Brazil and La Plata: The personal record of a cruise

by C. S. Stewart

A range of stately buildings on the west, faces and overlooks this point of aristocratic and fashionable reunion: an opera house and palatial café with other imposing structures, giving quite a metropolitan air to the scene. The first two mentioned bear the name of Tacon, in honor of the captain-general of that name, during whose rule they were built, and whose administration a few years ago, was distinguished by such signal reforms in the police of the city, and the entire suppression of the cut-throat outrages before so common. The enlarged views, public spirit, energy and determination which characterized his measures, stamped his name indelibly on the city; and to these is the population indebted, not only for the effectual suppression of crime, but for much also of the ornamental architecture which it boasts.

South of the Paseo is the Champ de Mars, an extensive parade ground, lined with spacious barracks and other governmental buildings. Passing these we drove three or four miles over a broad and well-kept macadamized avenue, filled with animated life in every form, and lined with suburban residences luxuriant in the richness and beauty of tropical growth in tree, shrub and flower: all in such wide contrast with scenes witnessed in a drive of like length in the suburbs of a city with us, as to excite the wonder, why more of our citizens of wealth and leisure do not take the short trip to Havana in the winter, to be amused and instructed by its novelties, and charmed by the blandness of its climate and the splendor of its vegetable life. Although the soil in this section of the island is of an inferior quality to that of most other regions, there are evidences on every hand of the richness and beauty which have secured to Cuba the proud and winning title of “Queen of the Antilles,” and make her the choicest colonial possession left to Spain.

From the heat of the climate, the construction of the houses, in general, is such as to make them little more than so many open pavilions, from which as you drive by, you unavoidably catch not only the

“Manners living as they rise,”

but many, if not all, the habits of life of the inmates. The eye penetrates at a glance, as it were, the entire domestic economy of the household. The dwellings are, for the most part, one story only in height, with a tower or mirador at one end or corner, for a “look-out.” Externally they seem all door and window. These are very wide, and extend from the ceiling to the floor, on a level with the street. Thrown widely open in the cool of the day, the interior becomes fully exposed: furniture and inmates—the whole family group in full dress or dishabille as the case may be—a scene on the stage of life, as open to inspection as one from a drama on the boards of a theatre. This is as true of the dwellings of the rich as of the poor. In seeing the whole diagram of the interior thus exposed without any appearance of bed or bedroom, the wonder in my mind was where the people could sleep? On expressing some curiosity on this point, I was told that in many cases, the beds of the family consist of mats or mattresses, spread at night on the floor, or in cots in the reception-rooms, while in most houses an inner court is encircled by small sleeping and dressing-rooms.

Many of the residences of the gentry and moneyed aristocracy in the suburbs are luxurious and princely; exhibiting long suites of spacious and elegantly furnished apartments, with floors of polished marble and the oriental luxury of jetting fountains and clustering flowers, endless in the variety of their tint and perfume. The gardens attached to some of these are laid out with taste, and kept in the nicest order, filled with an exuberance of choice plants known to us at the North only in the dwarfish and stunted growth of the conservatory. Indeed, many which are cherished exotics with us, are here seen in rank profusion in the hedges and by the roadside, like the thorn and the thistle of our ruder climate.

By the time of our return, the hour for the drive and promenade of the citizens had arrived; and, as we approached the Paseo, we were met and passed by great numbers of equipages of varied style. Some were altogether American and European in their appointments; but most were the native volante in greater or less elegance and richness—some with one horse only, and others with two. When two are used, the second is placed abreast of the one in the shafts and ridden by the calesero. Each carriage contained from one to three females, in full dress as if at a party—low necks and very short sleeves: to which may be added, very fat figures and very dark skins. Bonnets are not worn of course with this costume, nor indeed with any other. The coiffure at this season is of ribbons, gauzes, laces and other zephyr-like materials, with flowers and jewelry; but, in the winter, I am told, these give place to head-dresses of velvet and satin, with ostrich plumes, pearls and diamonds. As the volantes pass and repass along the carriage drive, salutations are exchanged between the ladies in the vehicles with each other, and with acquaintances and friends among the gentlemen on foot or on horseback, by the eyes, the fan and hat, more than with the voice; but, so far as I observed, the ladies did not alight as is the custom in Europe in many places of the kind, to join in the promenade on foot, or form groups for conversation. At nightfall there is a return to the city, where, for an hour or two, the ladies amuse themselves in driving from shop to shop, to have such articles as they ask for brought to their carriages for inspection, or, proceeding to the Plaza de Armas, again join their associates of the beau monde in display and flirtation by lamp-light or moonlight as the case may be, while a regimental band in front of the governmental palace gives a free concert of instrumental music till nine o’clock. The evening on this occasion was delightful, and we prolonged our stay and observations till that hour.

So well pleased was F—— as well as I with this first peep on shore, that we repeated the visit two days after, driving as far as the Bishop’s garden, the principal attraction of the kind in the neighborhood of the city. Since then there has been much heavy rain. The trade wind at the same time ceased, causing a closeness of atmosphere that has been very oppressive, and made me more than content to remain for the most part quietly on board ship: I say for the most part, for I went once into the city, on a solitary pilgrimage to the tomb of the good and great, and ever to be honored, discoverer of the New World. As you know, his remains were removed at intervals of time of various length, from Valladolid where he died, to Seville, and from Seville to St. Domingo, the resting-place designated for them in his will. On the cession of that island to France in 1796, they were brought to Cuba, and deposited with great ceremony in the cathedral of Havana. A medallion likeness in marble, with a short inscription on a mural tablet, marks the spot in the chancel near the high altar where they have found, as it is to be hoped, a lasting sepulchre. No American can stand near them unmoved: or without a recurrence in thought to the sublime vision of an unknown world, which so long filled the mind, and amid endless discouragements and disappointments sustained the hopes and energies of the adventurous navigator, till it issued in a glorious reality; or without deep sympathy in the vicissitudes and trials of his after life, and the neglect and injustice which brought his gray hairs with sorrow to the tomb. Near by are exhibited—I was about to say the ignominious, but I recall the epithet—the ennobled fetters with which an ungrateful monarch permitted a jealous rival and enemy to manacle his limbs.

On another occasion I left the ship after night, for a row across the harbor with Lieut. T—— in his gig. It had been our intention to pass the evening in the city, in a visit to some families of his acquaintance to whom he wished to introduce me, but the heat and dampness of a debilitating and sickening atmosphere during the day, determined us to postpone this till the return of a more invigorating and elastic air. Our row was from the anchorage of the men-of-war through that of the merchant ships, at another point in the harbor, to a landing near the town of Regla opposite the city; a place of no enviable notoriety, in times past, as a kind of city of refuge through the indulgent winkings of government officials, first for the pirates who once infested these regions, and more recently for dealers in the slave trade. Here also is one of the principal amphitheatres for the exhibition of the favorite national amusement, the bull fight. The special object of the trip, on the part of my companion, had some reference to the disposition of the slush of the Congress, if you can comprehend the import of so elegant a term in a ship’s economy: mine partly the pleasure of his company, and partly to inquire the state of the sick in a private hospital for cases of yellow fever, and to learn the practicability of visiting any American seamen, who might be suffering there from this pest of Havana, already beginning its annual ravages.

The night was very dark for a tropical region, and the most striking imagery discernible, as we threaded our way amidst the shipping, was the black masses of spars and rigging pencilled against the sky above us; the long line of brilliant lights marking the walls of the city reflected in streams of fire on the glassy water; and the alternate dim glimmerings and blinding flashes of the revolving pharos, surmounting the lofty tower of the Moro.