A little event has just occurred on our plantation, from which I am wandering. One of the laborers, a Chinaman, it is suspected (because the negroes are such cowards), threw into one of the wheels of the machinery an iron bolt of some sort to prevent its operation, and so give them all a holiday. The master, not being able to discover the offender, forced them all to work harder than ever through the week, and all the following Sunday.
But night is coming on and we must go in spite of urgent invitations to remain, and many expressed regrets from our kind hostess that her house is already too full of visitors to admit us permanently, and so, promising to “Come soon and spend the day,” we encounter the darkness, and I many misgivings of possible robbers. And why should I not? The country, from all accounts is full of them. Everybody goes armed. Not one man do you meet, from the elegant señor down to the stupidest negro, without pistols in his saddle and a long sword at his side, which I always see brushing against the hedges as they ride in the country, or rattling on the pavement as they walk in town.
My fears are somewhat quieted by the assurance that nobody accompanied by a lady has ever been attacked or in all probability will be, an assurance more interesting than convincing, it must be confessed. However, somewhat armed and strengthened by my weakness, we ride through the bristling hedges and star-lighted air until tremor is forgotten in the sweet enchantment of the scene, and we are sorry to see the lights of Guiness rising one by one out of the darkness.
Friday, March 23d.—These people have unquestionably the most heterogeneous tastes in the world. At dinner to-day I counted ten dishes entirely new to me,—all but two, intricate complications of flesh, fish, or fowl, but mostly of vegetables, compounds which no ingenuity of chemist could hope to resolve back to their elements. How think you, is unsophisticated American digestion to make terms with this marked array? How not to disappoint the attentive hostess who expects you to encounter them all unflinchingly, and end them, not yourself, victoriously?
During dinner we happened to mention our intention of procuring horses and riding twice a day in search of adventures and an appetite, when what does a polite Creole opposite do but offer me the use of his own horse as long as I stay: it is in Matanzas and he will be only too happy to send for it.
I found my French useful to decline and to express thanks more ample than the Spanish “gracias.”
