Speaking of the street cars, they are all open, of course, winter and summer. In fact, there is never anything resembling northern winter weather in Key West; light summer clothes and Panama hats are worn the year round.
But you are not obliged to patronize street cars. Riding in private conveyances is at a cheaper rate of fare than even in London, or in a country town on the Continent. In London the smallest cab fare is one shilling (twenty-five cents); in Key West you can ride a short distance for a dime, and a longer distance for fifteen cents. The conveyance is a very light and very dirty wagonette on four wheels. The driver is as dirty as his vehicle, and his horse resembles those poor skeletons which are blindfolded and pushed into the arena at a Cuban bull fight.
Such tropical fruits as the sugar apple, the guava, mango, the soft and sweet sapadillo, thrive in Key West. The climate and salt atmosphere combine to make it the home of the palm. There are many tall, slender and beautiful cocoanut trees, some with their graceful leaves waving as high as eighty feet in the air, making an interesting and pretty picture against a cloudless sky.
But the cultivation of the cocoanut in Key West might be made very profitable as well as picturesque. At present there are comparatively few of such trees; their cultivation ought to be encouraged. The tree has no tap root, and will thrive on a thin soil. It comes into bearing eight or ten years from the nut; and after that the fruit grows and increases every month in the year. Like the orange tree, the older it gets the more it bears. A bearing cocoanut grove costs less to care for than an orange grove, and the revenue therefrom is greater. It requires no cultivation, and is as hardy in its section as the cabbage palmetto, that grows everywhere in Florida. Besides, cocoanuts can be shipped in any month of the year; they require no packing, no care in handling, and they will bear transportation for thousands of miles. There is a good market for green cocoanuts in these parts as well as for matured ones. When the nut is fully grown, but green, it contains about two glasses of clear juice, milk we call it in the North. It is considered a healthful beverage in the tropics and sells per glass in the streets of Havana for the equivalent of five cents.
Nature has favored Key West with a perfect climate. It is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico, as blue and as beautiful as the famous Danube. Nature in fact has done everything she could to make the place desirable as a residence for man, but man has done little or nothing for himself, thus far, and if the truth must be told, notwithstanding its favorable natural conditions and its lovely surroundings, Key West is not yet a desirable place to live in. It has no sanitary laws, for nothing whatever has been done with a view to sanitation, and yet with the salt ocean all around the little island, how easy it would be to make it healthy and clean, for it is neither one nor the other. There is no such thing as system, no sewerage whatever in the town excepting one iron pipe which leads from one hotel, the Russell House, to the sea, and even that one pipe is allowed to clog occasionally.
A liberally illustrated and large edition of the Equator-Democrat was issued in 1889, which presents a very rose-colored view of Key West. In that paper I find that “the pleasant streets running at right angles are as smooth and hard as adamant.” I am not certain that I am very well acquainted with adamant, but I know that the streets of Key West are unpaved and that they are the roughest and the dirtiest streets I ever saw. As I have lived in Baltimore, in New York and in New Orleans, my testimony ought to be accepted on such a theme. I speak of Key West in fine weather; what it must be in wet weather I don’t like to imagine. If nothing but very deep ruts, holes and great gullies in the roadway resemble adamant then is Key West adamantine beyond doubt.
There is not a boot-black in the town; none is needed. Nobody thinks of blacking his shoes; it would be absurd. I spoke on this point with a young New Yorker who hails from the fashionable precincts of Madison avenue. He is a business man who is liberal in the matter of money, usually dressy, and extremely neat in his person. He has been in Key West six months, and in all that time not a brush has passed over his shoes.
I regret to differ with my learned and courteous friend, the editor of the Democrat, on the subject of hotels. Let him speak for himself. He says that “The Russell House, the leading hotel in the city, is second to none in the State in accommodations.” Now I had an idea that St. Augustine and Jacksonville and Tampa were in Florida, and that there were such hotels “in the State” as the Ponce de Leon and The Cordova at St. Augustine, and the new Tampa Bay Hotel at Tampa Bay, not to mention a number of other first-class houses “in the State.”
Directly opposite the Russell is the Duval House. You may never have heard of it; it is not one-third the size of the Russell House. I know nothing of the apartments of the Duval. for I investigated no further than the dining-room, but that was enough to establish its good reputation. It will be a long time before I forget how beautifully garnished a dish they made at the Duval of a red snapper, and the delicious flavor of their omelette soufflée remains with me still. The Duval is presided over by a Cuban lady, Mrs. Bolio, who kept for years one of the leading hotels in Havana. She is evidently a woman who knows what good living is.
Cigar-making is a very large and important industry in Key West. The place was selected for cigar-making because the climate is suited to the “curing” of tobacco in the leaf, and because it is near Havana. There is something also in the name. Everybody does not know that this (Spanish) island is United States territory, and some smokers if they see a “Key West” label on a box of cigars believe, without stopping to think, that they are smoking a foreign-made cigar. Now a Key West cigar if made from Havana tobacco of fine quality has just as good a flavor as if it were made in Cuba, but the Key West cigar can be sold at a lower price because the import duty on cigars is much higher than the duty on the raw material.