Behind all this follows an indiscriminate mass of men, women, and children; but I have seen enough, and go back to the house, wondering over the strange things in heaven and earth and our philosophies.
Mr. S—— tells us so much of the elaborate celebrations and ceremonies in Havana, during these Easter days, that we regret not having gone back to witness them. Yesterday, the streets in all parts of the city were filled by ladies walking to and from all the different churches; the great ambition and proof of piety being, to visit as many as possible during the day. All were dressed in deep black. This is the only day of the year when dainty Havanese female feet press the pavements. Not a sound was to be heard over the entire city. All shops closed, carriages and vehicles of all kinds forbidden to stir, as was the case in Guiness; profound silence reigns because Christ is dead, and no profane sound must disturb his slumbers. In most of the churches an image of the dead Christ lay in a tomb surrounded by burning tapers, and all the signs of burial. Even some of the private houses, opening as they do on the streets, discovered in the principal room, to passers by, the same ghostly image partly covered by a black pall, while the family and guests sit around it in deep mourning, which is, or should be, enlivened only by occasional sobs.
Friday evening, 10 o’clock.—We are just returned from the Cathedral. As we entered, the Miserere was being sung by two young priests and our friend Father M——; the organ accompaniment played by a young priest. The pathetic strains, here mournful as the sob of a broken heart, there subdued into the tones of resignation, then suddenly struggling out in an energy like despair, seemed to thrill all the hearts of the kneeling worshippers. They were composed entirely of black-robed women; for you must know, devotion here is entirely a feminine accomplishment: the men only stand around against the wall to admire the performer, apparently quite forgetting the performance.
I perceived on one side a regularly arranged pyramid of wax candles. At certain periods of the ceremony one of the lights was extinguished, then another and another; when all were out the services were to close; but finding my strength waning faster than the lights, I came home to make a hurried note of sounds and scenes that I do not attempt to describe, of ceremonies that have all the grotesqueness and absurdity of those of Rome without their dignity and grandeur. The piety of Cuba seems to think that the next best thing to being in Rome and doing as the Romans do, is to be out of Rome and do more than Romans do.
Saturday, April 7th.—At nine o’clock this morning we found ourselves waiting at the pretty and fanciful American depot for the Havana train. As soon as fairly seated in the American car, in came our jolly friend the priest, accompanied by a large number of officers; we find that he is chaplain of the regiment. Officers have taken the little private sitting-room one always finds in these cars. They amuse themselves more than us by uproarious singing and laughter. As we start the priest crosses himself, laughing, and accompanying it by a muttered prayer; all we hear is “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” He says this is so that if any accident happens it shall not be his fault. One of the sharply moustached officers is the first to get out his cigars and offer one to me, with a look of some concern that I decline, but all the rest of the ladies accept, and soon every man in the car, but one woman, is smoking and happy. But presently Father M—— discovers a pretty Creole lady acquaintance quietly smoking her cigar, at the other end of the car; he leaves me with a phrase characteristic of Spanish politeness,—“I kiss your feet, señora.”
Saturday.—San Nicola and the other little towns on our way present uniform features. In all varieties of new palms in groves and avenues; hogsheads of molasses waiting to get their tickets on the cars; low huts with thatched roofs, or else the ordinary Cuban house with nearly all its rooms opening on the street, exposing the occupants to the curiosity of travellers. These people seem to be as ignorant of private life as unconscious that they are leading a public one. How much is the privacy and sanctity of domestic life a matter of climate?
This being within a few days of the season of cock-fighting, these redoubtable warriors, tied securely by unwilling feet, were being carried in large numbers to the numerous fighting rendezvous. Their spurs were very long with which to “prick the sides” of their masters’ “intents,” otherwise I saw nothing to distinguish them from our humble, domestic, barnyard citizen at home, who crows and struts out his day, and dies “unwept, unhonored,” etc.
The approach to Matanzas, through a ravine between two mountains, is far famed, and certainly deserves no small credit for the hasty glimpse it gives you of an ordinarily interesting town and an extraordinarily interesting bay, and beyond this an even range of mountains which surely were not born great, nor have they achieved greatness, although many travellers and descriptions have thrust greatness upon them.
I will not blacken and mar the myriad-hued brightness of that bay with ink; nor will I attempt to chronicle the phosphorescent miracles which are all day long being performed by the gulf stream and the concealed rocks over which it washes and breaks in sunny foam and dripping rainbows. It is so marvellously uttered in colors that words would do it wrong.
Evening.—It being well established that the only sane thing to do upon our arrival was, soon as possible, to see the renowned valley of the Yumuri, we accordingly walked from the dinner-table into our waiting volante to go and see the renowned valley of the Yumuri.