The little Doctor laughed, and away we all cantered—Don Ricardo leading, followed by his wife and nieces, on three stout mules, sitting, not on side-saddles, but on a kind of chair, with a foot-board on the larboard side to support the feet—then followed the two Calens, and little Reefpoint, while the Captain and I brought up the rear. We had not proceeded five hundred yards, when we were brought to a stand-still by a mighty tree, which had been thrown down by the wind fairly across the road. On the right hand there was a perpendicular rock rising up to a height of five hundred feet; and on the left an equally precipitous descent, without either ledge or parapet to prevent one from falling over. What was to be done? We could not by any exertion of strength remove the tree; and if we sent back for assistance, it would have been a work of time. SO we dismounted, got the ladies to alight, and Aaron Bang, Transom, and myself, like true knights-errant, undertook to ride the mulos over the stump.
Aaron Bang led gallantly, and made a deuced good jump of it, Transom followed, and made not quite so clever an exhibition—I then rattled at it, and down came mule and rider. However, we were accounted for on the right side.
“But what shall become of us?” shouted the English doctor.
“And as for me, I shall return,” said the Spanish Medico.
“Lord love you, no,” said little Reefpoint; “here, lash me to my beast, and no fear.” The doctor made him fast, as desired, round the mule’s neck with a stout thong, and then drove him at the barricade, and over they came, man and beast, although, to tell the truth, little Reefy alighted well out on the neck with a hand grasping each ear. However, he was a gallant little fellow, and in nowise discouraged, so he undertook to bring over the other quadrupeds; and in little more than a quarter of an hour we were all under weigh on the opposite side, in full sail towards Don Ricardo’s property. But as we proceeded up the valley, the destruction caused by the storm became more and more apparent. Trees were strewn about in, all directions, having been tom up by the roots—road there was literally none; and by the time we reached the coffee estate, after a ride, or scramble, more properly speaking, of three hours, we were all pretty much tired. In some places the road at the best was but a rocky shelf of Limestone not exceeding twelve inches in width, where, if you had slipped, down you would have gone a thousand feet. At this time it was white and clean, as if it had been newly chiselled, all the soil and sand having been washed away by the recent heavy rains.
The situation was beautiful; the house stood on a platform scraped out of the hillside, with a beautiful view of the whole country down to St Jago. The accommodation was good; more comforts, more English comforts, in the mansion than I had yet seen in Cuba; and as it was built of solid slabs of limestone, and roofed with strong hardwood timbers and rafters, and tiled, it had sustained comparatively little injury, as it had the advantage of being at the same time sheltered by the overhanging cliff. It stood in the middle of a large platform of hard sun-dried clay, plastered over, and as white as chalk, which extended about forty feet from the eaves of the house, in every direction, on which the coffee was cured. This platform was surrounded on all sides by the greenest grass I had ever seen, and overshadowed, not the house alone, but the whole level space, by one vast wild fig-tree.
“I say, Tom, do you see that Scotchman hugging the Creole, eh?”
“Scotchman!” said I, looking towards Don Ricardo, who certainly did not appear to be particularly amorous; on the contrary, we had just alighted, and the worthy man was enacting groom.
“Yes,” continued Bang, “the Scotchman hugging the Creole; look at that tree—do you see the trunk of it?”
I did look at it. It was a magnificent cedar, with a tall straight stem, covered over with a curious sort of fretwork, wove by the branches of some strong parasitical plant, which had warped itself round and round it, by numberless snakelike convolutions, as if it had been a vegetable Laocoon. The tree itself shot up branchless to the uncommon height of fifty feet; the average girth of the hunk being four-and twenty feet, or eight-feet in diameter. The leaf of the cedar is small, not unlike the ash; but when I looked up, I noticed that the feelers of this ligneous serpent had twisted round the larger boughs, and blended their broad leaves with those of the tree, so that it looked like two trees grafted into one; but, as Aaron Bang said, in a very few years the cedar would entirely disappear, its growth being impeded, its pith extracted, and its core rotted, by the baleful embraces of the wild fig, of “this Scotchman hugging the Creole.” After we had fairly shaken into our places, there was every promise of a very pleasant visit. Our host had a tolerable cellar, and although there was not much of style in his establishment, still there was a fair allowance of comfort, every thing considered. The evening after we arrived was most beautiful. The house, situated on its white plateau of barbicues, as the coffee platforms are called, where large piles of the berries in their red cherry like husks had been blackening in the sun the whole forenoon, and on which a gang of negroes was now employed covering them up with tarpawlins for the night, stood in the centre of an amphitheatre of mountains, the front box, as it were, the stage part opening on a bird’s eye-view of the distant town and harbour, with the everlasting ocean beyond it, the currents and flaws of wind making its surface look like ice, as we were too distant to discern the heaving of the swell, or the motion of the billows. The fast falling shades of evening were deepened by the sombrous shadow of the immense tree overhead, and all down in the deep valley was now becoming dark and undistinguishable, through the blue vapours that were gradually floating up towards us. To the left, on the shoulder of the Horseshoe Hill, the sunbeams still lingered, and the gigantic shadows of the trees on the right hand prong were strongly cast across the valley on a red precipitous bank near the top of it. The sun was descending beyond the wood, flashing through the branches, as if they had been on fire. He disappeared. It was a most lovely still evening—the air—but hear the skipper.