On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

by William Seymour Edwards

Overnight a great storm has arisen. I tried to find out at the hotel about the weather, but in Havana weather reports are unknown. The Spanish clerk at the hotel smiled at me most condescendingly for asking so silly a question as, “Is a storm likely to be coming from the North or the South, or anywhere; and what sort of a day are we likely to have to-morrow?” Bowing politely, he spoke in sneering undertone to his Spanish companion, and then in broken English said to me, “I never hear even an American ask a question like that, Señor. How we know what the weather is to be? God makes the weather Señor, not you or I.” And they both smiled upon me with supercilious contempt. They took me for a fool. Only a fool would pretend to ask what Providence might have in store. So much for the Weather Bureau and the yet mediæval Spaniard!

When we left the harbor a few hours later, a great sea was tossing gigantic breakers above the ramparts of El Moro. We plunged into the fury of a Norther, which turned out to be one of the wildest gales of the midwinter. I might have put off departure a day or two if I had known of it, but Spanish ignorance sent me out in a small and laboring boat to make the dangerous ninety miles across the straits in the face of such a storm.

After my breakfast, a Spanish hall-boy of the hotel had struggled down the successive stairways with my valise. Ordinarily, we would have taken the new electric elevator, but the American company which recently installed it had recalled their experts, and the Spaniard supposed to run it in their place had promptly put the machine out of order. The cage now hung fast about half-way up the shaft awaiting American skill to set it moving.

One of the many cochas drawn up before the loggia of the hotel was soon carrying me to the Caballerio Pier, there to have my trunks and bags stamped with the certificates of the health officers of the port, and checked through for the journey to Tampa. And then I went up to a little bird shop on Calle Obispo, and took charge of a clever parrot, for which I had arranged the day previous,—a bird brought from the Isle of Pines, with green body, white head, pink throat. She is named Marie, and yesterday she talked to me long and loud in Spanish. Along with her I purchased also a pair of pretty love birds. Perhaps I may tell you that the Marie with which we reached Florida could talk no Spanish, and the pair of pretty parakeets, instead of being loving mates, turned out to be two fighting males. But all of this I only learned when many leagues distant from the soft-eyed señora who sold them to me in the little shop on the Calle Obispo.

Our boat was named the Mascot, and well was it so christened, for the fierce billows tried her seaworthiness to the limit. The Norther which broke its fury upon the coasts of Yucatan did not arouse so angry a sea as that which fought the currents of the Florida Strait.

The greater number of our passengers were Cubans going across to work in the tobacco factories at Key West. It was apparently their first experience of the sea. They filled the forward decks, and gay and lively was their company as they waved their adios to their shouting friends ashore. The tempestuous waters caught us before we even left the bay. We were steaming out dead in the teeth of the gale, and the little boat pitched until she almost stood on end, and rolled as though her gunwales would be every time awash. Our Cubans soon lost their speech and then their breakfasts, and were at last filled with fear alone. They were scarcely recovered when we made fast to the long pier at Key West, and did not regain their cheerfulness until their legs were firmly set upon the land.

Key West boasts a larger Cuban-Latin population than native American, and sonorous Spanish speech falls more frequently upon my ear than th-i-th-ing- s-i-s-sing- English; yet I behold the Stars and Stripes floating above me and know myself at home.

My journey through Mexico and Cuba is at an end, and I am returned to the United States. I now experience again the same shock of transition which so moved me when a few weeks ago I crossed the Rio Grande and entered Mexico. For many days have I beheld and felt the puissant tenacity of a civilization older than my own; a civilization once world-dominant and still haughty and assertive, which begat arrogant war-lord and subservient slave, which exalted the few and crushed the many, and which to-day while it applauds and assumes the outward habiliments of democracy, yet underneath retains the flesh and blood of despotic individualism; a civilization, nevertheless, marked by the highest appreciation of all that appeals to the finer senses in splendor of religious ritual, in sensuousness in art, and in the graceful and the ornate in architecture; in music and in belles-lettres.

For the masterful rule of Diaz I had come prepared, but of the numerous well-ordered and well-built Mexican cities I had no thought. The discovery that here had been successfully applied the principles of municipal ownership of public utilities centuries before Chicago, San Francisco, and New York had debated their problems, came to me as a revelation, and when I beheld the noble cities of Mexico, of Toluca, of Morelia, of San Louis Potosí, of Monterey, and many others, giving for three hundred years free water and free illumination to their people, and throughout these centuries adorned with well-kept parks where flowers bloomed, artistic fountains flowed, and music played, for the free enjoyment of the poorest peon as well as the millionaire grandee, I was fain to bethink me whether the practical, money-getting American might not after all take lessons from his Latin brother of the South.