XXIII
Cuba—The Tobacco Lands of Guanajay—The Town and Bay of Mariel
Guanajay, Cuba,
December 28th.
It was dark. Through the wide-open window of my chamber crept the soft morning air of the tropics. Some one was shaking my door and crying, “Hay las seis, Hay las seis.” It was six o’clock. I was to leave on the seven o’clock train for Guanajay, and the fertile tobacco plantations of Pinar del Rio. In the spacious, airy dining room, I was the first guest at desayuno.
The railways of Cuba and the railway coaches are yet of the antiquated sort. Our car must have been made fifty years ago, with its small seats of hard plank and windows without glass. The clerk who sold tickets spoke no English. I just kept putting down Spanish dollars until he said “bastante” (enough). Later, I found that, presuming on my ignorance and the throng pushing behind me, he had gathered in two dollars too much, to his personal profit. The railway is owned by Englishmen, although run by Cubans. We rolled slowly out of the city toward the west. We looked upon high stone walls, now and then catching a glimpse of a garden through an open gateway, and then ran between perfectly tilled market gardens with rich black soil, many Chinamen working in them.
Beyond the gardens, we passed stately buildings and the beautiful park surrounding the Spanish Captain General’s summer palace, where are ponds and fountains, palms and blooming shrubs. All these are now owned by the Republic of Cuba, and are some day to be converted into a pleasure ground for the people, just as are in France the ancient royal palaces and gardens of Versailles and Fontainebleau. As our train rolled west, it gradually approached a range of hills, where are now many pineapple farms, yielding pineapples which put the tiny Florida plant to the blush—big, luscious and juicy. A young man from Boston sat next me. He was looking for pineapple land. He meant to quit the snow and ice of New England. He would buy a plantation and settle and live in Cuba, where, thank God, the ice blight never comes, where man has only to plant and nature abundantly does the rest. We passed many orange groves, and lemon and lime and mango trees which the Spaniards had failed to destroy. Their branches were heavy with yellow, golden, ripe fruit. Here, where is no terror of frosts, many a frozen-out Floridian is now arrived or is on the way. The orange of Cuba is sweet, juicy and luscious, and some day Americans will here raise them and sell them in New York, and in this way win back the money they have lost in Florida. As we passed along, we traversed many sugar plantations, once cultivated, now abandoned. The black and ruined chimneys and dilapidated walls of their factories were eloquent witness of devastation and war. But the smaller farmsteads looked prosperous. Beside each dwelling was usually a grove of plantains and bananas. The latter, commonly thin skinned and fragrant, are as small as two of your fingers and most delicious. A young couple plant a banana grove when they set up housekeeping, and thereafter have bananas at hand all their lives.
At many of the houses we saw the Cuban flag floating from the staff top. “Cuba Libre” is in the hearts of all these rural people. I told a Cuban fellow-passenger, that I, too, had raised that flag, the first to do so in my State, and he thereafter treated me like a brother. I had touched his heart. We passed a deep, wide stream, flowing with a clear full tide. It is the overflow from the wonderful spring which supplies to Havana its water. It bursts from the ground a full-grown river. Havana has dammed it, bridled it, and through huge pipes, carries its abundant and pellucid flood into her streets and houses, furnishing fresh, sweet, pure water for the multitude. A few miles further on, we saw another river plunge suddenly into the bowels of the earth. Full and brimming it flows along, and then all at once disappears forever into a mysterious hole. The Spaniards have here raised a chapel and set up a big cross, for must not this engulfing cavern be one of the gates to hell? And what more certain than a house of God to frighten off the devil!
We are now in the midst of some of the finest tobacco lands of the world. This part of Cuba is founded on a coral reef. The lime of the coral has here permeated the ground. Red and chocolate and brown-black, the soil contains just those chemical ingredients which tobacco needs. No other land has anywhere yet been found just like it, and no other tobacco grows with quite the same fragrant quality of leaf. All the world wants this Cuban tobacco. Therefrom the French government makes and sells cigars and cigarettes and reaps great revenues. The Germans also want the Cuban tobacco lands, and the enterprising American intends sooner or later to have his share of them. How would you feel, my smoking brother, to be able to enjoy a delicious Havana cigar, to roll it between your lips and inhale the perfume of its smoke, all for the price of three cents or perhaps a nickel? The Americans are quietly acquiring as great an acreage as possible of the tobacco lands of Cuba. These lands are mainly held in small farms of four and five acres, each worked by a single family, who devote all their attention to the planting of the seed, the raising of the crop, the drying of the leaf, and even the final making of the finished cigar. They sell the cigars at their door, or take them to the town and sell them to the dealers, who buy and then put on their own labels and place them in the market. Nowhere in the United States will nature permit a tobacco leaf to stay on the plant until it is fully ripe; there is too much fear of frost. But in Cuba the leaf hangs to the stalk in the sunshine until it has reached that degree of ripeness which insures the most perfect tone and flavor. Thus it is, there can be no other tobacco just like Cuba’s, for nowhere on earth ’t is said, do soil and climate and human skill so aptly and completely combine to make the product perfect. There are three islands of the sea where the soil is rich and fertile beyond all other lands; the island of Java, owned by the Dutch; the island of Luzon, chief of the Philippines, and the island of Cuba. And in this one product, it is claimed that Cuba surpasses them all.