Some amusing experiments with a mimosa or sensitive plant served to fill a leisure hour at Buena Esperanza, under our host's intelligent direction. It grew wild and luxuriantly within a few feet of the broad piazza of the country-house. Close by it was a morning-glory, which was in remarkable fullness and freshness of bloom, its gay profuseness of purple, pink, and variegated white making it indeed the glory of the morning. It was a surprise to find the mimosa of such similar habits with its neighbor, the morning-glory, regularly folding its leaves and going to sleep when the shades of evening deepened, but awaking bright and early with the first breath of the morn. So sensitive is this most curious plant, so full of nerves, as our host expressed it, that it would not only shrink instantly, like unveiled modesty, at the touch of one's hand, but even at the near approach of some special organisms, ere they had extended a hand towards it. Five persons tried the experiment before the sixth illustrated the fact that touch was not absolutely necessary to cause the leaves to shrivel up or shrink through seeming fear. Our host even intimated that when the mimosa had become familiar with a congenial person its timidity would vanish, and it could be handled gently by that individual without outraging its sensibility. Of this, however, we saw no positive evidence. If Mr. Darwin had supplemented his chapters on the monkey by a paper relating to the mimosa, he might possibly have enabled us to find a mutual confirmation in them of some fine-spun theory.
The three great staple productions of Cuba are sugar, the sweetener; coffee, the tonic; and tobacco, the narcotic of half the world. The first of these, as we have shown, is the greatest source of wealth, having also the preference as to purity and excellence over any other saccharine production. Its manufacture also yields molasses, which forms an important article of export, besides which a spirituous liquor, called aguardiente, is distilled in considerable quantities from the molasses. The cane, which grows to about the size of a large walking-stick, or well-developed cornstalk, is cut off near the ground and conveyed in the green state, though it is called ripe, to the mill, where it is crushed to a complete pulp between stones or iron rollers. After the juice is thus extracted the material left is spread out in the sun to dry, and is after being thus "cured" used for fuel beneath the steam-boilers, which afford both power to the engine and the means of boiling the juice. Lime-water is employed to neutralize any free acid as well as to separate the vegetable matter. The granulation and crystallization are effected in large flat pans, or now more commonly by centrifugal machines, rotating at great speed. It is then crushed and packed either in hogsheads or in boxes for exportation; canvas bags are also being largely employed, as they are easier to pack on board ship, and also to handle generally. A plantation is renewed when deemed necessary, by laying the green canes horizontally in the ground, when new and vigorous shoots spring up from every joint, showing the great fertility of the soil.
Coffee was introduced by the French into Martinique in 1727, but it did not make its appearance in Cuba until forty years later, or, to be exact, in 1769. The decadence of this branch of agriculture is due not only to the causes we have already named, but also to the inferior mode of cultivation adopted on the island. It was predicted some years before it commenced, and when the crash came the markets of the world were also found to be greatly overstocked with the article. While some planters introduced improved methods and economy in the conduct of their estates, others abandoned the business altogether, and turned their fields either into sugar-raising, fruits or tobacco. Precisely the same trouble was experienced in the island of Ceylon, which was at one time a great coffee-raising centre, but now its planters are many of them abandoning the business, while others adopt new seed and new methods of culture. In Cuba it was found that the plants had been grown too closely together and subjected to too close pruning, while the product, which was gathered by hand, yielded a mixture of ripe and unripe berries. In the countries where coffee originated, a very different method of harvesting is adopted. The Arabs plant the coffee-shrubs much farther apart, allow them to grow to considerable height, and gather the crop by shaking the tree, a method which secures only the ripe berries. After a few weeks, or even days, the field is gone over a second time, when the green berries have become fit to gather, and readily fall to the ground.
A coffee estate well managed, that is, combined with the rearing of fruits and vegetables intermingled, thus affording the required shade for the main crop, proves fairly profitable in Cuba to-day, and were this industry not hampered and handicapped by excessive taxes, it would attract many new planters. The coffee ripens from August to December, the nuts then becoming about the size of our cherries. The coffee-berry is the seed of the fruit, two of which are contained in each kernel, having their flat surfaces together, surrounded by a soft pulp. The ripe berries are dried by exposure to the sun's rays, then bruised in a mill, by which means the seeds are separated from the berry. They are then screened to cleanse them, after which they are bagged, and the coffee is ready for market. Some planters take great care to sort their crop by hand, in which operation the negro women become very expert. By dividing the berries into first and second qualities as to size and cleanliness, a better aggregated price is realized for the entire harvest. Not only are the coffee estates much more pleasing to the eye than the sugar plantations, but they are also much more in harmony with the feelings of the philanthropist. There is here no such exigency in getting in the harvest, leading to the overwork of the slaves, as on a sugar estate in the grinding season. Indeed, we were assured that it was quite possible to carry on a coffee estate with white labor. When, heretofore, a negro has been brought to the block in Havana, or any other Cuban city, the price realized for him has always been materially affected by the question whether he had been employed on a sugar estate in the grinding season. If he had been thus employed it was considered that his life has been unduly shortened, and he sold accordingly at a lower price. At the present time few negroes are bought or sold, as their market value has become merely nominal. There is no good reason why white labor is not suited to the coffee and tobacco estates. When the field labor upon the sugar estates is almost wholly performed by machinery, that is, the cane cut by a reaper, there will be so much less exposure to the sun that white hands, under proper management, can perform it.
Tobacco, indigenous to both Cuba and the United States, is a great source of revenue upon the island. Its cultivation involves considerable labor and expense, as the soil must be carefully chosen and prepared, and the crop is an exhaustive one to the land; but the cultivation does not require machinery, like sugar-cane, nor quite so much care as does the growing coffee. It is valued in accordance with the locality from which it comes, some sections being especially adapted to its production. That of the greatest market value, and used in the manufacture of the highest-cost cigars, is grown in the most westerly division of the island, known as the Vuelta de Abajo (Lower Valley). The whole western portion of Cuba is not by any means suitable to the production of tobacco. The region of the best tobacco is comprised within a small parallelogram of very limited extent. Beyond this, up to the meridian of Havana, the tobacco is of fine color, but of inferior aroma. From Consolacion to San Christoval the tobacco is very "hot,"—to use a local phrase,—harsh, and strong, and from San Christoval to Guanajay the quality is inferior up to Holguin y Cuba, where better tobacco is produced. The fertile valley of Los Guines produces poor smoking-tobacco, but an article excellent for the manufacture of snuff. On the banks of the Rio San Sebastian, are also some estates which produce the very best quality of tobacco. Thus it will be seen that certain properties of soil operate more directly in producing a fine grade of tobacco than any slight variation of climate. Possibly a chemical analysis of the soil of the Vuelta de Abajo would enable the intelligent cultivator to supply to other lands the ingredients wanted to make them produce equally good tobacco. A fairly marketable article, however, is grown in nearly any part of the island. Its cultivation is thought to produce a full ten per cent. upon the capital invested, the annual crop of Cuba being estimated in value at about twenty-three million dollars. The number of tobacco planters is said to be about fifteen thousand, large and small. On many tobacco farms the labor is nearly all performed by white hands. Some coolies and some negroes are also employed even on small estates.
When it is remembered that so small a portion of the land is under cultivation, and yet that Cuba exports annually a hundred million dollars worth of sugar and molasses, besides coffee, tobacco, fruits, and precious woods, it will be realized what might be accomplished, under a liberal system of government, upon this gem of the Caribbean Sea. Cacao, rice, plantains, indigo, and cotton, besides Indian corn and many nutritious vegetables, might be profitably cultivated to a much larger degree than is now done. It is a curious and remarkable fact, suggesting a striking moral, that with the inexhaustible fertility of the soil, with an endless summer that gives the laborer two and even three crops a year, agriculture generally yields in Cuba a lower percentage of profit than in our stern Northern latitudes, where the farmer has to wrench, as it were, the half-reluctant crop from the ground. It must be remembered that in Cuba there are numerous fruits and vegetables not enumerated in these pages, which do not enter into commerce, and which spring spontaneously from the fertile soil. In the possession of a thrifty population the island would be made to blossom like a rose, but as it now is, it forms only a garden growing wild, cultivated here and there in patches. None of the fine natural fruits have ever been improved by careful culture and the intelligent selection of kinds, so that in many respects they will not compare in perfection with our average strawberries, plums, pears, and peaches. Their unfulfilled possibilities remain to be developed by intelligent treatment.
The plantain, which may be said to be the bread of the common people, requires to be planted but once. The stem bears freely, like the banana of the same family, at the end of eight months, and then withering to the ground renews itself again from the roots. Sweet potatoes once planted require care only to prevent their too great luxuriance, and for this purpose a plough is passed through them before the wet season, and as many of the vines as can be freely plucked up are removed from the field. The sugar-cane, on virgin soil, will last and prove productive for twenty years. The coffee shrub or tree will bear luxuriantly for forty or fifty years. The cocoanut palm is peculiar to all tropical climates, and in Cuba, as in the Malacca Straits and India, bears an important share in sustaining the life of the people, supplying milk, shade, and material for a hundred domestic uses. It grows in luxuriant thriftiness all over the island, in high and low land, in forests, and down to the very shore washed by the Gulf Stream. It is always graceful and picturesque, imparting an oriental aspect to everything which surrounds it. It is estimated that over ten million acres of native forests, covered by valuable wood, still remain untouched by the woodman's axe, especially on and about the mountain range, which extends nearly the entire length of the island, like the vertebræ of an immense whale.
About the coffee plantations, and indeed throughout the rural portions of the country, there is a curious little insect called a cocuyo, answering in its general characteristics and nature to our firefly, though it is quadruple its size, and far the most brilliant insect of its kind known to naturalists. They float in phosphorescent clouds over the vegetation, emitting a lurid halo, like fairy torch-bearers to elfin crews. One at first sight is apt to compare them to a shower of stars. They come in multitudes immediately after the wet season sets in, prevailing more or less, however, all the year round. Their advent is always hailed with delight by the slave children, as well as by children of a larger growth. They are caught by the slaves in any desired numbers and confined in tiny cages of wicker, giving them sufficient light in their cabins at night for ordinary purposes, and forming the only artificial light permitted them. We have seen a string of the little cages containing the glittering insects hung in a slave-cabin in festoons, like colored lamps in fancy-goods stores in America. The effect of the evanescent light thus produced is very peculiar, but the number of insects employed insures a sufficiently steady effect for ordinary purposes. These little creatures are brought into Havana by young Creole children and by women, for sale to the ladies, who sometimes in the evenings wear a small cage hung to the wrist containing a few of the cocuyos, and the light thus produced is nearly equal to a small candle. Some ladies wear a belt of them at night, ingeniously fastened about the waist, others a necklace, and the effect is highly amusing. In the ballroom they are worn in the flounces of ladies' dresses, where they glisten very much like diamonds and other precious stones. Strange to say, there is a natural hook near the head of the firefly, by which it can be attached to the dress without apparent injury to it. The town ladies keep little cages of these insects as pets, feeding them on sugar, of which they appear to be immoderately fond. On the plantations, when a fresh supply is desired, one has only to wait until evening, when hundreds can be secured with a thread net at the end of a pole. By holding a cocuyo up in the out-door air for a few moments, large numbers are at once attracted to the spot. In size they are about an inch long, and a little over an eighth of an inch in breadth.
There is an insidious and much dreaded insect with which the planters have to contend on the sugar and coffee plantations, but which is not met with in the cities; namely, the red ant, a much more formidable foe than any one not acquainted with its ravages would believe. These little creatures possess a power altogether out of proportion to their insignificant size, eating into the heart of the hardest wood, neither cedar, iron-wood, nor even lignum-vitæ being proof against them. They are not seen at the surface, as they never touch the outer shell of the wood whose heart they are consuming. A beam or rafter which has been attacked by them looks as good as when new, to the casual observer, until it is sounded and found to be hollow, a mere shell in fact. Even in passing from one piece of timber to another, the red ant does so by covered ways, and is thus least seen when most busy. The timbers of an entire roof have been found hollowed out and deprived entirely of their supporting strength without the presence of the insect enemy being even suspected until chance betrayed the useless character of the supports. For some unknown reason, upright timbers are rarely attacked by them, but those in a reclining or horizontal position are their choice. These destructive red ants are nearly always to be found in tropical countries, as in India, Batavia, and Sumatra, where they build mounds in the jungle half the size of the natives' cabins. They may be seen marching like an invading army in columns containing myriads across the fields of southern India.
The interior landscape, more particularly of the middle district of the island, is here and there ornamented by fine specimens of the ceiba, or silk-cotton tree, which is often seen a hundred feet in height, with stout and widespread branches, giving the idea of great firmness and stability. It sends up a massive sinewy trunk for some fifty feet, when it divides into branches covered with a dense canopy of leaves, expanded like an umbrella, and forming a perfect shade against the power of the torrid sun. The ceiba is slow of growth, but attains to great age, specimens thriving when Columbus first landed here being, as we were assured, still extant. Next to the royal palm, it is the most remarkable of all the trees which loom up beneath the brilliant purple skies of Cuba. The negroes have a superstition that the ceiba is a magic tree haunted by spirits, a singular notion also shared by the colored people of Nassau, though these two islands are so many hundreds of miles apart and have never had any natural connection. There is certainly something weird in the loneliness and solitary grandeur of the tree. Next to the palm and ceiba in beauty and picturesqueness of effect is the tamarind tree, with its deep green and delicate foliage, presenting a singular and curious aspect when thickly looped on every branch with hanging chocolate-colored pods.