The approach to Havana at daybreak overwhelms the senses with the gorgeous beauties of the sky and landscape. Foul as the harbor may be with city drainage it seems a silvery lake encircled with the charms of Paradise and over-arched with indescribable glories of celestial forms and hues and ever-changing witcheries wrought by the frolicsome sun in his ecstasy of morning release. Strange that where nature most lavishes her wealth of charms and favors, the listlessness of perverse man responds in ungrateful contrasts rather than in harmonies. Havana has the interest of age, with the drawbacks incident to hereditary indifference to progressive change. As in all important cities there are sharp contrasts in its quarters. With long avenues of stately mansions, marble-like and colonnaded, and exquisitely designed courtyards, there are unpaved thoroughfares with an open sewer in the mid-roadway, flanked by tenement houses with a family in each room. Most of Havana’s two hundred thousand citizens live in one-story buildings, lacking conveniences which the poorest American considers necessities. The older streets are mere alleys, about twenty feet wide, of which the sidewalks take up seven. Light and ample ventilation are obtained by grated window-openings without frames or glass. The dwellings and public buildings throughout Cuba are planned to give free passage to every zephyr that wafts relief from the oppressive heat. This is not because the thermometer mounts much higher than it does in the United States, for it never touches the records of our great cities, where a hundred in the shade is not unknown. From 80 to 50 degrees is the year’s average, and it is this steady continuance of warmth that tries strength and temper.
In the better districts of Havana the driveways are twenty-three feet and the sidewalks about ten feet wide. Politeness keeps native and foreign men hopping up and down the foot deep curb to allow ladies a fair share of elbow-room on the pavements. Your guest-chamber in a well-to-do family residence has probably a window twenty by eight feet, sashless, but with several lace curtains and shutters to suit the weather. The walls are tinted with the Spaniard’s eye for rich color display, the massive furniture is solid carved old mahogany, and the graceful mosquito curtains suggest experiences better left untold. House-rent is high, owing to the heavy taxation, which will doubtless be modified after American administration has put the city in a sanitary condition. Flour used to cost the poorer classes from two to three times its price in the United States.
Before we leave the capital for the interior we must note two or three of the time-mellowed edifices, which give the flavor of old-world mediævalism to the island. The gloomy Morro Castle is familiar in the chronicles of the war. It stands guard at the water-gate of the city, a grim-visaged dungeon that echoes with the despairing groans of more victims of cruel oppression than can ever be counted. A more cheerful landmark is the old Cathedral, looking as if it dates further back than 1724, cooped up in its crowded quarter. Here rest the ashes of Columbus, say the faithful, and they are probably right. He died in Spain May 20, 1506. In 1856, his bones were brought to San Domingo and from there were transferred in January, 1796, to this Cathedral, where they rest in the wall behind the bust and tablet to his memory. The elaborate monument under the dome is a splendid work of art. Four life-size sculptured ecclesiastics bear a sarcophagus on their shoulders. There is also a supposed portrait bust on a mural tablet.
The Spanish element in the city is popularly said to be an exaggeration of the old country quality. The Tacon theatre holds three thousand people. Cafés and restaurants abound, and never lack customers. Some day Havana may be transformed into a nearer Paris, with a larger American colony than haunts the dearer city across the sea. Cuba has nearly the same area as England. The Province of Havana has a population of 452,000, of whom 107,500 are black. Large tracts of the island have not yet been explored. The long years of intermittent battling between the Cubans and Spaniards have grievously hindered progress in all directions. Nature is bountiful beyond belief, yet her overtures have been scorned, partly because of native inertia, but mainly through dread of loss. Both sides have been guilty of laying waste vast areas of cultivated land, ruining its husbandmen, capitalists and laborers alike. The millennium bids fair to come before long. Peace is restoring confidence. The reign of justice will bring capital and labor back to the soil and tempt American migration to the cities and towns, where life can be lived so enjoyably by those who bring modern methods and ideas to bear in the task of converting a man-made wilderness into an alluring paradise. Not long ago an American bought seventy acres of ground in Trinidad valley, which he cleared and planted at a cost of $3,070 for the first year. The second year’s cultivation cost $1,120. He made it a banana orchard. At the end of the second year he had realized $30,680 net profit by the sale of his crop of 54,000 bunches.
Havana has the cosmopolitan air. Clubs, cafés, and entertainments abound and flourish. Its suburbs and nearby towns afford all the allurements the modern city-man seeks in country life. The rural charms of Marianao are unsurpassed in any land. Ornately simple architecture marks the columned houses of its best street. Around it are the cosy cottages in their luxuriant gardens, and beyond these the open country, a veritable Eden of foliage, flowers and fruit. In one spot a famous old banyan tree has thrown out its limbs, thrusting them deep into the soil till they have sprouted and spread over a five-acre field.
As we traverse the garden landscape in any settled part of the island, and in Porto Rico, we note the habits of the rustic native in his interesting simplicity. Poor enough in all conscience, but wonderfully contented with his crust of bread, his cigarette, the family pig, bananas for the pickaninnies’ staple fare, and the frequent sips of rum which are to the West Indian laborer what beefsteak is to the American toiler. He is by no means a drunkard, and if he lacks book-learning he excels in some civic virtues of the homelier kind, and is not extravagant in his tailor-bills. The children’s costume is usually that of Eve before the fall, and the apparel of a goodly family might be bought for the price of a dude’s red vest.
Cock-fighting is the favorite native sport. It is encountered at any hour, anywhere. There are other sports, such as boar hunts, spearing fish, not to mention that of killing tarantulas, sand-flies, land-crabs, and the gentle crocodile. The thousand miles of steam railway in Cuba are unevenly distributed. From Havana the trip through Pinar del Rio gives an astounding revelation of the wealth of forest and soil and mines. Devastated as so much of this country was during the long years of dragging war, its charms of scenery and possibilities of development will work its speedy salvation. A single acre of choice land has produced $3,000 worth of tobacco.
Two crops of corn and two of strawberries grow each year, vegetables and many fruits are superabundant, yet wheat and flour are imported, and cotton, besides other important staples, can be successfully cultivated.
Journeying to the charming Isle of Pines, and then south and east through Matanzas, Santa Clara, and Puerto Principe to Santiago, there is the same invitation of Nature to come and enjoy all that makes earth lovely. The island is dotted with towns large and small having much the same characteristics as Havana. Her virgin forests have some of the richest woods known to commerce. Her hills hold stores of iron, copper, coal and other minerals. Her soil is ready to yield many-fold to the courageous cultivator. When the swords have been turned into plough-shares and the spears to pruning-hooks, there will come a new day for the native Cuban. He will feel himself liberated from the hindering rancors and jealousies, inevitable in the light of recent history, which alone now stand between his beautiful island and the prosperity that hovers, waiting his encouragement to alight. Then the traveller will return with reports of Havana rejuvenated, her harbor dredged and purified, her highways paved, homes made healthy and the whole island lifted to the higher and happier plane that will give the Pearl of the Antilles its rightful setting among the other gems of God’s earth.