Due South: or, Cuba Past and Present

When the infuriated beast made a rush at one of his tormentors, they adroitly sprang on one side, or, if too closely pressed, these practiced athletes with a handspring leaped over the high board fence. Whichever way he turned the bull met a fresh enemy and another device of torment, until at last the poor creature was frantically mad. The fight then became more earnest, the bull rushing first at one and then another of his enemies, but the practiced fighters were too wary for him; he could not change position so quickly as they could. Finally, the bull turned his attention to the horses and made madly first at the one which was nearest, and though he received a tearing wound along his spine from the horseman's spear, he ripped the horse's bowels open with his horns and threw him upon the ground, with his rider under him. The men on foot rushed to the rescue and drew off the bull by fresh attacks and by flaunting the flags before his eyes. In the mean time, the rider was got out from beneath the horse, which lay dying. The bull, finding that he could revenge himself on the horses, transferred his attention to the other and threw him to the ground with his rider, but received another long wound upon his own back. Leaving the two horses lying nearly dead, the bull again turned upon the banderilleros, rushing with such headlong speed at them that he buried his sharp horns several inches in the timbers of the fence. It was even a struggle for him to extract them. The purpose is not to give the bull any fatal wounds, but to worry and torment him to the last degree of endurance. This struggle was kept up for twenty minutes or more, when the poor creature, bleeding from a hundred wounds, seemed nearly exhausted. Then, at a sign from the director, there was a grand flourish of trumpets, and the matador, a skillful swordsman and the hero of the occasion, entered the ring to close with the bull, singly. The other fighters withdrew and the matador advanced with a scarlet flag in one hand and his naked sword in the other. The bull stood at bay, too much worn by the fight and loss of blood to voluntarily attack this single enemy. The matador advanced and lured him to an attack by flaunting his flag. A few feeble rushes were made by the bleeding animal, until, in a last effort to drive his horns into this new enemy, he staggered heavily forward. This time the matador did not leap to one side, but received the bull upon the point of his Toledo blade, which was aimed at a spot just back of the horns, where the brain meets the spinal column. As the bull comes on with his head bent down to the charge, this spot is exposed, and forms a fair target for a practiced hand. The effect was electrical. The bull staggered, reeled from side to side for an instant, and then fell dead. Four bulls were destroyed in a like manner that afternoon, and, in their gallant fight for their lives, they killed seven horses, trampling their riders in two instances almost fatally, though they are protected by a sort of leather armor on their limbs and body. During the fight with the second bull, which was an extremely fierce and powerful creature, a young girl of eighteen dressed in male attire, who was trained to the brutal business, took an active part in the arena with the banderilleros. One remarkable feat which she performed was that of leaping by means of a pole completely over the bull when he was charging at her. At Madrid, where the author witnessed a similar exhibition, the introduction of a young girl among the fighters was omitted, but otherwise the performance was nearly identical. At the close of each act of the murderous drama, six horses gayly caparisoned with bells and plumes dashed into the arena led by attendants, and chains being attached to the bodies of the dead animals, they were drawn out at great speed through a gate opened for the purpose, amid another flourish of trumpets and the shouts of the excited multitude.

The worst of all this is that the influence of such outrageous cruelty is lasting. It infects the beholders with a like spirit. In fact, it is contagious. We all know how hard the English people became in the time of Henry VIII. and Bloody Mary.

In this struggle of the bull ring there is no gallantry or true bravery displayed on the part of the professional fighters. They run but little personal risk, practiced as they are, sheltered and protected by artificial means and armed with keen weapons, whereas the bull has only his horns to protect himself from his many tormentors. There is no possible escape for him; his fate is sealed from the moment he enters the ring. All the true bravery exhibited is on his part; he is always the attacking party, and were the exhibition to be attempted in an open field, even armed as they are, he would drive every one of his enemies out of sight. The much-lauded matador does not take his position in front of the animal until it is very nearly exhausted by loss of blood and long-continued, furious fighting. In our estimation, he encounters far less risk than does the humblest of the banderilleros or chulos, who torment the bull face to face in the fullness of his physical strength and courage. Still, instances are not wanting wherein these matadors have been seriously wounded and even killed by a frantic and dying bull, who has roused himself for a last final struggle.

Whatever colonial modification the Spanish character may have apparently undergone in Cuba, the Creole is Castilian still in his love for the cruel sports of the arena. Great is the similitude also between the modern Spaniard and the ancient Roman in this respect. As the Spanish language more closely resembles Latin than does the Italian, so do the Spanish people show more of Roman blood than the natives of Italy themselves. Panem et circenses (bread and circuses!) was the cry of the old Roman populace, and to gratify their wishes millions of sesterces were lavished, and hecatombs of human victims slain in the splendid amphitheatres erected by the masters of the world in all the cities subject to their sway. And so pan y toros (bread and bulls!) is the imperious demand of the Spaniards, to which the government is forced to respond. The parallel may be pursued still further. The proudest ladies of Rome, maids and matrons, gazed with liveliest interest upon the dying gladiators who hewed each other in pieces, or on the Christians who perished in conflict with the wild beasts, half starved to give them battle. So the señoras and señoritas of Madrid, Seville, Malaga, and Havana enjoy, with keen delight, the terrible spectacle of bulls slaughtered by picadors and matadors, and gallant horses ripped up and disemboweled by the horns of their brute adversaries. It is true that the ameliorating spirit of Christianity is evinced in the changes which the arena has undergone. Human lives are no longer designedly sacrificed wholesale in the bloody contests, yet the bull-fight is sufficiently barbarous and atrocious. It is a national institution, indicative of national character.

To look upon the serenity of Cuban ladies, driving in the Paseo or listening to the nightly music in the Plaza de Isabella, one could not possibly imagine them to be lacking in tenderness, or that there was in them sufficient hardihood to witness such exhibitions as we have described, and yet one third of the audience on the occasion spoken of was composed of the gentler sex. They are almost universally handsome, being rather below the average height of the sex with us, but possessing an erect and dignified carriage. Their form, always rounded to a delicate fullness, is quite perfection in point of model. Their dark hair and olive complexions are well matched, – the latter without a particle of natural carmine. The eyes are a match for the hair, being large and beautifully expressive, with a most irresistible dash of languor in them, – but not the languor of illness. It is really difficult to conceive of an ugly woman with such eyes as they all possess in Cuba, – the Moorish, Andalusian eye. The Cuban women have also been justly famed for their graceful carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that engage the beholder and lend a happy charm to every attitude and every step.

The gentlemen as a rule are good-looking, though they are much smaller, lighter, and more agile than the average American. The lazy life they so universally lead tends to make them less manly than a more active one would do. It seems to be a rule among them never to do for themselves that which a slave can do for them. This is demonstrated in the style of the volante, where the small horse is made not only to draw the vehicle, but also to carry a large negro on his back as driver. Now, if reins were used, there would be no occasion for the postilion at all, but a Spaniard or Creole would think it demeaning to drive his own vehicle. With abundance of leisure, and the ever present influences of their genial clime, where the heart's blood leaps more swiftly to the promptings of the imagination and where the female form earliest attains its maturity, the West Indians seem peculiarly adapted for romance and for love. The consequent adventures constantly occurring among them often culminate in startling tragedies, and afford plots in which a French feuilletonist would revel.

The nobility of Cuba, so called, is composed of rather homespun material, to say the least, of it. There may be some fifty individuals dubbed with the title of marquis, and as many more with that of count, most of whom have acquired their wealth and position by carrying on extensive sugar plantations. These are sneeringly designated by the humble classes as sugar noblemen, and not inappropriately so, as nearly all of these aristocratic gentlemen have purchased their titles outright for money. Not the least consideration is exercised by the Spanish throne as to the fitness of these ambitious individuals for honorary distinction. It is a mere question of money, and if this be forthcoming the title follows as a natural sequence. Twenty-five thousand dollars will purchase any title. Such things are done in other lands, but not quite so openly. And yet the tone of Cuban society in its higher circles is found to be rather aristocratic and exclusive. The native of Old Spain does not endeavor to conceal his contempt for foreigners of all classes, and as to the Creoles, he simply scorns to meet them on social grounds, shielding his inferiority of intelligence under a cloak of hauteur, assuming the wings of the eagle, but possessing only the eyes of the owl. Thus the Castilians and Creoles are ever at antagonism, both socially and politically. The bitterness of feeling existing between them can hardly be exaggerated. The sugar planter, the coffee planter, the merchant, and the liberal professions stand in the order in which we have named them, as regards their relative degree of social importance, but wealth, in fact, has the same charm here as elsewhere in Christendom, and the millionaire has the entrée to all classes.

The Monteros or yeomanry of the island inhabit the less cultivated and cheaper portions of the soil, entering the cities only to dispose of their surplus produce, and acting as the marketmen of the populous districts. When they stir abroad, in nearly all parts of the island, they are armed with a sword, and in the eastern sections about Santiago, or even Cienfuegos, they also carry pistols in the holsters of their saddles. Formerly this was indispensable for self-protection, but at this time weapons are more rarely worn. Still the arming of the Monteros has always been encouraged by the authorities, as they form a sort of militia at all times available against negro insurrection, a calamity in fear of which such communities must always live. The Montero is rarely a slaveholder, but is frequently engaged on the sugar plantations during the busy season as an overseer, and, to his discredit be it said, he generally proves to be a hard taskmaster, entertaining an intuitive dislike to the negroes.

An evidence of the contagious character of cruelty was given in a circumstance coming under the author's observation on a certain plantation at Alquizar, where a manifest piece of severity led him to appeal to the proprietor in behalf of a female slave. The request for mercy was promptly granted, and the acting overseer, himself a mulatto, was quietly reprimanded for his cruelty. "You will find," said our host, "that colored men always make the hardest masters when placed over their own race, but they have heretofore been much employed on the island in this capacity, because a sense of pride makes them faithful to the proprietor's interest. That man is himself a slave," he added, pointing to the sub-overseer, who still stood among the negroes, whip in hand.

The Montero sometimes hires a free colored man to help him in the planting season on his little patch of vegetable garden, in such work as a Yankee would do for himself, but these small farmers trust mostly to the exuberant fertility of the soil, and spare themselves all manual labor, save that of gathering the produce and taking it to market. They form, nevertheless, a very important and interesting class of the population. They marry very young, the girls at thirteen and fifteen, the young men from sixteen to eighteen, and almost invariably rear large families. Pineapples and children are a remarkably sure crop in the tropics. The increase among them during the last half century has been very large, much more in proportion than in any other class of the community, and they seem to be approaching a degree of importance, at least numerically, which will render them eventually like the American farmers, the bone and sinew of the land. There is room enough for them and to spare, for hardly more than one tenth of the land is under actual cultivation, a vast portion being still covered by virgin forests and uncleared savannas. The great and glaring misfortune – next to that of living under a government permitting neither civil nor religious liberty, where church and state are alike debased as the tools of despotism, – is their want of educational facilities. Books and schools they have none. Barbarism itself is scarcely less cultured. We were told that the people had of late been somewhat aroused from this condition of lethargy concerning education, and some effort has recently been made among the more intelligent to afford their children opportunities for instruction. But at the present writing, the Egyptian fellah is not more ignorant than the rural population of Cuba, who as a mass possess all the indolence and few of the virtues of the aborigines.

There is one highly creditable characteristic evinced by the Monteros as a class, and that is their temperate habits in regard to indulgence in stimulating drinks. As a beverage they do not use ardent spirits, and seem to have no taste or desire for the article, though they drink the ordinary claret – rarely anything stronger. This applies to the country people, not to the residents of the cities. The latter quickly contract the habit of gin drinking, as already described. There is one prominent vice to which the Monteros are indisputably addicted; namely, that of gambling. It seems to be a natural as well as a national trait, the appliances for which are so constantly at hand in the form of lottery tickets and the cock-pits that they can hardly escape the baleful influences. There are some who possess sufficient strength of character and intelligence to avoid it altogether, but with the majority it is the regular resort for each leisure hour. One of their own statesmen, Castelar, told the Spaniards, not long since, that gambling was the tax laid upon fools.

Perhaps the best place at which to study the appearance and character of the Monteros is at the Central Market, where they come daily by hundreds from the country in the early morning to sell their produce, accompanied by long lines of mules or horses with well-laden panniers. It is a motley crowd that one meets there, where purchasers and salesmen mingle promiscuously. From six to nine o'clock, a. m., it is the busiest place in all Havana. Negroes and mulattoes, Creoles and Spaniards, Chinamen and Monteros, men and women, beggars, purchasers, and slaves, all come to the market on the Calzada de la Reina. Here the display of fruits and vegetables is something marvelous, both in variety and in picturesqueness of arrangement. This locality is the natural resort of the mendicants, who pick up a trifle in the way of provisions from one and another, as people who do not feel disposed to bestow money will often give food to the indigent. This market was the only place in the city where it was possible to purchase flowers, but here one or two humble dealers came at early morn to dispose of such buds and blossoms as they found in demand. A blind Chinese coolie was found sitting on the sidewalk every morning, at the corner of the Calzada de la Reina, just opposite the market, and he elicited a trifle from us now and again. One morning a couple of roses and a sprig of lemon verbena were added to his small gratuity. The effect upon that sightless countenance was electrical, and the poor mendicant, having only pantomime with which to express his delight, seemed half frantic. The money fell to the ground, but the flowers were pressed passionately to his breast.

Did it remind him, we thought, of perfumes which had once delighted his youthful senses in far-off Asia, before he had been decoyed to a foreign land and into semi-slavery, to be deprived of health, liberty, sight, hope, everything?

The Cuban beggars have a dash of originality in their ideas as to the successful prosecution of their calling; we mean those "native and to the manor born." Some of them possess two and even three cadaverous dogs, taught to follow closely at their heels, as they wander about, and having the same shriveled-up, half-starved aspect as their masters. One beggar, who was quite a cripple, had his daily seat in a sort of wheelbarrow, at the corner of Paseo Street, opposite the Plaza de Isabella. This man was always accompanied by a parrot of gaudy plumage, perched familiarly on his shoulder. Now and then the cripple put some favorite bird-food between his own lips, which the parrot extracted and appropriated with such promptness as to indicate a good appetite. Another solicitor of alms, quite old and bent, had an amusing companion in a little gray squirrel, with a collar and string attached, the animal being as mischievous as a monkey, now and then hiding in one of the mendicant's several pockets, sometimes coming forth to crack and eat a nut upon his owner's shoulder. A blind beggar, of Creole nationality, sat all day long in the hot sun, on the Alameda de Paula near the Hotel San Carlos, whose companion was a chimpanzee monkey. The little half-human creature held out its hand with a piteous expression to every passer-by, and deposited whatever he received in his master's pocket. These pets serve to attract attention, if not commiseration, and we observed that the men did not beg in vain.

The acme of originality, however, was certainly reached in the case of a remarkable Creole beggar whose regular post is on the west corner of the Central Market. This man is perhaps thirty-five or forty years of age, and possesses a fine head, a handsome face, and piercing black eyes. He is of small body, and his lower limbs are so withered as to be entirely useless; so he sits with them curled up in a low, broad basket, in which he is daily brought to the spot, locomotion in his case being out of the question. He wears the cleanest of linen, and his faultless cuffs and ruffled shirt-bosom are decked with solid gold studs. He is bareheaded, but his thick black hair is carefully dressed, and parted with mathematical precision in the middle. He wears neither coat nor vest, but his lower garments are neatly adapted to his deformity, and are of broadcloth. This man does not utter a word, but extends his hand pleasantly, with an appealing look from his handsome eyes, which often elicits a silver real from the passer-by. We acknowledge to having been thus influenced more than once, in our morning walks, by a sympathy which it would be difficult to analyze. We had seen a colored dude selling canes at Nassau, but a dude mendicant, and a cripple at that, was a physical anomaly.

CHAPTER XIII

Introduction of Sugar-Cane. – Sugar Plantations. – Mode of Manufacture. – Slaves on the Plantations. – African Amusements. – The Grinding Season. – The Coffee Plantations. – A Floral Paradise. – Refugees from St. Domingo. – Interesting Experiments with a Mimosa. – Three Staple Productions of Cuba. – Raising Coffee and Tobacco. – Best Soils for the Tobacco. – Agricultural Possibilities. – The Cuban Fire-Fly. – A Much-Dreaded Insect. – The Ceiba Tree. – About Horses and Oxen.

The first sugar plantation established in Cuba was in 1595, nearly three hundred years since. These plantations are the least attractive in external appearance, but the most profitable pecuniarily, of all agricultural investments in the tropics, though at the present writing there is a depression in prices of sugar which has brought about a serious complication of affairs. The markets of the world have become glutted with the article, owing to the enormous over-production in Europe from the beet. The plantations devoted to the raising of the sugar-cane in Cuba spread out their extensive fields, covered with the corn-like stalks, without any relief to the eye, though here and there the graceful feathery branches of the palm are seen. The fields are divided off into squares of three or four acres each, between which a roadway is left for ox-teams to pass for gathering purposes. On some of the largest estates tramways have been laid, reaching from the several sections of the plantation to the doors of the grinding-mill. A mule, by this means, is enabled to draw as large a load as a pair of oxen on plain ground, and with much more ease and promptness.

About the houses of the owner and the overseer, graceful fruit trees, such as bananas and cocoanuts, with some flowering and fragrant plants, are grouped, forming inviting shade and producing a picturesque effect. Not far away, the low cabins of the blacks are half hidden by plantain and mango trees, surrounded by cultivated patches devoted to yams, sweet potatoes, and the like. Some of the small gardens planted by these dusky Africans showed judgment and taste in their management. Chickens and pigs, which were the private property of the negroes, were cooped up just behind the cabins. Many of these plantations employ from four to five hundred blacks, and in some instances the number will reach seven hundred on extensive estates, though the tendency of the new and improved machinery is to constantly reduce the number of hands required, and to increase the degree of intelligence necessary in those employed. Added to these employees there must also be many head of cattle, – oxen, horses, and mules. The annual running expenditure of one of these large estates will reach two hundred thousand dollars, more or less, for which outlay there is realized, under favorable circumstances, a million five hundred thousand pounds of sugar, worth, in good seasons, five cents per pound at the nearest shipping point.

There are a few of the small estates which still employ ox-power for grinding the cane, but American steam-engines have almost entirely taken the place of animal power; indeed, as we have shown, it will no longer pay to produce sugar by the primitive processes. This creates a constant demand for engineers and machinists, for whom the Cubans depend upon this country. We were told that there were not less than two hundred Bostonians at the present time thus engaged on Cuban estates. A Spaniard or Creole would as soon attempt to fly like a bird as to learn how to run a steam-engine or regulate a line of shafting. It requires more intelligence and mechanical skill, as a rule, than the most faithful slaves possess. A careful calculation shows that in return for the services of this small band of employees taken from our shores, this country takes eighty per cent. of all the sugar produced upon the island! Twelve per cent. is consumed by peninsular Spain, thus leaving but eight per cent. of this product for distribution elsewhere.

During the grinding season, which begins about the first of December and ends in April, a large, well-managed sugar plantation in Cuba is a scene of the utmost activity and most unremitting labor. Time is doubly precious during the harvesting period, for when the cane is ripe there should be no delay in expressing the juice. If left too long in the field it becomes crystallized, deteriorating both in its quality and in the amount of juice which is obtained. The oxen employed often die before the season is at an end, from overwork beneath a torrid sun. The slaves are allowed but four or five hours sleep out of the twenty-four, and being worked by watches during the night, the mill does not lie idle for an hour after it is started until the grinding season is closed. If the slaves are thus driven during this period, throughout the rest of the year their task is comparatively light, and they may sleep ten hours out of the twenty-four, if they choose. According to the Spanish slave code, – always more or less of a dead letter, – the blacks can be kept at work in Cuba only from sunrise to sunset, with an interval of two hours for repose and food in the middle of the day. But this is not regarded in the sugar harvest season, which period, after all, the slaves do not seem so much to dread, for then they are granted more privileges and are better fed, given more variety of food and many other little luxuries which they are known to prize.

On Sunday afternoons and evenings on most of the plantations the slaves are given their time, and are permitted, even in the harvest season, to amuse themselves after their own chosen fashion. On such occasions the privilege is often improved by the blacks to indulge in native African dances, crude and rude enough, but very amusing to witness. The music for the dancers is supplied by a home-made drum, and by that alone, the negro who plays it being to the lookers-on quite as much of a curiosity as those who perform the grotesque dances. This humble musician writhes, wriggles, twists himself like a corkscrew, and all the while beats time, accompanying his notes with cries and howls, reminding one of the Apache Indian when engaged in a war dance. It is astonishing to witness to what a degree of excitement this negro drummer will work himself up, often fairly frothing at the mouth. A buxom wench and her mate step forward and perform a wild, sensuous combination of movements, a sort of negro can-can, like those dancing girls one sees in India, striving to express sentiments of love, jealousy, and passion by their pantomime, though these negroes are far less refined in their gestures. When these two are exhausted, others take their place, with very similar movements. The same drummer labors all the while, perspiring copiously, and seeming to get his full share of satisfaction out of the queer performance. This is almost their only amusement, though the Chinese coolies who have been distributed upon the plantations have taught the negroes some of their queer games, one, particularly, resembling dominoes. The author saw a set of dominoes made out of native ebony wood by an African slave, which were of finer finish than machinery turns out, delicately inlaid with ivory from alligators' teeth, indicating the points upon each piece. We were told that the only tool the maker had with which to execute his delicate task was a rude jack-knife. We have said that the negroes find in the singular dance referred to their one amusement, but they sometimes engage among themselves in a game of ball, after a fashion all their own, which it would drive a Yankee base-ball player frantic to attempt to analyze.

The sugar-cane yields but one crop in a year. There are several varieties, but the Otaheitan seems to be the most generally cultivated. Between the time when enough of the cane is ripe to warrant the getting-up of steam at the grinding-mill and the time when the heat and the rain spoil its qualities, all the sugar for the season must be made; hence the necessity for great industry on the large estates. In Louisiana the grinding season lasts but about eight weeks. In Cuba it continues four months. In analyzing the sugar produced on the island and comparing it with that of the mainland, – the growth of Louisiana, – chemists could find no difference as to the quality of the true saccharine principle contained in each. The Cuban sugar, compared with beet-sugar, however, is said to yield of saccharine matter one quarter more in any given quantity.

In society the sugar planter holds a higher rank than the coffee planter, as we have already intimated; merely in the scale of wealth, however, for it requires five times the capital to carry on a sugar estate that would serve for a coffee estate. Some of the large sugar plantations have been owned and carried on by Jesuit priests – we were about to write ex-Jesuit priests, but that would not be quite correct, for once a member of this order one is bound to it for all time. The priest or acknowledged member of the organization may be forced for prudential reasons to temporarily change his occupation, but he cannot sever himself from the responsibilities which he has once voluntarily assumed. There was a time when much of the landed and fertile property of the island was controlled by the Church, – in fact owned by it, though often by very questionable titles. The original owners, under cunning pressure, perhaps on a threatened death-bed, were induced to will all to the Church; or as an act of deep penance for some crime divulged at the confessional, they yielded up all. To preserve this property and possibly to cause it to produce an income for the Church, certain priests became active planters. Extreme ecclesiastic rule, as has been said, is greatly modified in Spain and her colonies, the natural reaction of the hateful days of the Inquisition.

As the sugar plantation surpasses the coffee in wealth, so the coffee estate surpasses the sugar in every natural beauty and attractiveness. A coffee plantation, well and properly laid out, is one of the most beautiful gardens that can well be conceived of, in its variety and loveliness baffling description. An estate devoted to this purpose usually covers a hundred acres, more or less, planted in regular squares of one acre or thereabouts, intersected by broad alleys lined with palms, mangoes, bananas, oranges, and other fruits; as the coffee, unlike the sugar cane, requires partial protection from the ardor of the sun. Mingled with the trees are lemons, limes, pomegranates, Cape jasmines, and a species of wild heliotrope, fragrant as the morning. Occasionally in the wide reach of the estate there is seen a solitary, broad-spreading ceiba, in hermit-like isolation from other trees, but shading a fragrant undergrowth. Conceive of this beautiful arrangement, and then of the whole when in flower; the coffee, with its milk-white blossoms, so abundant that it seems as though a pure white cloud of snow had fallen there, and left the rest of the vegetation fresh and green. Interspersed in these fragrant alleys dividing the coffee plants is the red of the Mexican rose, the flowering pomegranate, the yellow jasmine, and the large, gaudy flower of the penon, shrouding its parent stem in a cloak of scarlet. Here too are seen clusters of the graceful yellow flag, and many wild flowers, unknown by name, entwining their tender stems about the base of the fruit trees. In short, a coffee plantation is a perfect floral paradise, full of fragrance and repose.

The writer's experience was mainly gained at and about the estate of the late Dr. Finley, a Scotch physician long resident upon the island. He had named his plantation after the custom with a fancy title, and called it Buena Esperanza. Here was seen the mignonette tree twenty feet high, full of pale yellow and green blossoms, as fragrant as is its little namesake, which we put in our conservatories. There were also fuchsias, blue, red, yellow, and green, this last hue quite new to us. The night-blooming cereus was in rank abundance, together with the flor de pascua, or Easter flower, so lovely in its cream-colored, wax-like blossom. The Indian poui, with its saffron-colored flowers, was strikingly conspicuous, and there too was that pleasant little favorite, the damask rose. It seemed as if all out-doors was an exotic garden, full of marvelous beauty. What daily miracles nature is performing under our only half-observant eyes! Behold, where the paths intersect each other, a beautiful convolvulus has entwined itself about that dead and decaying tree, clothing the gray old trunk with pale but lovely flowers; just as we deck our human dead for the grave.

It was the revolution in San Domingo which gave the first great stimulus to the culture of the coffee plant in Cuba, an enterprise which has gradually faded out in the last decade, though not absolutely obliterated. The refugees from the opposite shore sought shelter wherever they could find it among the nearest islands of the Archipelago, and large numbers made their new homes in the eastern department of Cuba, near the cities of Trinidad and Santiago. Here they turned lands which had been idle for three and four centuries into smiling gardens, and the production of the favorite berry became very profitable for a series of years, many cargoes being shipped annually to this country from the two ports just named. The production of sugar, however, has always maintained precedence, dividing the honor to-day only with tobacco in the manufactured state. Coffee does not figure to any extent in the statistics of exports. Exorbitant taxation and the cruel ravages of civil war, in the coffee districts especially, are largely the cause of the loss of an important and profitable industry.

Some amusing experiments with a mimosa or sensitive plant served to fill a leisure hour at Buena Esperanza, under our host's intelligent direction. It grew wild and luxuriantly within a few feet of the broad piazza of the country-house. Close by it was a morning-glory, which was in remarkable fullness and freshness of bloom, its gay profuseness of purple, pink, and variegated white making it indeed the glory of the morning. It was a surprise to find the mimosa of such similar habits with its neighbor, the morning-glory, regularly folding its leaves and going to sleep when the shades of evening deepened, but awaking bright and early with the first breath of the morn. So sensitive is this most curious plant, so full of nerves, as our host expressed it, that it would not only shrink instantly, like unveiled modesty, at the touch of one's hand, but even at the near approach of some special organisms, ere they had extended a hand towards it. Five persons tried the experiment before the sixth illustrated the fact that touch was not absolutely necessary to cause the leaves to shrivel up or shrink through seeming fear. Our host even intimated that when the mimosa had become familiar with a congenial person its timidity would vanish, and it could be handled gently by that individual without outraging its sensibility. Of this, however, we saw no positive evidence. If Mr. Darwin had supplemented his chapters on the monkey by a paper relating to the mimosa, he might possibly have enabled us to find a mutual confirmation in them of some fine-spun theory.

The three great staple productions of Cuba are sugar, the sweetener; coffee, the tonic; and tobacco, the narcotic of half the world. The first of these, as we have shown, is the greatest source of wealth, having also the preference as to purity and excellence over any other saccharine production. Its manufacture also yields molasses, which forms an important article of export, besides which a spirituous liquor, called aguardiente, is distilled in considerable quantities from the molasses. The cane, which grows to about the size of a large walking-stick, or well-developed cornstalk, is cut off near the ground and conveyed in the green state, though it is called ripe, to the mill, where it is crushed to a complete pulp between stones or iron rollers. After the juice is thus extracted the material left is spread out in the sun to dry, and is after being thus "cured" used for fuel beneath the steam-boilers, which afford both power to the engine and the means of boiling the juice. Lime-water is employed to neutralize any free acid as well as to separate the vegetable matter. The granulation and crystallization are effected in large flat pans, or now more commonly by centrifugal machines, rotating at great speed. It is then crushed and packed either in hogsheads or in boxes for exportation; canvas bags are also being largely employed, as they are easier to pack on board ship, and also to handle generally. A plantation is renewed when deemed necessary, by laying the green canes horizontally in the ground, when new and vigorous shoots spring up from every joint, showing the great fertility of the soil.

Coffee was introduced by the French into Martinique in 1727, but it did not make its appearance in Cuba until forty years later, or, to be exact, in 1769. The decadence of this branch of agriculture is due not only to the causes we have already named, but also to the inferior mode of cultivation adopted on the island. It was predicted some years before it commenced, and when the crash came the markets of the world were also found to be greatly overstocked with the article. While some planters introduced improved methods and economy in the conduct of their estates, others abandoned the business altogether, and turned their fields either into sugar-raising, fruits or tobacco. Precisely the same trouble was experienced in the island of Ceylon, which was at one time a great coffee-raising centre, but now its planters are many of them abandoning the business, while others adopt new seed and new methods of culture. In Cuba it was found that the plants had been grown too closely together and subjected to too close pruning, while the product, which was gathered by hand, yielded a mixture of ripe and unripe berries. In the countries where coffee originated, a very different method of harvesting is adopted. The Arabs plant the coffee-shrubs much farther apart, allow them to grow to considerable height, and gather the crop by shaking the tree, a method which secures only the ripe berries. After a few weeks, or even days, the field is gone over a second time, when the green berries have become fit to gather, and readily fall to the ground.

A coffee estate well managed, that is, combined with the rearing of fruits and vegetables intermingled, thus affording the required shade for the main crop, proves fairly profitable in Cuba to-day, and were this industry not hampered and handicapped by excessive taxes, it would attract many new planters. The coffee ripens from August to December, the nuts then becoming about the size of our cherries. The coffee-berry is the seed of the fruit, two of which are contained in each kernel, having their flat surfaces together, surrounded by a soft pulp. The ripe berries are dried by exposure to the sun's rays, then bruised in a mill, by which means the seeds are separated from the berry. They are then screened to cleanse them, after which they are bagged, and the coffee is ready for market. Some planters take great care to sort their crop by hand, in which operation the negro women become very expert. By dividing the berries into first and second qualities as to size and cleanliness, a better aggregated price is realized for the entire harvest. Not only are the coffee estates much more pleasing to the eye than the sugar plantations, but they are also much more in harmony with the feelings of the philanthropist. There is here no such exigency in getting in the harvest, leading to the overwork of the slaves, as on a sugar estate in the grinding season. Indeed, we were assured that it was quite possible to carry on a coffee estate with white labor. When, heretofore, a negro has been brought to the block in Havana, or any other Cuban city, the price realized for him has always been materially affected by the question whether he had been employed on a sugar estate in the grinding season. If he had been thus employed it was considered that his life has been unduly shortened, and he sold accordingly at a lower price. At the present time few negroes are bought or sold, as their market value has become merely nominal. There is no good reason why white labor is not suited to the coffee and tobacco estates. When the field labor upon the sugar estates is almost wholly performed by machinery, that is, the cane cut by a reaper, there will be so much less exposure to the sun that white hands, under proper management, can perform it.

Tobacco, indigenous to both Cuba and the United States, is a great source of revenue upon the island. Its cultivation involves considerable labor and expense, as the soil must be carefully chosen and prepared, and the crop is an exhaustive one to the land; but the cultivation does not require machinery, like sugar-cane, nor quite so much care as does the growing coffee. It is valued in accordance with the locality from which it comes, some sections being especially adapted to its production. That of the greatest market value, and used in the manufacture of the highest-cost cigars, is grown in the most westerly division of the island, known as the Vuelta de Abajo (Lower Valley). The whole western portion of Cuba is not by any means suitable to the production of tobacco. The region of the best tobacco is comprised within a small parallelogram of very limited extent. Beyond this, up to the meridian of Havana, the tobacco is of fine color, but of inferior aroma. From Consolacion to San Christoval the tobacco is very "hot," – to use a local phrase, – harsh, and strong, and from San Christoval to Guanajay the quality is inferior up to Holguin y Cuba, where better tobacco is produced. The fertile valley of Los Guines produces poor smoking-tobacco, but an article excellent for the manufacture of snuff. On the banks of the Rio San Sebastian, are also some estates which produce the very best quality of tobacco. Thus it will be seen that certain properties of soil operate more directly in producing a fine grade of tobacco than any slight variation of climate. Possibly a chemical analysis of the soil of the Vuelta de Abajo would enable the intelligent cultivator to supply to other lands the ingredients wanted to make them produce equally good tobacco. A fairly marketable article, however, is grown in nearly any part of the island. Its cultivation is thought to produce a full ten per cent. upon the capital invested, the annual crop of Cuba being estimated in value at about twenty-three million dollars. The number of tobacco planters is said to be about fifteen thousand, large and small. On many tobacco farms the labor is nearly all performed by white hands. Some coolies and some negroes are also employed even on small estates.

When it is remembered that so small a portion of the land is under cultivation, and yet that Cuba exports annually a hundred million dollars worth of sugar and molasses, besides coffee, tobacco, fruits, and precious woods, it will be realized what might be accomplished, under a liberal system of government, upon this gem of the Caribbean Sea. Cacao, rice, plantains, indigo, and cotton, besides Indian corn and many nutritious vegetables, might be profitably cultivated to a much larger degree than is now done. It is a curious and remarkable fact, suggesting a striking moral, that with the inexhaustible fertility of the soil, with an endless summer that gives the laborer two and even three crops a year, agriculture generally yields in Cuba a lower percentage of profit than in our stern Northern latitudes, where the farmer has to wrench, as it were, the half-reluctant crop from the ground. It must be remembered that in Cuba there are numerous fruits and vegetables not enumerated in these pages, which do not enter into commerce, and which spring spontaneously from the fertile soil. In the possession of a thrifty population the island would be made to blossom like a rose, but as it now is, it forms only a garden growing wild, cultivated here and there in patches. None of the fine natural fruits have ever been improved by careful culture and the intelligent selection of kinds, so that in many respects they will not compare in perfection with our average strawberries, plums, pears, and peaches. Their unfulfilled possibilities remain to be developed by intelligent treatment.

The plantain, which may be said to be the bread of the common people, requires to be planted but once. The stem bears freely, like the banana of the same family, at the end of eight months, and then withering to the ground renews itself again from the roots. Sweet potatoes once planted require care only to prevent their too great luxuriance, and for this purpose a plough is passed through them before the wet season, and as many of the vines as can be freely plucked up are removed from the field. The sugar-cane, on virgin soil, will last and prove productive for twenty years. The coffee shrub or tree will bear luxuriantly for forty or fifty years. The cocoanut palm is peculiar to all tropical climates, and in Cuba, as in the Malacca Straits and India, bears an important share in sustaining the life of the people, supplying milk, shade, and material for a hundred domestic uses. It grows in luxuriant thriftiness all over the island, in high and low land, in forests, and down to the very shore washed by the Gulf Stream. It is always graceful and picturesque, imparting an oriental aspect to everything which surrounds it. It is estimated that over ten million acres of native forests, covered by valuable wood, still remain untouched by the woodman's axe, especially on and about the mountain range, which extends nearly the entire length of the island, like the vertebræ of an immense whale.

About the coffee plantations, and indeed throughout the rural portions of the country, there is a curious little insect called a cocuyo, answering in its general characteristics and nature to our firefly, though it is quadruple its size, and far the most brilliant insect of its kind known to naturalists. They float in phosphorescent clouds over the vegetation, emitting a lurid halo, like fairy torch-bearers to elfin crews. One at first sight is apt to compare them to a shower of stars. They come in multitudes immediately after the wet season sets in, prevailing more or less, however, all the year round. Their advent is always hailed with delight by the slave children, as well as by children of a larger growth. They are caught by the slaves in any desired numbers and confined in tiny cages of wicker, giving them sufficient light in their cabins at night for ordinary purposes, and forming the only artificial light permitted them. We have seen a string of the little cages containing the glittering insects hung in a slave-cabin in festoons, like colored lamps in fancy-goods stores in America. The effect of the evanescent light thus produced is very peculiar, but the number of insects employed insures a sufficiently steady effect for ordinary purposes. These little creatures are brought into Havana by young Creole children and by women, for sale to the ladies, who sometimes in the evenings wear a small cage hung to the wrist containing a few of the cocuyos, and the light thus produced is nearly equal to a small candle. Some ladies wear a belt of them at night, ingeniously fastened about the waist, others a necklace, and the effect is highly amusing. In the ballroom they are worn in the flounces of ladies' dresses, where they glisten very much like diamonds and other precious stones. Strange to say, there is a natural hook near the head of the firefly, by which it can be attached to the dress without apparent injury to it. The town ladies keep little cages of these insects as pets, feeding them on sugar, of which they appear to be immoderately fond. On the plantations, when a fresh supply is desired, one has only to wait until evening, when hundreds can be secured with a thread net at the end of a pole. By holding a cocuyo up in the out-door air for a few moments, large numbers are at once attracted to the spot. In size they are about an inch long, and a little over an eighth of an inch in breadth.

There is an insidious and much dreaded insect with which the planters have to contend on the sugar and coffee plantations, but which is not met with in the cities; namely, the red ant, a much more formidable foe than any one not acquainted with its ravages would believe. These little creatures possess a power altogether out of proportion to their insignificant size, eating into the heart of the hardest wood, neither cedar, iron-wood, nor even lignum-vitæ being proof against them. They are not seen at the surface, as they never touch the outer shell of the wood whose heart they are consuming. A beam or rafter which has been attacked by them looks as good as when new, to the casual observer, until it is sounded and found to be hollow, a mere shell in fact. Even in passing from one piece of timber to another, the red ant does so by covered ways, and is thus least seen when most busy. The timbers of an entire roof have been found hollowed out and deprived entirely of their supporting strength without the presence of the insect enemy being even suspected until chance betrayed the useless character of the supports. For some unknown reason, upright timbers are rarely attacked by them, but those in a reclining or horizontal position are their choice. These destructive red ants are nearly always to be found in tropical countries, as in India, Batavia, and Sumatra, where they build mounds in the jungle half the size of the natives' cabins. They may be seen marching like an invading army in columns containing myriads across the fields of southern India.

The interior landscape, more particularly of the middle district of the island, is here and there ornamented by fine specimens of the ceiba, or silk-cotton tree, which is often seen a hundred feet in height, with stout and widespread branches, giving the idea of great firmness and stability. It sends up a massive sinewy trunk for some fifty feet, when it divides into branches covered with a dense canopy of leaves, expanded like an umbrella, and forming a perfect shade against the power of the torrid sun. The ceiba is slow of growth, but attains to great age, specimens thriving when Columbus first landed here being, as we were assured, still extant. Next to the royal palm, it is the most remarkable of all the trees which loom up beneath the brilliant purple skies of Cuba. The negroes have a superstition that the ceiba is a magic tree haunted by spirits, a singular notion also shared by the colored people of Nassau, though these two islands are so many hundreds of miles apart and have never had any natural connection. There is certainly something weird in the loneliness and solitary grandeur of the tree. Next to the palm and ceiba in beauty and picturesqueness of effect is the tamarind tree, with its deep green and delicate foliage, presenting a singular and curious aspect when thickly looped on every branch with hanging chocolate-colored pods.

Under the noonday sun, sitting in the deep shade of some lofty ceiba, one may watch with curious eyes the myriads of many-hued, broad-winged butterflies, mingling orange, crimson, and steel-blue in dazzling combinations, as they flit through the ambient atmosphere with a background of shining, evergreen foliage, the hum of insects and the carol of birds forming a soft lullaby inviting sleep. Naturalists tell us that no less than three hundred distinct species of butterflies are found in Cuba, ranging in size from a common house-fly to a humming-bird. The day dies with a suddenness almost startling, so that one passes from sunshine to starlight as if by magic. Then the cocuyo takes up the activity of insect life, flashing its miniature torches over the plantations, and peeping out from among the dense foliage, while the stars sing their evening hymn of silent praise.

The Cubans have a peculiar mode of harnessing their oxen, similar to that seen in the far East and also in some parts of Europe, as at San Sebastian, on the Bay of Biscay. A stout wooden bar is placed at the root of the horns, and so securely bound to them with thongs that the animal draws, or rather pushes, by the head and frontlet, without chafing. The Cuban oxen have a hole pierced in their nostrils, through which a metallic ring is secured, and to this a rope is attached, serving as reins with which to guide the animal. This mode of harnessing certainly seems to enable the oxen to bring more strength to bear upon the purpose for which they are employed than when the yoke is placed, as is the case with us, about the throat and shoulders. The greatest power of horned animals undoubtedly lies in the head and neck, and the question arises whether in placing the yoke on the neck and breast we do not get it out of reach of the exercise of that strength, and cause the animal to draw the load behind him by the mere force of his bodily weight and impetus. The West Indian animal is small, and often of the cream-colored breed, mild-eyed and docile, of which one sees such choice specimens in Italy and especially on the plains of Lombardy.

Not quite satisfied with the conclusion first arrived at, we gave this subject of the harnessing of oxen a second consideration, and in carefully watching the operation of the frontlet-bar we detected at least one very cruel and objectionable feature in this mode of harnessing. The animals are necessarily so bound to the bar that to move their heads one way or the other is a simple impossibility, while our mode of yoking oxen leaves them very much at liberty in the use of their heads, thus enabling them to shake off flies and other biting insects which may tease them, whereas the eyes of a Cuban ox are often seen infested with flies which he cannot get rid of while in harness, however he may be beset by them. This alone, in a climate where biting insects swarm all the year round, is a most serious objection to the frontlet-bar as compared with the yoke.

The Cuban horse deserves more than a mere mention in this connection. He is a remarkably valuable animal, especially adapted to the climate and to the service required of him. Though small and delicate of limb he can carry a great weight, and his gait is not unlike that of our pacing horses, though with much less lateral motion, and is remarkably easy for the rider, certainly forming the easiest gait combined with rapidity of motion possessed by any breed. He has great power of endurance, is a small eater, requiring no grain as a general thing, but is satisfied with the green leaves and stalks of the corn, upon which he keeps in good condition and flesh. He is a docile little creature, easily taught and easily taken care of. The Cuban horse knows no shelter except the heavens above him, for there are no barns in Cuba; but he will no more wander away from his master's door, where he stands at nearly all hours of the day with the saddle on his back, than would a favorite dog. The Montero inherits all the love of his Moorish ancestors for the horse, and never stirs abroad except upon his back. He considers himself established for life when he possesses a good horse, a sharp Toledo blade, and a pair of silver spurs. Being from childhood accustomed to the saddle, it is natural for him to be a good rider, and there are none better even in Arabia. He is apt to tell big stories about his little horse, intimating its descent direct from the Kochlani, or King Solomon's breed, and to endow it with marvelous qualities of speed and endurance. The Montero is never heard to boast of his wife, his children, or any other possession, but he does "blow" for his horse.

One of this class stood beside his pony one warm afternoon opposite the Hotel Telegrafo, where a few of the guests were seated under the broad veranda. The sleek, well-formed animal elicited some complimentary remarks, which gratified the owner, who spoke English after the style of his people. He indulged in praises of the horse, especially as to the ease and steadiness of his gait, and offered a bet that he could ride round the outside of the Campo de Marte on him and return to the spot where he stood, at ordinary speed, carrying a full glass of water without spilling a tablespoonful of the liquid; such is the ease of motion of these animals trained to what is called the paso gualtrapeo. Four corners were to be turned by the Cuban, as well as half a mile of distance accomplished. The small bet suggested was readily taken, and the full tumbler of water brought out of the house. The Cuban mounted his pony and rode round the park with the speed of a bird, easily winning his bet.

The visitor, as he proceeds inland, will frequently observe on the fronts of the dwellings attempts at representations in colors of birds and various animals, resembling anything rather than what they are apparently designed to depict. The most striking characteristics are the gaudy coloring and the remarkable size. Pigeons present the colossal appearance of ostriches, and dogs are exceedingly elephantine in their proportions. Space would not be adequate to picture horses and cattle. Especially in the suburbs of the cities this fancy may be observed, where attempts at portraying domestic scenes present some original ideas as to grouping. If such ludicrous objects were to be met with anywhere else but in Cuba they would be called caricatures. Here they are regarded with the utmost complacency, and innocently considered to be artistic and ornamental. Noticing something of the same sort in Vevay, Switzerland, not long since, the author found on inquiry that it was the incipient art effort of a Spanish Creole, who had wandered thither from the island.

The policy of the home government has been to suppress, so far as possible, all knowledge of matters in general relating to Cuba; especially to prevent the making public of any statistical information regarding the internal resources, all accounts of its current growth, prosperity, or otherwise. Rigidly-enforced rules accomplished this seclusiveness for many years, until commercial relations with the "outside barbarians" rendered this no longer possible. No official chart of Havana, its harbor, or that of any other Cuban city has ever been made public. Spain has seemed to desire to draw a curtain before this tropical jewel, lest its dazzling brightness should tempt the cupidity of some other nation. Notwithstanding this, our war department at Washington contains complete drawings of every important fortification, and charts of every important harbor in Cuba. Since 1867 we have been connected with Cuba by submarine cable, and through her with Jamaica since 1870. The local government exercises, however, strict surveillance over telegraphic communications.

The political condition of Cuba is what might be expected of a Castilian colony, ruled and governed by such a policy as prevails here. Like the home government, she presents a remarkable instance of the standstill policy, and from one of the most powerful and wealthy kingdoms of Europe, Spain has sunk to the position of the humblest and poorest. Other nations have labored and succeeded in the race of progress, while her adherence to ancient institutions and her dignified contempt for "modern innovations" have become a species of retrogression, which has placed her far below all her sister governments. The true Hidalgo spirit, which wraps itself up in an antique garb and shrugs its shoulders at the advance of other nations, still rules over the realm of Ferdinand and Isabella, while its high-roads swarm with gypsies and banditti, as tokens of decaying power.

CHAPTER XIV

Consumption of Tobacco. – The Delicious Fruits of the Tropics. – Individual Characteristics of Cuban Fruits. – The Royal Palm. – The Mulberry Tree. – Silk Culture. – The Island once covered by Forests. – No Poisonous Reptiles. – The Cuban Bloodhound. – Hotbed of African Slavery. – Spain's Disregard of Solemn Treaties. – The Coolie System of Slavery. – Ah-Lee draws a Prize. – Native African Races. – Negroes buying their Freedom. – Laws favoring the Slaves. – Example of St. Domingo. – General Emancipation.

The consumption of tobacco in the form of cigars is almost incredibly large in Cuba, and for the city of Havana alone it has been estimated to amount to an aggregate cost of five million dollars per annum. Every man, woman, and child appears to be addicted to the habit. It strikes a Northerner as rather odd for a lady to sit smoking her cigarette in her parlor, but this is not at all rare. The men of all degrees smoke everywhere, in the dwelling-house, in the street, in the theatre, in the cafés, and in the counting-room; eating, drinking, and truly it would also seem, sleeping, they smoke, smoke, smoke. At the tables d'hôte of the hotels it is not unusual to see a Cuban take a few whiffs of a cigarette between the several courses, and lights are burning close at hand to enable him to do so. If a party of gentlemen are invited to dine together, the host so orders that a packet of the finest cigarettes is frequently passed to his guests, with a lighted taper, in the course of the meal, and at its close some favorite brand of the more substantial cigar is furnished to all. Thus, tobacco is consumed on every occasion, in the council-chamber, the court, at funerals, in the domestic circles, at feasts, and on the out-door drive. The slave and his master, the maid and her mistress, boy and man, all, all smoke. It seems odd that one does not scent Havana far out at sea before the land is sighted.

We were told that gentlemen who have the means to procure them smoke on an average what is equivalent to a dozen cigars per day, and those of the other sex addicted to the habit consume half that quantity. Of late the larger proportion, however, takes the form of cigarettes, which are far more subtle in effect when used to excess. The consequence of this large home consumption, in addition to the export of the article, is that a very numerous class of the population is engaged in the manufacture, and little stores devoted solely to this business are plentifully sprinkled all about the metropolis. The imperial factory of La Honradez, already described, occupies a whole city square, and is one of its curiosities, producing from three to four million cigarettes per diem. This house enjoys special governmental protection, and makes its annual contribution to the royal household of Madrid of the best of its manufactured goods. A snuff-taker is rarely to be met with, and few, if any, chew the weed, if we except the stevedores and foreign sailors to be seen about the shore and shipping. Havana has no wharves, properly speaking; vessels are loaded and discharged by means of lighters or scows. The negroes become passionately fond of the pipe, inhaling into their lungs the rich, powerful narcotic and driving it out again at their nostrils in slow, heavy clouds, half dozing over the dreamy effect. The postilion who waits for a fare upon the street passes half his time in this way, dreaming over his pipe of pure Havana, or renewing constantly his cigarette. The price of manufactured tobacco in Cuba is about one half that which we pay for the same article in America, either at wholesale or retail, as shipping expenses, export duty, and import duty must be added to the price charged to the consumer.

In discussing this habit one naturally looks back about four hundred years, recalling the amazement of the Spanish discoverers, when they first landed here, at seeing the Indians smoking a native weed which was called tobacco. The practice was, at that time, entirely unknown in Europe, though now indulged in as a luxury by nearly half the population of the globe.