As we walk over the very clean pavement, stared at by wondering groups of villagers, a woman rushes up to us breathlessly explaining that she knows where the English person who lives here is to be found, and will be very willing to show us the way.
Mr. S—— thanks her, with the assurance that we are only waiting for the train; and we soon find ourselves reclining beatifically under deliciously breathing trees, whose shadows are thick as night with darkness.
I must not forget to mention a primitive kind of well we saw when again en route. It was like an ordinary well: an old white horse walking away from it when the bucket was full and backing to it after it was emptied into the cask on the cart, and must go down for more.
We came also for the first time upon a peculiar species of palm, distinguishable from the royal palm only by an enormous swelling half way up the trunk. I pronounced them dropsical. B—— was more brilliant, declaring they resembled a snake, that had fallen into the misfortune of swallowing a toad,—an idea which Mr. S—— developed in a drawing which I copied and am saving to show you. Very many of these singular trees grow crookedly—vegetable leaning towers suggesting the idea that a variation from the perpendicular may be peculiarly incident to trees as well as tropical towers and morality.
It is an interesting fact that instead of undressing with the indelicate precipitancy of our trees at home, the palm-tree drops only one leaf every lunar month,—a replenishing of its wardrobe which is dignified as well as rhythmical.
On the subject of palms I find authors in Cuba again inaccurate. It is asserted that they are of no use, when it is true that of all the several hundreds of varieties found on the island every one is useful. A gentleman who has lived here in the country many years says, “They are the most useful tree we have.” They give food to animals, thatches to roofs, brooms to housemaids, cords to tobacconists, hats to men, besides being used for numerous other purposes.
The young palm often reminds one of an overgrown aquatic weed; very many resemble a gigantic pencil-case, the trunk quite straight and equal until you approach the top, where it suddenly diminishes, looking loose as if it would shove up and down like the pencil point.
Arrived at Guiness, the volante does not come as we expected from the plantation where we are invited to spend a week or more. We go—not to a fonda, for they are usually only miserably dirty inns, but to a private boarding-house, with which Mr. S—— is already acquainted. Here we find what we have so much desired—a characteristic Cuban house with characteristic Creole customs, although our landlord is a fat, good-natured Frenchman, and his wife a tall, stately, imposing negress. Her history is a little interesting. A sister of hers had a daughter, whose father was a wealthy Spaniard, and who sent her to Paris to be educated. Soon after she died, leaving this aunt $10,000, with which she purchased her freedom, and, I conjecture, the French husband.
As we enter the door, large enough for a camel, she greeted us with a hospitable smile and graceful bow, at the same time motioning us to sit in the row of rocking-chairs standing accurately in front of the huge window. I am told that unlike ordinary parallel lines these have been known to absolutely meet. If I do not mistake, the occasion is apt to be when an appreciative señor finds a pretty Creole for a vis-à-vis.
The house is a fac-simile of nearly all these houses. Massive stone, directly upon the street. It is of one high story; tiles keep out the heat; the pointed roof and bare rafters inside giving a bare-like effect, which the brick-paved floor tries to counteract, and the enormous doorways to maintain.