William Seymour Edwards

“ Perhaps nowhere in the world have so many souls been shriven as in the chapel of La Cabaña, and nowhere have so many lives gone out as by this dread instrument of death. And yet, as we stood on this high platform, with the balmy air of now free Cuba filling our lungs, and watched the Cuban soldiery pacing their beat in the park below, it seemed, in the serene and restful humor of the day, almost incredible that only three short years ago, at most but four, here had been enacted a daily tragedy of cruelty and horror which no human pen will ever be adequate actually to portray. ”

“ All Mexican cities are paved, every street, every alley. A great aqueduct, built on immense arches, brings an abundant supply of sweet, fresh water. There are many beautiful parks in these Mexican cities, all kept in perfect order at municipal expense. In them, flowering shrubs, roses, geraniums and heliotropes, grown to veritable trees, are ever in bloom; there are orange and lemon, pomegranate and fig, palm and banana trees; there are statues and flowing fountains, and great carved stone seats, all free to the people. ”

“ Here is a little courtyard, at the farther end of which hangs a life-size portrait of Jose Marte, the martyred patriot. We sat in the patio, where palms waved over us, and coffee and delicious fish were brought to us along with a basket of oranges such as even Florida cannot well surpass. Lighting our cigars, we now sauntered into the fine, old-fashioned, Spanish gardens of the Plaza, laid out with precise symmetry and guarded by low iron fences set on bases of carved stone, the flowering shrubs and many blooming plants being half hid by the iron and the rock. ”

“ We sped between rolling grass-covered hills, passing great groves of that most graceful and stately of tropic trees, the royal palm, large plantings of luxuriant bananas, and many cocoanut palms as well. The country was more flat than toward the west, and soon we were moving through wide reaches of the feathery sugar cane. There were miles of it, leagues of it, and all taller and more robust than the cane I saw while traversing the sugar lands of Louisiana.
In the black, deep and wonderfully fertile soil, the cane grows without care or heed. ”

“ She is progressive. I have been amazed at the wealth and beauty, the cleanliness and comfort of her towns and cities, at the splendor of her capital, at the fertility and variety of her soils and climates,—the perpetual spring of Ario and Morelia and Toluca and Mexico City,—the eternal summer and tropical heats of the lowlands of the Tierra Caliente, while between the lofty highlands and the lowlands lie the temperate levels, the Tierra Templada, where are climates ranging from those of Cuba to Quebec.
Three hundred years ago Spanish civilization was ahead of that of England and Germany. ”

“ I am now, at half past nine, going about in slippers, in linen trousers and my thin pajama coat, and even then I hide from the sun. By ten o’clock a silence lies upon the land profound and overwhelming, not a living thing is astir, except only the lizards and the cicadas. The daylight ends precipitately. The day lasts only as long as the sun is up. By half past five the sun hangs above the mountains on the west. Suddenly it is gone. In fifteen minutes it is dark, the stars are out, and such white stars they are! The cold air of the highlands then settles down upon us for the night. ”

“ Before we crept up the mountain very far, darkness descended precipitately upon us, for there is no twilight in these southern latitudes.
We were at Acambaro for breakfast, and all the morning traversed a rolling, cultivated, timbered country much like the blue grass counties of Greenbrier and Monroe in West Virginia. Here we travelled through some of the loveliest landscapes in all Mexico. This is a region of temperate highlands amidst the tropics, so high in altitude lies the land,—seven to eight thousand feet above the sea. ”

“ On the flattened crest of this hill is the Plaza Grande, and from the Plaza down to the sea, a mile or two in length, stretches the Prado;—a wide boulevard on either side of a broad green strip of park, where a walk-way passes beneath a double row of ancient and umbrageous trees, and comfortable seats are placed at intervals.
It is on the Prado that the fashion and beauty of Habana drives and promenades and lingers to see and be seen of all the world. Along its borders, on either hand, are built many of the noblest mansions of her merchant and planter magnates. ”

“ The allurement and dazzling fame of the Empire of Montezuma attracted thither all that was daring and forceful and brilliant in old Spain. Even the wonders of Cuba and the Antilles paled before the tales of fabulous wealth and treasure of the conquest of Cortez. The noble churches and architecture of Mexico have no rivals among the Cuban cities. Nor is there among the Cubans that picturesqueness in garb, that striking brilliancy of coloring, which one sees upon the streets of the Mexican cities. In Cuba you see no scarlet and green and blue zerapes ”

“ La Cabaña is the largest Spanish fortification in the New World. It has been several centuries in growing to its immense dimensions. Crowning the heights across the bay from the city of Havana, its record of compulsory guests is a record of three centuries of the grief and agony of a race. Eighteen to twenty millions of dollars in gold have been spent upon its vast and massive walls and ramparts, its moats and fosses. Impregnable was it deemed to be by the Spanish engineers, and the United States did not have to try what its strength might be in fact. ”

“ The road, a mere trail, was as steep as some of those which lead down from our Kanawha mines. We let the Jefe and his soldiers follow us, we taking the lead. Down we went and down, and down, hour after hour. We passed palm trees, multitudes of bananas, and coffee trees. There were many Indian huts by the wayside,—for we were on a famous, much traveled thoroughfare,—and at most of them a bottle or gourd of pulque and fruit were set out to tempt the traveler to buy. ”

“ The moment we crossed the Rio Grande we changed instantly from American twentieth century civilization to mediæval Latin-Indian. The Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo, the buildings, the women, the men, the boys, the donkeys, all were different. I felt as though I had waked up in another world. As we approached the station of the Mexican city, I noticed an old man riding upon his donkey. His saddle was fastened over the hips just above the beast’s tail, his feet trailed upon the ground. ”

“ An Aztec pagan, a Spanish Christian, both sped the soul to Paradise through blood and pain, and I wondered, as I watched an Indian mother kneel in humble penitence before an effigy of the Virgin, and fix a lighted taper upon the altar before the shrine, whether she, too, felt clustering about her, in the sombre shadows of the semi-twilight, memories of these tragedies which have so oppressed her race. ”

“ Our fellow passengers eyed us in suspicious silence, each holding fast his broncho lest it should jump out, their wild dark glances betokening little friendliness. Reaching the shore each silently swung into his saddle and galloped off toward the not far distant Cordillera. These silent, untamed men traverse this desolate country everywhere, keeping constant track of the thousands of cattle and horses which roam their wastes; and the Indians of Guerrero bear the name of being the most turbulent and treacherous of all Mexico. ”

“ The traveling Mexican eats early and, while he may take a midday snack, it rarely rises to the dignity of the comida, and when the day’s journey is over, like the two morning meals, the comida and cena, are united into one. Our breakfast consisted of fried chicken and rice—rice so delicately fried that each grain was encased in a crisp and dainty shell, and each mouthful cracked with relish between your teeth. Eggs are always to be had. In Spain and Cuba an egg is called huevo, in Mexico the refinement of language substitutes the word blanquillo (little whitey) . ”

“ There are no sidewalks in these Spanish towns. Men and women bolted from our onward coming, children fled into open doorways, and dogs and chickens and lank hogs scattered before us as chaff before the wind. We rattled past the one-time palace of Cortez, afterward of Carlotta, Maximilian’s ill-fated mate, and now used as the State Capitol. We circled the pretty plaza with its flowers and palms and tropical gardens and splashing fountains. We viewed the monstrous cathedral, all dilapidated. ”

“ As you wander along its rues and ways you feel that, somehow or other, the days of its importance and its power are forever gone. Mansions, once the imposing homes of the affluent, are now cracked and marred, and there seem to be none to put them into good repair. Dilapidation broods over the Vieux Carré. You feel that the good old Creole days are surely fled. You realize that as the language of La Belle France is disappearing, so the leisurely customs and easy habits of French New Orleans, before many years, will be submerged by the direct speech and commercial brusqueness of modern America. ”

“ As I sat and looked out on the ten thousand faces of all classes, rich and poor, all radiant and frenzied with the blood-lust and the joy of seeing a creature tortured to the very death, and then heard the clang of the multitudinous church bells, calling to Vesper services, even before the spectacle was ended, I realized that, surely, I was among a different people, bred to a different civilization from my own; a civilization still mediæval and still as cruel as when the Inquisition sated even fanaticism with its cultivated passion for blood! ”

“ Sunday morning we arose while the stars yet blazed, found a cup of coffee for our desayuno at a little restaurant across the street, and at five o’clock were in the cars again traveling toward Havana.
The country we have been looking on is quite as beautiful as the more flat-lying, but not more fertile region about Matanzas, and I have felt that the many Americans we have met everywhere, all looking for land to buy and to abide upon, are in happy quest. They are entering into one of the veritable garden places of the earth and many more of my fellow-countrymen will surely follow them. ”

“ Like all those of that fast disappearing race, the lone prospector, he is visionary and sanguine of temperament, and a delightful companion for a plunge among the wild and lonely regions of the Cordilleras. His imagination is eternally fired by the ignes-fatui of mineral wealth, and he has discovered, exploited and lost a hundred fortunes with no lessening of the gold-silver-copper hunger which incessantly gnaws his vitals. His muscles are of iron, his voice is deep and resonant. Kindly by nature, his solitary life has made him reticent and self-contained. ”

“ Toluca is one of the more vigorous of the growing cities of the republic. It is a community of some twenty-five thousand people, the capital of the State of Mexico, and lies one thousand feet higher in the air than Mexico City. It is near the center of a fertile valley, forty or fifty miles in length, and ten to twenty broad, while ten miles to the southwest towers the snow-capped Volcano de Toluca, lifting its gleaming cone fifteen thousand feet into the heavens, its melting snows giving an abundant supply of pure water to the town. ”

“ I spent one morning viewing the markets and watching the city life on the streets. In Mexico your social standing is marked by the shoeing of your feet, the covering of your head; your boots and your hats are the two things a Mexican first looks at when approaching you. The Mexican loves to thrust his feet into long, narrow toothpick-pointed shoes; the smaller and daintier the happier he is. For a hat, the costly sombrero, for which fifty to one hundred dollars are often paid, covers the man of means ”

“ The American sugar men are now scouting the land in Cuba. I met them from Louisiana and from Texas and from Florida. They are bound to come in numbers greater yet.
For many miles we traversed these waving cane fields, passing many villages and smoking sugar mills at work, teams of fat oxen hauling in the cane, miniature railroads dragging in long train loads of cane to the factories, and thousands of men and many women working in the fields, these lifting their faces from toil to gaze momentarily at our train as it hurried by. ”

“ By 5:45 we were climbing down the three hundred feet of mountain side, through the mining village, over an ancient paved roadway about four feet wide, the paving stones set in so firmly between the curbs that the floods and wear of the centuries and seasons have left it as intact and solid as when first laid. The Spaniards built many such roadways to their mines, when they worked the Indians as slaves, centuries ago. The mining village was picturesque. The miner, when he goes to work, builds his own house and pays no rent. The walls are upright poles and the roof is a palm leaf thatch. ”