A noteworthy thing about Habana is the great number of cigar stores. No city in the world possesses so many. Nor are the cigars there purchased to be surpassed. Every one smokes cigars in Habana. The cigarette holds the inferior place. The men smoke cigars; the boys smoke cigars; even many of the women smoke cigars. In Mexico, in the hotels and railway cars, the ladies were usually smoking cigarettes. Here in Habana delicate feminine lips close tenderly upon el segaro.
There is also much fruit sold at little stands along the street curbs and at the corners, but in nothing like the quantity or profusion seen in the Mexican cities, nor have I met any dulce boys with trays of candied fruits upon their heads.
There are two chief markets in Habana; one is by the water side, where the fishermen come and where I was greatly interested. There were the splendid red-snapper—which I saw in the markets of Mexico fresh from the sea,—a large handsome fish of deep-red color, weighing five or six pounds; and multitudes of sorts I did not know. The other, a large market where flowers and fruits and vegetables are sold is on the hill a mile or two from the sea.
The vegetable gardens in the outskirts of the city, are in the hands of the Chinese, who bring the vegetables to the markets where they are sold by the Cubans. They work the gardens just as they would in Shanghai, in Canton, in Pekin; they have come over from China direct; they already control the greengrocer trade of Habana, and are said to be fast growing rich.
The markets are neither so large, nor so abundantly supplied as those of Mexico City, where the fruits and vegetables of the temperate highlands, and also those of the tropics are offered in the same stall.
It was the day before Christmas when I visited the larger market, and the chief interest of the buyers seemed to be centered in the display of live and suckling pigs. It is the custom of the Cuban to celebrate his Christmas with a royal banquet of roast pig. So the housewife selects a “live and squealing dinner,” ties him together by his four legs and with a cord slung across her shoulder, carries him home, lustily vociferating beneath her arm. I saw few pigs in Mexico, only an occasional hog or shoat, lean and wild, scampering along the wayside in Michoacan; but here, in Cuba, the pig is el gran Señor.
The crowds gathering in these markets were in strong contrast to those of Mexico. Here, were none of the warm brown Indian tints, but instead the yellow mulatto and the very dark Spaniard or negro. The curious thing about these Cuban crowds is that the Spanish mulatto, instead of carrying the white man’s color with the negro’s features, bears, on the contrary, the white man’s features with the darker color of his African blood, and hence, the impression created by a Cuban crowd is rather that of men having Caucasian features shaded in color from the paler to the darker hues. It is also said, that many of the darker faces have in them no negro blood at all, but are those of the descendants of the ancient Moors, who, once the lords of old Spain, have left as legacy a proud lineage and swarthy skin. To the unpracticed eye, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the Spanish negro and the “Black Spaniard.” Thus in Cuba the color line of race distinction, as drawn in the United States, becomes almost impossible. Nor does it exist. Men of all shades mingle and mix in social functions, for who can tell whether the dark face is shaded by the infused blood of the lowly negro or the haughty Moor?
THE CATHEDRAL—HAVANA
In the late afternoon I took my way down along the Prado, and, stopping before No. 55, touched an electric bell. The door opened and I entered a spacious patio; on one side stood a modern automobile,—on the other, pots of flowering plants, and I entered a large and airy drawing room.