SANTIAGO DE CUBA.
At last an abrupt termination of the stern, gray cliffs which mark this shore line indicates the proximity of Santiago harbor, and a nearer approach reveals the most picturesque fort or castle, as well as one of the oldest, to be found on the western hemisphere. An enormous rounding rock, whose base has been hollowed into great caverns by the restless Caribbean, standing just at the entrance of the narrow channel leading into the harbor, is carried up from the water's edge in a succession of walls, ramparts, towers and turrets, forming a perfect picture of a rock-ribbed fortress of the middle ages. This is the famous castle of San Jago, the Moro, which antedates the more familiar fortress of the same name in Havana harbor by at least a hundred years. Words are of little use in describing this antique, Moorish-looking stronghold, with its crumbling, honey-combed battlements, queer little flanking turrets and shadowy towers, perched upon the face of a dun-colored cliff 150 feet high—so old, so odd, so different from anything in America with which to compare it. A photograph, or pencil sketch is not much better, and even a paint brush could not reproduce the exact shadings of its time-worn, weather-mellowed walls—the Oriental pinks and old blues and predominating yellows that give it half its charm. Upon the lowermost wall, directly overhanging the sea, is a dome-shaped sentry box of stone, flanked by antiquated cannon. Above it the lines of masonry are sharply drawn, each guarded terrace receding upon the one next higher, all set with cannon and dominated by a massive tower of obsolete construction.
It takes a good while to see it all, for new stories and stairways, wings and terraces, are constantly cropping out in unexpected places, but as it occupies three sides of the rounding cliff and the pilot who comes aboard at the entrance to the channel guides your steamer close up under the frowning battlements, you have ample time to study it. Window holes cut into rock in all directions show how extensive are the excavations. A large garrison is always quartered here, even in time of peace, when their sole business is searching for shady places along the walls against which to lean. There are ranges above ranges of walks, connected by stairways cut into the solid rock, each range covered with lolling soldiers. You pass so near that you can hear them chattering together. Those on the topmost parapet, dangling their blue woolen legs over, are so high and so directly overhead that they remind you of flies on the ceiling.
In various places small niches have been excavated in the cliff, some with crucifixes, or figures of saints, and in other places the bare, unbroken wall of rock runs up, sheer straight 100 feet. Below, on the ocean side, are caves, deep, dark and uncanny, worn deep into the rock. Some of them are so extensive that they have not been explored in generations.
The broad and lofty entrances to one of them, hollowed by the encroaching sea, is as perfect an arch as could be drawn by a skillful architect, and with it a tradition is connected which dates back a couple of centuries. A story or two above these wave-eaten caverns are many small windows, each heavily barred with iron. They are dungeons dug into the solid rock, and over them might well be written, "Leave hope behind, ye who enter here!" A crowd of haggard, pallid faces are pressed against the bars; and as you steam slowly by, so close that you might speak to the wretched prisoners, it seems as if a shadow had suddenly fallen upon the bright sunshine, and a chill, like that of coming death, oppresses the heart. Since time out of mind, the Moro of Santiago has furnished dungeons for those who have incurred the displeasure of the government infinitely more to be dreaded than its namesake in Havana. Had these slimy walls a tongue, what stories they might reveal of crime and suffering, of tortures nobly undergone, of death prolonged through dragging years and murders that will not "out" until the judgment day.
Against that old tower, a quarter of a century ago our countrymen of the Virginius were butchered like sheep. Scores of later patriots have been led out upon the ramparts and shot, their bodies, perhaps, with life yet in them, falling into the sea, where they were snapped up by sharks as soon as they touched the water.
The narrow, winding channel which leads from the open sea into the harbor, pursues its sinuous course past several other fortifications of quaint construction, but of little use against modern guns—between low hills and broad meadows, fishing hamlets and cocoanut groves. Presently you turn a sharp angle in the hills and enter a broad, land-locked bay, inclosed on every side by ranges of hills with numerous points and promontories jutting into the tranquil water, leaving deep little coves behind them, all fringed with cocoa-palms. Between this blue bay and a towering background of purple mountains lies the city which Diego Velazquez, its founder, christened in honor of the patron saint of Spain, as far back as the year 1514. It is the oldest standing city in the new world, excepting Santo Domingo, which Columbus himself established only eighteen years earlier. By the way, San Jago, San Diego and Santiago, are really the same name, rendered Saint James in our language; and wherever the Spaniards have been are numbers of them. This particular city of Saint James occupies a sloping hillside, 600 miles southeast from Havana, itself the capital of a department, and ranks the third city of Cuba in commercial importance—Matanzas being second. As usual in all these southern ports, the water is too shallow for large vessels to approach the dock and steamers have to anchor a mile from shore. While waiting the coming of health or customs officials, these lordly gentlemen who are never given to undignified haste, you have ample time to admire the prospect, and if the truth must be told, you will do well to turn about without going ashore, if you wish to retain the first delightful impressions—for this old city of Spain's patron saint is one of the many to which distance lends enchantment.
Red-roofed buildings of stone and adobe entirely cover the hillside, with here and there a dome, a tower, a church steeple shooting upward, or a tell palm poking its head above a garden wall—the glittering green contrasting well with the ruddy tiles and the pink, gray, blue and yellow of the painted walls. In the golden light of a tropical morning it looks like an oriental town, between sapphire sea and turquoise mountains. Its low massive buildings, whose walls surround open courts, with pillared balconies and corridors, the great open windows protected by iron bars instead of glass, and roofs covered with earthen tiles—are a direct importation from Southern Spain, if not from further east. Tangiers, in Africa, is built upon a similar sloping hillside, and that capital of Morocco does not look a bit more Moorish than Santiago de Cuba. On the narrow strip of laud bordering the eastern edge of the harbor, the Moro at one end and the city at the other, are some villas, embowered in groves and gardens, which, we are told, belong mostly to Americans who are interested in the Cobre mines. The great iron piers on the right belong to the American mining companies, built for loading ore upon their ships.
CARDINAS.
Fifty miles east of Matanzas is the city of Cardinas, the last port of any consequence on the north coast of the island. It has a population of 25,000, and is the capital of a fertile district. It is one of the main outlets of Cuba's richest province, Matanzas, and is the great railroad center of the island, or, more properly speaking, it ought to be, as the railroads of the country form a junction fifteen miles inland, at an insignificant station called Jouvellenes.