Cuba Past and Present

by Richard Davey

"Ah," said our hostess, "you see I always have cut flowers in my rooms, but you will never find them in the house of any Spaniard or Cuban. Even the negroes seem to object to them, and are apt to throw them away as soon as my back is turned. But what I want you to notice, whilst they are getting breakfast ready for us, are some mantis which we caught this morning in the garden;" and here the lady brought forward a box with a glass lid, containing apparently four or five beautiful green leaves, about the size and shape of a poplar leaf. But they were living insects, so cunningly formed by Nature that even the birds disdain to touch them, be they ever so hungry, fully believing them to be tasteless castaway foliage. The manti family is largely represented throughout the whole of the West Indies, from the sly gentleman who looks like a piece of broken brown stick, some four or five inches in length, to the pale green leaf we had just admired, and to yet another species which has all the appearance, and even the indentures and veining, of an autumn-tinted oak leaf, and which, moreover, the better to deceive its enemies, flutters to the ground exactly as if the wind had detached it from the bough of some tall tree.

Everywhere in this fine hacienda, all that wealth could procure to increase comfort had been introduced by a lavish and tasteful hand. The lofty bedrooms, I remember, were deliciously clean and airy, and the brass bedsteads—a real luxury in the tropics—were surrounded by the whitest and most impenetrable of mosquito netting. The coloured servants, too, looked sleek and happy, and spotless, in their snowy liveries.

Our host informed us that although since the emancipation of the slaves he paid his ex-slaves a weekly wage, he had purposely kept up the numerous institutions in connection with the plantation which were universal in the slave days, but which many of the native planters had latterly dispensed with, much to the inconvenience and regret of the poor black people, now left, with little or no experience, to their own devices. There was a sort of hospital on this estate, where the sick were looked after, and a nursery, in which the little black gentry were screened from the blazing sun, and carefully watched over by several old ebony and mahogany-tinted ladies deputed for the purpose. At certain hours of the day the mothers were allowed to tend their little ones, and to pass with them a half-hour or so of that supreme bliss which is so dear to every mother's heart.

After a well served and most enjoyable luncheon, and a cigarette, we sallied forth to see the sights of the place.

A sugar-cane field does not present a particularly inviting appearance, not more so than the ordinary cane jungles you so frequently come across in the Genoese Riviera. When green it is pretty enough; but ripe, it has a distinctly disorderly appearance, and is not to be compared with an English wheat field in the golden month of August.

There are two sorts of cane: the criolla or native cane, which, I was told, was first imported from the Canaries by Columbus on his second voyage. It is considered the least excellent in quality, and is not largely cultivated by the planters. They leave it to the negroes, who consume vast quantities of molasses—when they get the chance. The Otahite is the finest cane. It is very thick, and grows to a height of from six to sixteen feet. As in the case of all the cane family, the stem is divided into angular joints, which vary in length as the cane tapers upwards. The moist, soft pith contains the sweet juice, which, when pressed out by machinery, is converted into sugar. The sugar harvest commences late in January, and ends in May, the planting season taking place during the breaks in the wet season, which lasts from June to the end of November. The cane is not grown from seed, as is generally stated, but from slips taken from the top of the plant, the lower leaves of which are stripped off. When stuck in the ground at regular intervals, to a depth of about two inches, the cane slips soon take root, and in about six months grow to maturity, sometimes, but very rarely, attaining a height of twenty feet.

The field we first visited was a very large one, the ripe canes, of a pale green turning to grey, undulating over it to a considerable distance. There must have been some thirty or forty men, women, and children working in this plot, under the supervision of a mounted over-seer. The men cut the cane with a small hatchet, the women gathered it together and tied it into bundles, whilst some of the negroes and most of the children peeled off the leaves, which are good for fodder, or hoisted it on to the high-wheeled carts, each drawn by four prodigiously long-horned oxen, of the breed so dear to the Roman art student.

The sky above was hazy, almost an English grey, and everything was subdued to its tone, whereby for once we avoided that glare which, in warm climates, so often destroys the effect of those soft and fleeting tints of "middle distance." Some dozen carts piled with the silver-grey canes filed off in a slow procession down the white-sanded road towards the hacienda, the noble-looking oxen occasionally lifting their heads to give vent to their feelings, and express their opinion of things in general, by a prolonged bellow. Each team was led by a negro, with a wide straw hat on his head, and wearing only a pair of white drawers. Bobbing up and down among the uncut canes we could see the bright turbans of the negresses, and occasionally a little ebony imp would turn an impossible somersault right in front of us, and then drop on his knees in the expectation, promptly realised, of a liberal donation, as the price of his queer antic.

The carts take the cane to the mill, where they are unloaded, and where huge wheels, worked by steam, or latterly by electricity, press the sugar out of them,—the engine never ceasing its evolutions night or day. In the old times, the negroes were worked, as I have elsewhere stated, as many as nineteen and even twenty hours a day, at this, to them, terrible season. Even now, their hours are very long, but they are at liberty to strike for higher wages if they choose, and I am assured they very often do so.

It is very interesting to watch the cane being thrown into the mill, and to observe the great wheels whirling round and round, while the continuous river of pale green syrup flows into its wooden trough-like receptacles, whence it is taken in buckets to the furnaces to be clarified. In its first state it soon turns acid, and consequently has to be boiled and clarified immediately, or else it would be ruined; and this is one of the principal reasons why there is such a press of work during the sugar harvest. It cannot be neglected for a single hour, and relays of hands have to relieve each other constantly, rest being impossible, even on the Sabbath. The juice, after being boiled and clarified, is filtered through vats, which, up to the rim, are filled with bone black and changed every six or eight hours, until the juice turns colour. According to the punctuality and skill with which the bone black is changed, so does the quality of the sugar increase in excellence. This apparently simple process is one of the chief expenses, as well as one of the subtlest arts, of sugar-making. Once clarified, the sugar goes through a variety of mechanical processes—very absorbing to the spectator, but not particularly so to the reader,—until it is eventually converted into moist sugar. Some portion, however, is retained, and sold as molasses, and golden syrup. When duly prepared for exportation, it is tightly packed in wooden cases, which are sealed up and strapped with slips of raw hide, ready for market.