CHAPTER IX.
HAVANA, THE METROPOLIS OF THE ISLAND.
Havana and Its Attractions for Tourists—How to Reach Cuba— Description of the Harbor of Havana—How the Proverbial Unhealthfulness of the City May Be Remedied—Characteristics of the Business Quarter—Residences and How the People Live—Parks and Boulevards—Other Features of Life in the City.
In spite of the little encouragement which American tourists have had for visiting the city of Havana, for many years it has been a popular place of resort for the few who have tried it or have been recommended to it by their friends. With the attractions it has had during Spanish administration, when an air of constraint and suspicion marked the intercourse with every American, it will not be surprising if under changed auspices and in an atmosphere of genuine freedom, Americans will find it one of the most delightful and easily accessible places possible for them to visit. It is not all pleasant, but the unpleasant things are sometimes quite as interesting as the pleasant ones. If the traveler forms his judgments according to the actual comforts he may obtain, he will be pleased from beginning to end of his stay. If the measure of his good opinion is whether or not things are like those to which he is accustomed, he will be disappointed, because novelty reigns. But novelty does not necessarily mean discomfort.
Havana may be reached by a sea voyage of three or four days from New York, on any one of several excellent steamers under the American flag, and even in winter the latter portion of the voyage will be a pleasant feature of the journey. Or the path of the American invading squadron may be followed, and the traveler, after passing through Florida by rail, may journey from Tampa by the mail steamers, and touching at Key West for a few hours, reach Havana after a voyage of two nights and a day.
The Florida straits, between Cuba and the Florida keys, which were the scene of the first hostilities of the war, are but ninety miles wide, and the voyage is made from Key West in a few hours. The current of the gulf stream makes the channel a trifle reminiscent of the English channel, but once under the lee of the Cuban coast the water is still and the harbor of the old city offers shelter.
In the days before the war, Morro Castle had an added interest to the traveler from the fact that behind its frowning guns and under the rocks on which it was built, were the cells of scores of sad prisoners, some of them for years in the dungeons, whose walls could tell secrets like those of the inquisition in Spain if they could but speak. Between Morro Castle and its neighbor across the way, La Punta, the vessels steam into that bay, foul with four hundred years of Spanish misrule and filth, where three hundred years of the slave trade centered, and into which the sewers of a great city poured their filth. Once inside the harbor, Cabana Castle frowns from the hills behind Morro, and on the opposite shore rise the buildings of the city itself.
The harbor always has been a busy one, for the commerce of the island and of the city has been large. In times of peace, scores of vessels lie at anchor in the murky waters. The American anchorage for mail steamers for years has been in the extremest part of the bay from the city of Havana itself, in order to avoid the contagion which was threatened by a nearer anchorage. Until the Maine was guided to her ill-fated station by the harbor master, it had been long since any American vessel had stopped in that part of the harbor.
PERFECT SANITARY CONDITION EASILY CREATED.
The shallow harbor of Havana has its entrance from the ocean through a channel hardly more than three hundred yards wide, and nearly half a mile long, after which it broadens and ramifies until its area becomes several square miles. No fresh water stream, large or small, flows into it to purify the waters. The harbor entrance is so narrow, and the tides along that coast have so little rise and fall, that the level of water in the harbor hardly shows perceptible change day after day.
The result of this is that the constant inflow of sewage from the great city pouring into the harbor is never diluted, and through the summer is simply a festering mass of corruption, fronting the whole sea wall and throwing a stench into the air which must be breathed by everyone on shipboard. There is one part of the harbor known as "dead man's hole," from which it is said no ship has ever sailed after an anchorage of more than one day, without bearing the infection of yellow fever among its crew.
Along the shores of this very harbor are great warehouses for the sugar and tobacco shipped into the United States by the thousands of tons every year. To preserve our national health, our government has maintained an expensive marine hospital service and quarantine system along our southern ports which trade with Havana, in addition to supporting a marine hospital service under the eminent Dr. Burgess in Havana itself. To the rigid enforcement of this system, and the untiring vigilance of Dr. Burgess, must be credited the immunity which the United States has had from annual epidemics of yellow fever and smallpox.
The guilt of Spain in permitting this shocking condition to continue, cannot in any way be palliated. For four hundred years she has had sway in the island, free to work her own will, and drawing millions of dollars of surplus revenue out of the grinding taxes she has imposed. The installation of a sanitary system of sewage, which should discharge into the open sea instead of into this cesspool which lies at the city's feet, would have been the first solution of the difficulty. The threat of danger would have been finally averted by the expenditure of a few hundred thousand dollars, which would open a channel from the further extremity of the harbor to the ocean eastward. The distance is but a few miles and the engineering problem a simple one. This and the construction of a jetty northwestward from the point on which Morro Castle stands, would divert a portion of the current of the noble gulf stream into the harbor entrance, and the foul pond of to-day would be scoured of its filth by a perennial flood which could never fail.
Vera Cruz, on the Mexican coast, has proven that it is possible to exterminate yellow fever, and it is a duty owed to civilization that Havana shall follow along the same path. If all other excuses were to be ignored, the United States for years has had ample cause for intervention in Cuban affairs, as a measure of safety to the health of her own citizens, as truly as one man may complain to the authorities if his neighbor maintains a nuisance in the adjoining yard.
THE BUSINESS QUARTERS OF HAVANA.
Once anchored in the safest place in the harbor, the mail steamers are surrounded without delay by a fleet of peculiar boats of a sort seen only in the bay of Havana. For a bit of silver, the traveler is taken ashore, the journey to the landing stage being a matter of but a few moments. The journey through the custom house is not a formidable one, for unless there is suspicion of some contraband goods, the customs officers are not exacting upon travelers. At the door of the custom house, or aduana, wait the cabs, which are cheaper in Havana than in any other city of the new world, and they serve as a conveyance to the hotels, which are all grouped in the same neighborhood.
The streets through which the traveler passes are picturesque, but hardly practical, from the American point of view. Some of them are so narrow that carriages cannot pass, and all traffic must go in one direction. Nearly all of the business streets have awnings extending from one side to the other, between the roofs, as a protection from the tropic sun. The sidewalks on some of the most pretentious streets are not wide enough for three persons to walk abreast, and on others two cannot pass. On every hand one gets the impression of antiquity, and antiquity even greater than the four hundred years of Spanish occupancy actually measures. Spanish architecture, however modern it may be, sometimes adds to that impression and one might believe himself, with little stretch of the imagination, to be in one of the ancient cities of the old world.
The streets are paved with blocks of granite and other stone, roughly cut and consequently exceedingly noisy, but upon these narrow streets front some shops as fine as one might expect to discover in New York or Paris. It is true that they are not large, but they do not need to be, for nearly all are devoted to specialties, instead of carrying stocks of goods of the American diversity. The one who wants to shop will not lack for temptations. The selection is ample in any line that may be named, the styles are modern and in exquisite taste, and altogether the shops are a considerable surprise to one who judges them first from the exterior. Stores devoted exclusively to fans, parasols, gloves, laces, jewels, bronzes, silks and the beautiful cloth of pineapple fiber known as nipe cloth, are an indication of the variety that may be found. The shoes and other articles of men's and women's clothing are nearly all direct importations from Paris, and where Parisian styles dominate one may be assured that the selection is not a scanty one. Clerks are courteous even to the traditional point of Castilian obsequiousness, and altogether a shopping expedition along this Obispo street is an experience to be remembered with pleasure.
HAVANA HOMES.
You notice that everything is made to serve comfort and coolness. Instead of having panes of glass, the windows are open and guarded by light iron railings, and the heavy wooden doors are left ajar. You see into many houses as you pass along, and very cool and clean they look. There are marble floors, cane-seated chairs and lounges, thin lace curtains, and glimpses of courts in the center of each building, often with green plants or gaudy flowers growing in them between the parlor and the kitchen.
You find much the same plan at your hotel. You may walk in at the doors or the dining room windows just as you please, for the sides of the house seem capable of being all thrown open; while in the center of the building you see the blue sky overhead. Equally cool do all the inhabitants appear to be, and the wise man who consults his own comfort will do well to follow the general example. Even the soldiers wear straw hats. The gentlemen are clad in underwear of silk or lisle thread and suits of linen, drill or silk, and the ladies are equally coolly apparelled.
Havana is a dressy place, and you will be astonished at the neatness and style to which the tissue-like goods worn there are made to conform.
But come and see the apartment you are to rest in every night. Ten to one the ceiling is higher than you ever saw one in a private house, and the huge windows open upon a balcony overlooking a verdant plaza. The floor is of marble or tiling, and the bed is an ornate iron or brass affair, with a tightly stretched sheet of canvas or fine wire netting in place of the mattress you are used to. You could not sleep on a mattress with any proper degree of comfort in the tropics. There is a canopy with curtains overhead, and everything about the room is pretty certain to be scrupulously clean. Conspicuous there and everywhere else that you go is a rocking chair. Rocking chairs are to be found in the houses, and in regiments in the clubs.
Havana is the metropolis of the West Indies. It has more life and bustle than all the rest of the archipelago put together. If you are German, English, Scotch, Dutch, American, French or whatever you are, you will find fellow countrymen among its 250,000 souls. There is a public spirit there which is rare in these climes. The theaters astonish you by their size and elegance. The aristocratic club is the Union, but the popular one is the Casino Espanol, whose club house is a marvel of tropical elegance and beauty. Nearly all these attractions are on or near the broad, shady and imposing thoroughfare, the Prado—a succession of parks leading from the water opposite Morro Castle almost across the city.
In one or another of these parks a military band plays on three evenings of the week, and the scene on such occasions is wholly new to English eyes. It is at such times that one may see the beautiful Spanish and Cuban women. They do not leave their houses in the heat of the day unless something requires them to do so, and when they do they remain in their carriages, and are accompanied by a servant or an elderly companion. So strict is the privacy with which they are surrounded that you shall see them shopping without quitting their carriages, waited on by the clerks, who bring the goods out to the vehicles.
But when there is music under the laurels or palms the senoritas, in their light draperies, and wearing nothing on their heads save the picturesque mantilla of Old Spain, assemble on the paths, the seats, the sidewalks and in their carriages, and there the masculine element repairs and is very gallant, indeed.
Here you will listen to the dreamy melody of these latitudes, Spanish love songs and Cuban waltzes so softly pretty that you wonder all the world does not sing and play them. On other nights the walk or drive along the Prado is very interesting. You pass some of the most elegant of the houses, and notice that they are two stories high, and that the family apartments are on the upper stories, so that you miss the furtive views of the families at meals and of the ladies reclining in the broad-tiled window sills that you have in the older one-story sections of the city.