The mule in Cuba as elsewhere, “without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity,” is a most patient and useful animal, and his virtues and his scarcity make him more valuable than the horse. A fine mule commands a fancy price, and a pair are worth from $600 to $800. What the mule raisers of the United States can do in Cuba is left for them to determine.
Sheep of good quality are among the impossibles to Cuba, for the climate has the peculiar effect of straightening their wool into harsh hair, like that of the goat.
Although Cuba has not only every facility for hog raising, including the palm, the seed of which is one of the finest hog-fatteners on earth, and although the people of the Island use more lard, bacon, hams, and pickled pork than any other meat product, nevertheless, instead of raising their own, they have received from the United States over $35,000,000 worth of pork in the ten years from 1887 to 1896. Some hogs are raised, but it is because of the energy of the hog, not of the Cuban. Wild hogs (jabali) prevail in many parts of the Island, and the boar hunts are sometimes exciting sport. The wild hog is merely the domestic hog run away and grown up in the woods.
Poultry of all kinds similar to that found in the United States was common all over the Island before the war. No attention is paid to its cultivation, except in the matter of game-cocks. Cock-fighting is so wide-spread and popular that the game-cock may be well called the national bird of Cuba.
Humboldt has said that the bee is not native to Cuba and came from Europe. However that may be, the busy little worker has found there a land of flowers, and his products of honey and wax are among the reliable exports of the Island. The value of honey shipped to the United States in 1893 was $39,712, and of beeswax, $45,504. The best honey comes from the uplands and the poorest from the swamp flowers.
Agriculture in Cuba promises rich results in the future.
CHAPTER XXIV
TIMBER AND FRUIT TREES
OF the approximately twenty-eight millions of acres in Cuba and its islands, it is estimated that from thirteen to fifteen millions of acres are covered with timber, the vastly larger portion of it yet untouched by the axe. Of this, mahogany and cedar lead in value as lumber, though, for the variety of its uses, the palm, of which there are thirty species in the Island, easily takes precedence. A notable peculiarity of tree growth in Cuba is the presence of the pine, a distinctively northern product, yet here it is found growing side by side with the mahogany; and on the Isle of Pines it is so plentiful as to have given the name to the island. The province of Pinar del Rio (River of Pines) also receives its name from the pines which are so numerous there.
Of the thirty varieties of palm, the first and foremost is the Palma Real, or Royal Palm, called also the “Blessed Tree” because of its manifold uses to man. This tree is common all over the Island, growing alike on hills and in valleys; but it is most frequent in the west, where the soil is generally richest and heaviest. It rises to a height of from sixty to eighty feet, like a tall shaft of rough, grey marble, and from its top springs a great tuft of green leaves. Its peculiar growth does not make it especially valuable as a shade tree, but an avenue of palms is unequalled in its impressive beauty. Of its uses in other respects an inventory can scarcely be made. Its roots are said to have medicinal virtues. The stem of its leaves, or yagua, often six feet in length, is like a thin board and can be used as a dinner plate by cutting it into shape; it may be folded like stiff paper when wet; and is bent into a catana, or basin, or a pot, in which food may be boiled, and there is sufficient salt in the wood to make the food palatable; it serves also as a basket for carrying farm products; it is said a dozen catanas will produce a pound of salt. The seed of the royal palm furnishes an excellent “mast” for fattening hogs. Good weather-boarding is made from its trunk, and the lumber may also be made into plain furniture; its leaves form the roofs of houses; fine canes are made from the hard outside shell, which may be polished like metal; the bud of the tuft is a vegetable food much like cauliflower in taste, and is eaten raw and cooked; and hats, baskets, and even cloth may be made from its leaves and fibre. What further uses may be found for it, future Yankee ingenuity will develop.