of a harbour ? "
During the four months of winter Cuba enjoys almost complete immunity from yellow fever; a few cases occur indeed in that season, but they are little regarded, and must be the result of extreme imprudence. The mean temperature is 700, and the heat may easily be borne by strangers who do not needlessly expose themselves to the glare of the sun in the middle of the day. In sunny Italy there is little provision made against the severity of winter, and English travellers sorely miss their own snug rooms and sea-coal fires in the cold season ; but in Cuba the gradations of temperature are only from heat to more heat, and all the domestie and social arrangements of the island are happily adapted to this esnstant quality of the weather. We feel assured that many of our countrymen will be tempted by Mr. Dana's delightful book ti follow his example, were it only to escape from the coughs and snivellings, and the tallowed noses incident to an English winter, to a paradise of warmth and colour, where the pure and elastic air makes pocket-handkerchiefs of little use except for ornament. And if an overwrought man wants a holiday which shall be a holiday indeed, filled with novel and exhilarating impressions, where can he better find that refreshment for his jaded spirits than amidst the delicious scenery of Cuba, and even in the narrow streets of its surprising capital? The streets are like those of Eastern cities, so narrow that it is barely possible for two vehicles topass abreast ; and in some places they are like long tents, awnings being stretched aeross them from house to house. But the streets of Havana are uot lined with such utter dead walls as flank those of Damascus, for large grated windows, mostly without glass, and flush with the street, offer to the passenger a full view of all within them. In the drawing-rooms is always to be seen a double row of chairs fatting each other, about four or five feet apart, and at right angles to the street. "Tie etiquette is that the gentlemen sit on the row op- posite to the ladies if there be but two or three present. If a lady on entering go to the side of a gentleman when the other row is open to her, it indicates either familiar acquaintance or boldness. There is no people so observant of outguaxds as the Spanish race." Ladies are never seen on foot in the streets, nor any women except negresses : but the fair Cubans flash upon the sight as they are whirled along in volantes, a strange vehicle which seems to be a glorified edition of the Swedish car. "A pair of very long, limber-shafts, at one end of which is a pair of huge wheels, and at the other end a horse with his tail braided and brought for- ward and tied to the saddle, an open chaise body resting on the shafts, about one-third of the way from the axle to the horse ; and on the horse is a negro, in large postilion boots, long spurs, and a bright jacket. It is an easy vehicle to ride in ; but it must be a sore burden to the beast. Here and there we pass a private volante, distinguished by rich silver mountings and postilions in livery. Some have two horses, and with the silver, and the livery, and the long dangling traces, and a look of superfluity, have rather an air of high life. In most, a gentleman is reclining, cigar in mouth ; while in others is a great puff of blue or pink muslin or calico, ex- tending over the sides to the shafts, topped off by a fan, with signs of a face behind it. Calle de los Qffleios, Calle del Obispo, Calle de San Ignacio, Calle de Nereaderes' are on the little corner boards. Every little shop and every big shop has its title ; but nowhere does the name of a keeper appear. Almost every shop advertises por mayor y manor, wholesale and retail. What a Gil-Bias-Don-Quixote feeling, the names of posada, tienda, and cantina give you!"
Everything is picturesque in Havana except the dress of the men. Soldiers are rationally clad in white linen, but civilians stupidly wear black dress coats, black chimney-pot hats, and the rest of the costume of "systematic, scientific, capable unpie- turesque, unimaginative France." But this is for parade in the streets. Call upon a merchant or a banker, and you will find him in his palace-like house of business, dressed in loose white gar- ments, smoking a succession of cigars, and surrounded by tropical luxuries and tropical defences—rooms over twenty feet high, marble floors, panels of porcelain tiles, colossal doors and windows, and staircases almost as stately as that of Stafford House. After your morning bath when you enter the restaurant at ten o'clock, the usual breakfast hour, this pretty scene is before you.
"The restaurant with cool marble floor, walls twenty-four feet high, open rafters, painted blue, great windows open to the floor and looking into the Paseo, and the floor nearly on a level with the street, a light breeze fanning the thin curtains, the little tables, for two or four, with clean white cloths, each with its pyramid of great red oranges and its fragrant bouquet, the gentlemen in white pantaloons and jackets and white stockings, and
• To Cuba and Back. A Vacation Voyage. By Richard Henry Daus, Jun., Author of "Two Years before the Mast,' &c. Published by Smith, Elder. and Co.
the ladies in fly-away =alias, and hair in the sweet neglect of the morn- ing toilet, taking their leisurely breakfasts of fruit and claret, and omelette and Spanish mixed dishes (ollas), and cafe noir. How airy and ethereal it seems! They are birds, not substantial men and women. They eat am- brosia and drink nectar. It must be that they fly and live in nests in the tamarind trees. Who can eat a hot, greasy breakfast of cakes and gravied meats, and in a close room, after this ? '
Nay, but you may do better: take the usual breakfast of the country, fruits, claret, omelette, fish from the Gulf stream, into which a man may almost throw a line from the kerbstone of the streets that run down to the sea, rice excellently cooked, fried plantains, olla and coffee. Then for grace after breakfast you may ejaculate with Mr. Dana, "I can truly say that I ate this morning my first orange ; for I had never before eaten one newly gathered which had ripened in the sun hanging on the tree." The cocoa nut is another fruit unknown to Europe, for the indi- gestible lining of the hardened shell is quite unlike the soft pulp of the young fruit, luscious and wholesome, which the Cubans mix with the milk and eat with a spoon. And now for a first view of the interior of Cuba.
"The air is clear, and not excessively hot. The soft clouds float midway in the serene sky ; the sun shines fair and bright, and the luxuriance of a perpetual summer covers the face of nature. These strange palm trees everywhere ! I cannot yet feel at home among them. Many of the other trees are like our own, and, though tropical in fact, looked to the eye as if they might grow as well in New England as here. But the royal palm looks so intensely and exclusively tropical ! It cannot grow beyond this narrow belt of the earth's surface. Its long, thin body, so straight and so smooth, swathed from the foot—in a tight bandage of grey canvas, leaving only its deep-green neck, and over that its crest and plumage of deep-green leaves! It gives no shade, and bears no fruit that is valued by men. And it has no beauty to atone for those wants. Yet it has more than beauty,—a strange fascination over the eye and the fancy, that will never allow it to be overlooked or forgotten. The palm-tree seems a kind of loans natural to the northern eye—an exotic wherever you meet it: It seems to be conscious of its want of usefulness for food or shade, yet has a dignity of its own, a pride of unmixed blood and royal descant,—the hidalgo of the soil. "What are those groves and clusters of small growth, looking like Indian corn in a state of transmigration into trees, the stalk turning into a trunk, a thin soft coating half-changed to bark, and the ears of corn turning into melons ? Those are the bananas and plantains, as their bunches of green and yellow fruits plainly enough indicate, when you come nearer. But, that sad, weeping tree, its long yellow-green leaves drooping to the pound! What can that be ? It has a green fruit like a melon. There it is again, in groves ! I interrupt my neighbour's tenth cigarrito to ask him the name of the tree. It is the cocoa! And that soft green melon becomes the hard shell we break with a hammer. Other trees there are, in abundance, of various forms and foliage, but they might have grown in New England or New York, so far as the eye can teach ; but the palm, the cocoa, the banana, and plantain are the characteristic trees you could not possibly meet with in any other zone. "Thickets—jungles, I might call them—abound. It seems as if a bird could hardly get through them ; vet they are rich with wild flowers of all forms and colours—the white, the purple, the pink, and the blue. The trees are full of birds of all plumage. There is one like our brilliant oriole.
cannot hear their notes, for the clatter of the train. Stone fences, neatly laid up, run across the lands ;—not of our cold bluish-gray granite, the colour, as a friend once said, of a miser's eye, but of soft, warm brown and russet, and well overgrown with creepers, and fringed with flowers. There are avenues, and here are clumps of the prim orange-tree, with its dense and deep-green polished foliage gleaming with golden fruit. Now we conic to acres upon acres of the sugar-cane, looking at a distance like fields of over-grown broom -corn. It grows to the height of eight or ten feet, and very thick. An army could be hidden in it. The soil must be deeply and intensely fertile."
Mr. Dana's remarks on the present state of Cuba carry with them the strongest marks of scrupulous fidelity. What most surprised him was to find industry so vigorous in a tropical is- land. Its weak point is the want of variety. Apart from manu- factures and exports of no great importance, sugar is the one staple. "All Cuba has but one neck—the worst wish of the tyrant." Out of that single branch of industry the Government derives a net revenue of sixteen millions of dollars, but the taxes are heavier than those paid by any people on the earth at this moment. The political condition of the island is that of a despotism exercised by one white race over another, and any hopes of its improvement are dim and remote. No native Cuban can hold any office of honour, trust, or emolument iii. Cuba, ex- cept by special favour of the Government, and in contravention to the written law. Since 182,5 the island has been not only under martial law, but in a state of siege, and all sorts of vexatious and impracticable regulations are maintained, which put the people in danger of fines or extortion at every turn. The black popu- lation are gainers by the division between the two rival and even hostile races of whites, the Peninsular Spaniards and the Cubans. The slaves have the benefit of laws made in Spain, and ad- ministered by men who, like the lawgivers, are not slaveholders. These laws afford the slaves considerable facilities for self- emancipation. One negro in every four is free, and one thousand free blacks are enrolled in a regiment of volunteers, an honour and a privilege which is not allowed to the white natives. Dis- affection naturally prevails amongst this class, but their con- dition with all its evils is better than that which exists in nearly all the Republican States of Spanish America, and it is not likely to be improved by revolution. Circumstanced as they are, and wholly inexperienced in the discharge of public duties, the Cubans are not the men to work out successfully the problem of self-government.
"The natural process for Cuba is an amelioration of her institutions under Spanish auspices. If this is not to be had, or if the connexion with Spain is dissolved in any way, she will probably be substantially under the pro- tection of some other power, or a part of another empire. Whatever nation may enter upon such an undertaking as this, should take a bond of fate. Besides her internal danger and difficulties, 'Culia is Implicated externally
with every cause of jealousy and conflict. She has been called the key to the Gulf of Mexico. But the Gulf of Mexico cannot be locked. Whoever takes her is more likely to find in her a key to Pandora's box. Close upon her is the great island of Jamaica, where theexperiment of free negro labour in the same products is on trial; near to her is Hayti, where the experiment of negro self-government is on trial ; and further off, separated, it is true, by the great Gulf Stream, and with the neighbourhood of the almost un- inhabited and uninhabitable sea coast of Southern Florida, yet near enough to furnish some cause for uneasiness, are the slave-states of the Great Re- public. She is an island, too ; and as an island, whatever power holds or protects her, must maintain on the spot a sufficient army and navy, as it would not do to rely upon being able to throw in troops and munitions of war, after notice of need."
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