Much as I doat on cleanliness, I find it a poor exchange to pay for it in the more precious commodity of sleep, and I record myself to you as a wretched victim to this diurnal deluge of neatness.
On our way to the ingenio I mustered Spanish enough to beg a cane-stalk of the negresses who were cutting it down with great rapidity in the fields, using huge sharp knives that I could scarcely lift. They eagerly gave us more than we could carry, enough to keep us sucking all the way home, and a six weeks to come. Willis says, “Nobody can starve here: the cane-fields are all open; and if hungry, one has only to cut a stick and suck.” We discovered this morning still another sugar plantation, but distrusting the availability of our Spanish, only rode past the sugar-house without asking for guirappa. As we passed a gate near which groups of women were at work, one of them came up with outstretched hand, begging countenance, and some sort of a jumble, and all the rest started to follow her example; but being purseless, and with no great mind to use a purse if I had had it, I shook my head and said, “No hablo Espagnol,” emphasizing the remark by a decided application of my horsewhip to the horse.
Saturday, 31st.—This evening we promised ourselves another visit to our mountain, but an unusual amount of heat and exhaustion forbade the ascent, and very soon found me reclining under the irresistible shadow of trees that knew how to make shade, while B—— galloped off to reconnoitre. But I soon found myself comparing myself to Gulliver when he became populated with Liliputians, so many insects shared in my taste for shade and solitude; and I was glad enough when B—— made his perspiring appearance.
This being market-day, we found great amusement in watching the peasants astride their panniers which bestrode the horses. In addition to being stuffed monstrously with vegetables, over the edge of most of the panniers were dangling chickens, ducks, and Guinea-hens, tied together by their feet, feathers ruffled, wings flapping backwards, heads dangling downwards, and an expression on their faces of pious resignation adapted to the study of bigger bipeds. All the poor things were alive, but one was sure must die of vertigo or apoplexy, before they could by any possibility reach the town. Here we noticed particularly the tethering of the horses and cattle, a custom indispensable in a country where there are no fences and rarely hedges. One end of the rope being tied around the animal’s neck, the other is fastened to a tree or shrub or stake driven in the ground, or sometimes to the long, strong grass. Thus localized, they are allowed food and exercise to the full capacity of the rope, but no farther. Each one is made a hermit, ruminating round and round in his solitude and his circle, which, instead of increasing, is sure to diminish, for the rope gets tangled in knots, or twisted around sticks, or the animal’s own legs, so that prudence soon forces a sedentary life upon him. Not unfrequently these ropes were lying in ambush across our path, often so hidden by the grass that neither ourselves nor our horses discovered them until we were nearly caught in the snare. Imagine the interesting frights and ingenious summersaults that we escaped!
I must not forget a remarkable tree we discovered across the fields, which attracted so much our fancy that we immediately turned off, overleaping hedges and ditches (small ones) to examine it. Its outward proportions were on the most magnificent scale, eclipsing in size all its neighbors and all the trees we have before seen, but the trunk proved to be nearly or quite hollow. B—— rode in through the gothic opening, turned his horse around inside, and came out again, and I might have done the same thing at the same time. It would make a dwelling absolutely larger than some of the inhabited huts I have seen here. That admirable disciplinarian, the old woman who lived in her shoe, etc., would here have found “ample room and verge enough” for all her surplus of light infantry, while those who had to go to bed without molasses or bread could have amused themselves with the echoes of their own squallings, for the cavity sounded hollow, like a great unfurnished room. But at the time I only thought how much the tree resembled those magnificent lives spreading out so fair and grandly, reaching so near their kindred blue that in the eyes of the world they are fulfilling all of a high and happy destiny. You must approach very near, perhaps penetrate the abysses of their being, to find that the great heart is gone; its place is only supplied by hollow echoes and aching void.
April 1st.—Palm Sunday—like all the other Cuban Sundays, except that two, or at most three, men have passed on horseback, with long palm branches in their hands.
A south wind again, more enervating than can well be imagined by those who have never felt it come hot and hissing from the equator. It is an incipient sirocco, and always sends the Italians to bed. Of course, too languid for the early, and only mass, coming as it does, before breakfast: the rest of the day we have only to endure with the aid of a fan, and to watch the altitudes of the thermometer.
I have not yet recovered from the uncomfortable sensation of living in a Sundayless world,—a world which being so elaborate in its upholstery, is supposed to have required the full seven days to complete it, leaving no rest or hallowing for anybody.
You can well understand that writing to you, or anybody, on these hot but heavenly days, is simply a contrivance for inking over my dulness. As you suspect, I am getting to live quietly here, dreaming away life, without much help of books, it is true, but, what is better still, without much hindrance from them either.
After all, why not take a little time to dream a few little dreams in this large dream of life? Death will come soon enough to tap us on the forehead, or it may be to shake us rudely, and then we shall be wide awake, and for a long time. Besides, if it takes a long time to dream one’s dreams, it takes as long time to undream them; and you know—who does not?—that they are a kind of atmosphere which penetrates where everything is as much as where everything is not.