Pioneering in Cuba

by James Meade Adams

In and Around La Gloria.

A very good Book that I wot of contains an Apocrypha. This will have no Apocrypha, but I will here relate an incident which did not come under my personal observation, but which was told of by my ordinarily veracious friend, Colonel Maginniss. At one time during the winter, Colonel Maginniss and his assistants had for three days, been searching for a company horse that was lost, when a man named Ramsden came to the colonel's tent and reported that there was a horse hanging in the woods not far away. The colonel and Mr. Jones went to the spot and found a large white horse, that had weighed twelve hundred pounds, dead in the thicket, hanging by the neck. No formal inquest was held, but it was the colonel's theory that this American-born horse could not live on Cuban grass, and had deliberately hanged himself. A somewhat similar case I was personally cognizant of. A sick horse was reported drowning in a shallow pond near the camp. Colonel Maginniss went to the scene on a Cuban pony, with a dozen colonists, and after a hard struggle the horse was dragged one hundred yards away from the mud and water, and left on dry land. Early the next morning it was discovered that the horse had worked his way back into the pond and drowned himself. Was this a case of animal suicide? It may be said that none of the colonists ever resorted to this desperate expedient, even when the sugar gave out.

Colonel Maginniss was "a master hand in sickness." An English woman who came to the colony was very ill, and blood poisoning set in. The colonel's experience as a family man was now of service. He had the woman removed to a large tent, attended her personally and looked after the children, calling four or five times daily, and administering such remedies as he had. The woman recovered, and gratefully expressed the belief that the colonel had saved her life.

Near the end of April there was a sudden and surprising rise of water along Central avenue between La Gloria and the port. One afternoon Mr. Lowell and his men at work upon the road noticed that the water was rising in the creeks and ditches along the way. This was a surprising discovery, inasmuch as there had been no rain of any account. The water continued to rise rapidly, and when the men left off work late in the afternoon it was several feet higher than it had been at noon. It came up steadily through the night, so that pedestrians to the port the next morning found the water even with the new road all along and over it where the creeks came in. Further down toward the port, the savanna was flooded in places to a depth of one or two feet. Among the pedestrians that morning were several colonists who were on their way home to the States, and who, singularly enough, were obliged to walk out of La Gloria through mud and water very much as they had walked in several months before, although between the two periods there had been for a long time a good dry road.

It was that morning that we, in the camp, heard a peculiar rushing sound which we at first mistook for water sweeping through the woods. On going down the road to investigate, however, we found that the noise was the deafening chorus of millions of little frogs—some contended that they were tree toads—which had come in with the flood or with the rain which fell in the night. Never before had I seen such a sight. The frogs were everywhere, on logs, stumps, in the water, and along the road; bits of earth jutting out of the water would be covered with them. They were all of one color—as yellow as sulphur—and appeared to be very unhappy. I saw large stumps so covered with these frogs, or toads, as to become pyramids of yellow. Whether frogs or toads, they seemed averse to getting wet and were all seeking dry places. I saw a snake about two feet long, who had filled himself up with them from head to tail, floating lazily on the surface of the water. No less than five of the yellowbacks had climbed up on his head and neck, and he had only energy enough left to clasp his jaws loosely upon one of them and then let go. The snake seemed nearly dead from over-eating. The frogs disappeared in a day or two as suddenly as they had come.

At the time of this small-sized flood, a party of surveyors were camped upon the savanna near Central avenue and about a mile from the port. Their camp was high enough to escape the water, but they were pretty well surrounded by it. One of the men, finding deep water running in the road, went a-fishing there and boasted that he had caught fish in Central avenue! The water soon subsided, and the generally accepted explanation of the sudden flood was that it had been caused by the overflow of the Maximo, and that there had been heavy rains, or a cloudburst, twelve or fifteen miles away.

April was a warm month, but by no means an uncomfortable one. The lowest temperature recorded was 67°; the highest, 94°. The weather was delightful; the breezes were fresh and fragrant; flowers were blossoming everywhere; and the honey bees of this incomparable bee country were happy and industrious. So, too, were the colonists. The work of the latter was well advanced by the first of May, or, at least, that of some of them. As an example of industry, D. Siefert is worthy of mention. Mr. Siefert hailed from British Columbia and came to La Gloria on the first Yarmouth. On the voyage down he was somewhat disturbed over the question of getting his deed, but once in La Gloria, he put his apprehensions behind him, secured his allotment of a five-acre plantation, indulged in no more vain questionings and waited for no further developments, but each morning shouldered his axe and attacked the trees on his land. He kept up the battle for months, rarely missing a day's work. The result was that by May 1, Mr. Siefert, alone and unaided, had cleared his five acres of timber land, burned it over, and was ready for planting. Other colonists worked hard and effectually in the forest, but this was the best single-handed performance that came under my notice.

Another enterprising and highly intelligent colonist was Max Neuber of Philadelphia, who has been before alluded to as one of the teachers in the evening school. Mr. Neuber pushed the work upon his land, doing much of it himself. Early and late his friends would find him chopping, digging, and planting. When he left for the States in April he had five boxes packed with the products of his plantation, such as lemons, limes, potatoes, and specimens of mahogany and other valuable woods.

A group of industrious workers, most of whom had earlier been attached to the survey corps, were in May located and well settled in a place which they called Mountain View. This was a partially open tract four or five miles west of La Gloria and about a mile from Mercedes. Here the young men pitched their tents and swung their hammocks, confidently claiming that they had the best spot in all the country round. From here the Cubitas mountains could be plainly seen; hence the name of Mountain View. A person following the rough trail from La Gloria to Mercedes might have seen on a tree at the left, shortly before reaching the latter place, a shingle bearing the inscription, "Change Cars for Mountain View." If he should choose to take the narrow, rough, and crooked trail to the left through the woods, he would ere long come out into the open and probably see Smith Everett, formerly of Lenawee county, Michigan, lying-in his hammock watching his banana trees grow.