The Steamer Dee.—Running down the coast.—Beautiful scenery.—Associations awakened by it.—Columbus.—The scenes of his glorious achievements.—The island groups.—The shores of the continent.—"The Columbian sea."—Disappointments and sufferings, the common inheritance of genius.—Cervantes, Hylander, Camoens, Tasso.—These waters rich in historical incidents.—Revolutions.—Arrival at Vera Cruz.—The Peak of Orizaba.—Description of Vera Cruz.—Churches.—The Port.—San Juan de Ulloa.—Scarcity of Water.—The suburbs.—Population.—Yellow Fever.
The British Royal mail steamer Dee, arriving at Havana on one of her regular circuits, presented a very favorable opportunity to gratify a disposition for change. Accordingly, on the 10th of February, I embarked on board of her, with the intention of touching at Vera Cruz, and thence proceeding to Tampico, and such other interesting points as my time and health would allow.
The "Dee" is one of a Line of Steamers, built by a company in London, to carry the mails, which are placed in charge of an officer, acting under the direction of the British government. This company receives from the government, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds annually. The vessels average about one thousand tons each, and are so built as to be readily altered into men-of-war, should they be required to strengthen the English naval power. The Dee consumes about thirty-five tons of coal per day. Her average speed, however, under the most favorable circumstances, does not exceed eight and a half knots an hour. She is commanded by a sailing master of the British navy, whose salary is about fifteen hundred dollars per annum. She has been in service only two years, but has the appearance of being a much older vessel; a circumstance caused no doubt by the "retrenchments" consequent upon the unlimited extravagance of the company's first outfit. Her so-called "accommodations" were very inferior, and the table was miserably furnished, but the service of plate, emblazoned with heraldic designs, was, unquestionably, beautiful.
We steamed out of the harbor at sunrise, the ever wakeful Moro looking sternly down upon us as we passed under its frowning battlements; and, being favored with delightful weather, skirted the coast as far as we could, and took our departure from Cape Antonio.
Nothing can exceed the beauty and sublimity of the natural scenery thus presented to our view, between Havana and the point of the Cape. The broad rich plains, the gentle slopes, the luxuriant swells, the hills clothed with verdure to their very crowns, the lofty mountains with their abrupt and craggy prominences and ever changing forms, make up a landscape of the richest and rarest kind, beautiful in all its parts, and exceedingly picturesque in its general effect. The hills, with highly cultivated plantations, extending from the lovely valleys below, in beautiful order and luxuriance, far up towards their forest-crowned summits, looked green and inviting, as if full of cool grottos and shady retreats; while the far-off mountains where
"Distance lent enchantment to the view,"
seemed traversed with dark ravines and gloomy caverns, fit abodes for those hordes of merciless banditti, whose predatory achievements have given to the shores and mountain passes of Cuba, an unenviable pre-eminence in outlawry.
The motion of our oaken leviathan, sweeping heavily along through the quiet sea, created a long, low swell, which, like a miniature tide, rose gently upon the resounding shore, washing its moss-covered bank, and momentarily disturbing the echoes that lingered in its voiceless caves. It was painful to feel that I was leaving those beautiful shores, never, in all probability, to revisit them. A gloomy feeling took possession of my soul, as if parting again, and for ever, from the shores of my early home. Then came up, thronging upon the memory and the fancy, a multitude of historical associations, suggested by the land before me, and the sea on whose bosom I was borne—associations of the most thrilling and painful interest, and yet so wonderfully arrayed in the gorgeous drapery of romance, that I would not, if I could, dismiss them.
Albeit, then, I may be in imminent danger of running into vain repetitions, in giving indulgence to the melancholy humor of the hour, I cannot refrain from following out, in this place, where a clear sky and an open sea leave me no better employment, some of those reflections, which, if indulged in at all, might, perhaps, with equal appropriateness have found a place in one of the previous chapters. With Cuba, one of the earliest, and the most important of the great discoveries of Columbus, behind me—the shores of Central America, the scene of his last and greatest labors in the cause of science, before me—and the wide expanse of sea, which witnessed all his toils, and sufferings, around me on every side—how could I do otherwise than recall to mind all that he had accomplished, and all that he had endured, in this region of his wonderful adventures! Here was the grand arena of his more than heroic victories, the theatre of his proud triumph over the two great obstacles, which, in all ages have opposed the march of mind—the obstinate bigotry of the ignorant, and the still more obstinate ignorance of the learned.
Behind me, far away toward the rising sun, was the little island of San Salvador, where the New World, in all its elysian beauty, its virgin loveliness, burst upon his view. Conception, Fernandina, and Isabella, the bright enchanting beacons rising out of the bosom of the deep, to guide his eager prow to Cuba, the "Queen of the Antilles," were there too, slumbering on the outer verge of the coral beds of the Bahamas. Nearer, and full in view, its mountain peaks towering to the skies, and stretching its long arm nearly three hundred leagues away toward the south-east, lay the beautiful island I had just left, the richest jewel of the ocean, the brightest gem in the crown of Spain. Farther on in the same direction, and dimly descried from the eastern promontories of Cuba, were the lofty peaks of St. Domingo, beautifully flanked by Porto Rico on the right, and Jamaica on the left. Then, farther still, sweeping in a graceful curve toward the outermost angle of the Southern continent, and completing the emerald chain, which nature has so beautifully thrown across the broad chasm that divides the eastern shores of the two Americas, lay the windward cluster of the Caribbean islands, terminating with Trinidad, in the very bosom of the Gulf of Paria. Returning westward, along the coast of Paria, where Columbus first actually saw the continent, and traversing the whole extent of the Caribbean Sea, you might reach the shores of Honduras, where he again touched the shores of the continent, and finished, amid the infirmities of age, and the sufferings consequent upon a life of toil, hardship and exposure, his great achievement of discovery, his career of usefulness and glory.