From flag to flag

by Eliza Ripley

The amount of work accomplished during the six winter months was enormous and varied. Every operation, from the planting of cane to the shipping of sugar, was in progress at the same time. As the cane—to be ground—was cut and hauled away, the field was taken possession of by the boyero to herd and feed his oxen, and they followed day by day in the wake of the cane-cutters. The slender cane-tops, and leaves that grow along the stalk, form the only food the cattle receive in winter, though in time the saccharine matter contained therein destroys the teeth. In two weeks after the oxen gleaned a field, young cane sprouted up, straight and stiff like asparagus-shoots, till all was covered with a carpet of delicate green; then the plows and hoes were used to destroy the weeds that crept in among the tender cane-sprouts. Meanwhile cane was being hauled in heavy wagons all day long to the sugar-house, passed through the powerful mill, that crushed it to a pulp; the extracted juice was carried through troughs to the kettles and boiled; the newly made sugar was shoveled into hogsheads, placed over the molasses-cistern to drain eight or ten days, then “headed up” and shipped to the city by cars.

The pressed cane-stalks, spread over the ground, were tossed in the sun to dry for fuel. Men were plowing, hoeing, cutting cane, loading wagons, driving teams, boiling, skimming, stirring fuel, filling hogsheads, and driving wagons to the depot loaded with sugar and molasses, day after day. For manifest reasons, no insurance could be effected on plantation property; therefore the planters deposited their produce in city warehouses as rapidly as possible. Our hogsheads were all made from staves and heads shipped direct from Maine, and put together by Chinese in our cooper-shop. Casks to contain molasses were furnished by a merchant in Matanzas (the great molasses market), whose warehouses were provided with enormous tanks into which the casks were emptied, then returned to be filled again. We had a well-equipped carpenter-shop and blacksmith’s forge, and mechanics, mostly among our own laborers, who were equal to almost any emergency. Other plantations around us were similarly provided and managed. There was daily more or less of borrowing going on; though only a matter of sixty miles from Havana, it was often impossible to obtain from the city the aid required in a sudden emergency. The planters were generous, kindly, and mutually helpful in cases when extra assistance was needed, often sending their own mechanics and sugar-makers if necessary.

Six months of tireless activity was conducted with clock-work regularity. The bell tolled the hours of meals, and changes of watch day and night. No one, from Lamo in the house to the cattle-tenders in the field (except the delicate women), had more than six hours for sleep during the twenty-four.

After the first week, all became accustomed to the change; and, by the end of the season, every living creature was rounder and fatter, except the hard-worked oxen. These had to be sent at once to a potrero (grazing-farm), and boarded at the rate of a dollar a month, until the next busy season.

Toward the end of winter all vegetation, albeit green, was parched and dusty; the cane-leaves hung from the stalks in dry and curled shreds. A carelessly dropped match, or a half-extinguished cigar, often caused a conflagration that swept over acres, and destroyed property worth thousands of dollars. From the veranda we had a commanding view of the broad plain which spread from the mountain to the sea, and scarcely a day passed that ascending smoke did not indicate burning cane-fields, sometimes in two or three widely separated places.

While a fire on an adjoining plantation was an excitement, it did not compare with the intense alarm created by one in our own fields. The first shout of “Fuego!” and loud peal of the bell, started every one to his feet. Several horses were kept saddled, and others hitched under the sugar-house shed, for such emergency. So well did they know the signal of the bell at an unusual hour, that with the first taps they were frantic to start, and, if a rider did not immediately appear, sometimes broke loose and ran at the top of their speed in the direction of the fire. At the first alarm, Lamo, Henry, and Zell, were on the saddled horses, and off at a sweeping gallop. I snatched the key from its hook and hurried to unlock the store-room, where Ciriaco and Martha stood ready, each side the door, to distribute machetes (cane-knives)—always kept in reserve for such an emergency—to the men who were at work about the sugar-house. Those first ready mounted the tethered horses, sometimes two or three on one animal, and were off like the wind. It was an unwritten law that a fire-alarm must command an immediate response from laborers, white and black, on every plantation in sound of the bell. Before the echoes of our signal had died away, Brito’s hands could be seen pouring pell-mell down the mountain-side, followed by the ardent Don José himself, on horseback, urging them forward; from the right, Valera’s workmen, machete in hand, tumbled over the low rock fence and aloe hedge that divided the two estates; while from another direction came Don Pancho, on his fiery stallion, brandishing his sword, and hurrying the entire force of the “Josefita” to the scene of action.

The excitement was intense and wide-spread. Steam is shut off, fires hastily raked from under the sugar-kettles, and all work at the sugar-house abandoned. Every hand that could wield a machete sped to the fiery fields, only a few white employés remaining in the vicinity of the buildings.

With straining eyes and bated breath the handful of us left at the house stood upon the veranda and watched the black volume of smoke rise in dense clouds and spread like a pall over the place where the brilliant flames were shooting heavenward in fiery, forked tongues. The shouted orders of the mayorals rose above the crackling sounds of destruction. By the aid of a field-glass we followed the rapid riding hither and thither, and rushing of hands with the glistening machetes, as the fitful wind changed from side to side. Sometimes an erect rider, with uplifted sword, was revealed against such a brilliant background of flame and rose-tinted smoke, that he seemed enveloped with the fiery element. Breathlessly we watched, passing the glass from one to another! How nervous and anxious we were, lest the flakes of fire, swept by a whirlwind through the air, might fall among dry leaves and increase the conflagration, and truly thankful when the diminished smoke and flame indicated a victory; and later saw the negroes, all begrimed and drenched with the sweat of toil, who had been fighting the fire inch by inch until it was subdued, turn their faces toward the house, where a refreshing dram of aguadiente (native rum) was waiting for them! The planters and mayorals rode around the charred field, estimating the number of acres burned, that they might be fully advised whether we required assistance in cutting and hauling the scorched cane that stood in blackened, serried ranks, forming a melancholy blot in the midst of the universal verdure that hemmed it in on every side. Our generous neighbors were ready with men and teams to help, if more cane was injured than could be put under shelter in a week; longer delay, or a rain, rendered it sour and worthless.

The whole party adjourned to the veranda, all more or less disheveled and begrimed, some having lost their hats, and others singed their beards, in the fierce conflict, but all in good-humor; and, while partaking of coffee, extended their sympathy in our loss, and freely offered further assistance if needful.

In the United States, under similar circumstances, some more stimulating beverage than coffee would have been in “good form”; but, after such fatigue and exposure, it would not have been accepted in Cuba. While it is the custom of a Cuban to offer you his house and all that therein is when you call, or his volante-horses if you chance to admire them, or his watch if you cast a glance at it when he tells you the hour, there lies beneath all this effusion, which to matter-of-fact people seems so unmeaning and absurd, a genuine kindness of heart. You are not expected to accept the horses or watch; it is only their Oriental way of signifying a desire to serve you. Our neighbors, who had so promptly responded to our signal of danger, however, were not like the disappointed and chagrined Frenchman, who “did offer his voiture for la politesse, and he took it for ride!”