MATANZAS.
Matanzas is at the present day one of the most populous and important towns of the island of Cuba: second to Havannah, it goes on ever increasing in commercial activity; it has a railroad and a well-sheltered harbour, and is surrounded by an extent of sugar and coffee cultivation which promises, with a never-failing supply of exports, to maintain and constantly increase its prosperity.
Nevertheless Matanzas has an ugly name; for, though euphonious enough to our ears, its meaning is neither more nor less than “Slaughterings,” and the ugly name is connected with an ugly history, and, it would seem, an inseparable association of ugliness in every detail. Its situation is flat and unpicturesque; the buildings—unlike, and indeed in strong contrast with the beautiful outlines which, imitating those prevalent in Spain at the time of her greatest colonial eminence, were spread by her all over the new world—are mean and bare, and, while too solidly built of stone to offer any hope that the venerable-making hand of time will ever clothe them with any even adventitious interest, they are yet altogether deficient in a grand or imposing character.
The following story of the circumstances of its origin may be taken to account for the absence of those softening influences of family life and home traditions, which in the other colonies reproduced many of the most beautiful features of the old country.
There once lived, in a village of Castille, a man who thought only of enjoying himself, and who spent all his money without taking any account of how much he had got left for the future; so that at last a day came when he had nothing at all left, and not a bite of any thing but his nails. When he came home without a maravedi, his wife and children dinned him so for food that they drove him distracted; and he borrowed a rope of a neighbour, and went to an olive-tree to hang himself.
He had hardly fastened the rope to the tree, when a little sprite appeared, sitting astride on one of its branches, who called out to him, “What are you going to do? You, a Christian, going to hang yourself like Judas! Give up such an idea; here, take this purse, which is never empty, and go home.”
So Perrico (that was the name of our man) caught at the purse to see if such good fortune could be true, and drew out one duro[1] after another without stopping, like words out of a woman’s mouth. When he saw that the store was so bountiful, he untied the rope and coiled it up, and made the best of his way home. But passing by the way a tavern where he had been accustomed to take refreshment, he could not resist the temptation of turning in; nor, when he was in, the temptation of ordering the best drinks and viands, till at last he took more than was good for him, and passed the night under the table, drunk, and as insensible as the dead in the churchyard.
The host, who had observed that he payed for every thing he ordered, duro after duro out of his little purse, and that there was always a duro left, determined to possess himself of the treasure, and so told his wife to make another exactly like it, and then changed it against the magic purse in Perrico’s pocket.
In the morning Perrico woke, and suspecting nothing, ran home to his wife as joyous as a holiday.
“No more hunger! no more misery!” he cried; “here’s money enough to last our lives—here’s enough for every one; come, come all and be merry!”