March 26th.—Again this morning from bed to horse for a little free air, a little hour to enjoy this wonderfully sweet and delicious nature before the sun begins his reign of tyranny, and, to all who have the temerity to encounter his personal presence, reign of terror.
Among untried points of the compass, we remember due south as one. Here we very soon find ourselves and the road entering upon a long avenue formed by hedges that have grown to trees, often meeting over our heads. These are filled with birds and flowers of all songs and perfumes; through them we catch glimpses of scattered cocoa-nut groves and wide cane-fields.
Presently we come upon a high, ornamented, close-locked gate, the first of the kind we have seen, and as unlike a sketch I made of it as a pretty gate must almost be to a bad drawing of it. On approaching more nearly we find written upon it “Cafetal.” We look over the side fence and discover a wide avenue of palms leading to the concealed house, and on both sides the pretty coffee-plant, with its small, dark-green leaves. All over the wide fields it is growing under the shade of a great variety of trees,—the cocoa-nut, orange, palm etc.; for you must know the coffee-plant has the feminine peculiarity of always needing shelter and protection, as well as of causing palpitations, exhilarations, trepidations, and nervousness generally.
What a shame and sin it was to turn all these shady, poetical cafetals into horrid ingenios with their treeless, monotonous, endless fields of cane, their dreary smoking chimneys, their steaming engines, and broiling machinery of men and women!
In the perpetual battles between gold and beauty, it is likely, I fear, the latter will not win until it has the millennium for an ally.
As we were turning away from the closed gate, a huge piece of midnight, bungled into human shape, and dressed, or rather undressed, so as to display the herculean proportions of the entire morning and evening of his body, having the noon in eclipse, came up to us, holding out an immense charcoal paw, accompanied by a beseeching jumble of chopped Spanish.
B—— put in it a piece of silver, which the black-meat looked at so contemptuously as to quite spoil his attempt at a civil “gracias.”
Evening.—We ventured to penetrate the inviting avenue of this morning; found it leads to the beautiful Cafetal of “La Providencia.” The grounds lovely, with overgrown ornamental trees and shrubs, and pretty brook of rural and domestic habits. Just beyond we met the administrator with his wife and sister, returning on horseback from the “south side.” where we had much wished to extend our own ride. The pros why we should go are:—this is just the season for the sea-cow; they are being caught in large numbers, and I am positively assured by those who should know, that they are the real original mermaid—the prosaic suggestion of all the romantic ballads and traditions. But the cons that confront our enthusiasm are mostly the roads, which are so bad as to be dangerous; the horses we met had been almost buried in the mud, and it is a severe test of the strength of the most vigorous person. So we yield to the urgencies of that wretched bugbear, invalidism, and, finally, to the invitation of the party, to go back with them to the house. Here we are urged to remain to dinner, which is waiting in the large living-room where we sit, but the sun is already set, and we excuse ourselves, accepting at last some fruit and a glass of guirappa.
By the time we have passed the grounds night is lapping over the edge of day without any perceptible clasp of twilight. And those hedges so high and thickly woven! The starlight scarcely contrives to get through them. How easily an army of robbers might conceal there and rush upon us, unarmed as we are, and the darkness robbing us of our only protection—my sex, and its weakness and appeal to gallantry. Our horses even instinctively press close to each other and quicken their pace. But the darkness, or the invisible hand and heart that fashion it, protects us safely home. Here we are just in time for the usual evening music on the plaza, a pretty square in the heart of the little town, made and ornamented by concha, with much taste and expense. It is like all the plazas I have seen, an imitation of the one at Havana; with exactly four palm-trees, with shrubs and flowers and statues; with small bilious-looking men, and belles with regular oriental features, soft and dark eyes, fat forms, pretty ball dresses, and an awkward mode of progression which they fancy is walking.
Tuesday, 27th.—To-day we explored our way to a new sugar plantation, the first I have seen where the cane is ground by oxen instead of the usual steam-engine. I have always pitied those poor oxen and horses pacing round and round in the mill, round and round with the rounding months and years; but these wretched beings who drive them, with long whips or rather poles in their hands, calling out to the long train of animals at every step, as they follow them, in hideous monotonous, guttural tones that never end; fifty in number, all young and mostly females; night and day, day and night; and several overseers with the invariable long whip in hand to watch at every step,—it made me heart-sick, and glad enough to turn from the entrance of the building, where we sat on our horses, and ride up to the house of the mayoral for a glass of water. His wife, with an interesting Creole face and Spanish tongue, insists that we dismount, which accordingly we do, and wait while the slip-shod negress (negresses here are always slip-shod) goes to the sugar-house for guirappa. We learn that the plantation belongs to Marquise Somebody, who only comes once in two or three years, occupying the family house across the green, which, though ample and well built, has not a tree, a shrub, a leaf to turn it into a home. As we wait, a small chain-gang passes by us, coolies and negroes linked together at their work; not an uncommon appendage to a plantation, and in fact essential with coolies, who are quite certain to commit suicide if whipped. The lady tells me by proxy that she much prefers negroes to coolies because they are so much more amiable.