Morning journal and courier., 1888-05-07

strength. They are built Of the famous Cu- ban wood, much resembling lignum vit@, called guibrahaca, literally ''axe-breaker'' on account of the difficulty found in working upon it with any edged tools. The labor re- quired in fashioning these guibrahaca piers is simply incalculable; and they could only have been constructed under 8 system of slavery that counted superhumsn teil as nothing. The bulkheads and cappings are of mahogany and there are enough solid mahogany timbers in these wharyes, if laid down in New York at their marketable value, to alone purchase the land and properties of the most valuable block on Broadway: while bolts of solid copper, from six to ten feet long. as thick as your wrist, with huge brass heads, are as frequent as rusty iron spikes in any American seaport pier. Here at Casildo are also few quaint fower-embowered viI- las along the sea, and huge banos or bathing places where sharks and other monsters of these tropic deeps are fenced out by huge palmetto piling, and light, dainty roofs are made of the brown and puce palmetto leaves.
 TRINIDAD.
 But three miles distant inland over queer little railway we came to Trinidad. The al- most land-locked bay at it's edge is called Masio. It is a noble harbor requiring but slight engineering and expenditure to cut a ship channel to the sea through the soft and level intervening coral That done, the na- yies and shipping of the world could lie se- curely at anchor in Bahia Masio, for it is larger and finer than any other of the splen- did Cuban harbors. And here again, should Cuba's present desperate dolor give the is- land to the United States, to which it must eventually belong, American capital and en- terprlse would find a veritable Eldorado The ancient glories of Trinidad seem beyond belief. But the magnifcence of her deserted structures of to-day attest their former real- lty Many of them are palaces beside which the storied edifces of the Riviera seem plain and commonplace. In no part of the habi. table globe is there such an equable, health~ ful and entrancing climate. Men and women live here until far past century in age. Rising gradually from these enchanted shores, the city, spread downward like a gleaming satin fan from the apex of pic- turesque height, is one vast garden broken only by splendid edifce, dreamful plaza and quaint old fountains. To the east sweeps the splendid bay. To the south stretches the great sea, from which pleas ant breezes endlessly come. To the west vast reaches of forest, and again the seq. Behind, as if in terrace on terrace. forests, wales of indeseribable luxuriance, and score of miles away the famous above the sea, whose grand upland sweep reaches to picturesque foothills, and be- yond the grim mountains the Andes of Cuba blue-black in the wondrous tropic air.
 THE COFFEE LANDS.
 In this glorious region lie the coffee lands of Cuba. Only a quarter of a een- tury ago the fabulous riches derived from them gave the brilliant city of Trinidad the name of 'sParis Chiquito'-ssthe little Paris" There were nearly three hundred of these magnificent plantations. The smallest was one hundred cabellerias in ex- tent. A cabelleria is thirty-three and one- third acres of land. The larger contained from five hundred to one thousand cabel- lerias, or from about seventeen thousand to about thirty-four thousand acres. And this was exclusive of hundreds of interven- ing raspaureros, or little plantations where cane syrup was made and stirred with sjonjoli, or oily broken corn, into the toothsome raspadura cakes all Cubans dear ly love. The ancient city with it's former princely masters; the surroundings eloouent with unequaled natural beauty; the old slave times when every plantation had it's palace and it's hordes of half-naked African serfs; have left the locality rife with weird legends and fearful tales, far surpassing in horrible memories that pandemonium of aw- ! ful imagery depicted in Hugos Bug -Jargle. Here is one told by my companion who was a child here during the occurrences narrated, as we sat in La Vijia, the quaint old signal station upon the heights above the city.
 THE REVOLUTION DEL oUEMADo.
 The efforts of the English government tc suppress the Spanish slave trade, as is gene rally believed in Cuba through the probably unauthorized promptings of the English consul-general at Havana, brought about the terrible uprising of the blacks in and about Trinidad, known as the Revolution del Que mado, in 1883. Four English speaking ne. groes were brought here from Jamaica, who fomented discord and organized this revolu- tion. The plan of the blacks was to arm themselves as best they might, and on Holy Thursday of that year, while vigilance was relaxed, and the white forces at the planta- tions were weakened by the general attend ance of the planters and their families upon rise at noon of that day, kill every male white left upon the plantations and then march upon Trinidad, where their black brethren would join them in extermination of all whites and mestizo property owners. An absolute extinction of all males save ne- grees in this portion of the island was sworn; and only for @ providential circumstance would have been oonsummated. The white women were to be saved for wives of the leaders of the thirty thousand blacks en- gagged in the massacre. Copinge, a Spanish colonel, was the Governor of Trinidad. In his household was beautiful mulatto slave girl, Malibran, whose lover, desperate black named Cangalito, one of the leaders of the instruction, had revealed to her the horrible plot and boasted that she should be made queen of the new black republic. The even ing before Holy Thursday and the planned massacre Malibran revealed the plot to Gov ernor Copinge. Swift ceuriers were instant ly dispatched to Cienfuegos and many plant CTS secretly notified. The inhabitants of the city were summoned, the blacks within the city imprisoned; the place fortified against the onslaught as best it might be; and at day-break relieving forces arrived from the west. But the uprising could not be stayed. Infuristed at betrayal, the blacks began the massacre at daylight. Hundreds of families were safely within protection at Trinidad. Those who were not, and were unable to de- fend themselves, were butchered. The whole valley was swept by fires and demoniac hor- TOTS. Then on came the brute hordes upon the city. The attack was ferocious but fruit less. A terrible hand to hand battle ensued. The blacks were driven back into the valley, the jungles and the mountains, and in time were again subjugated. Upwards of three hundred whites were butchered and more than thousand blacks were killed outright. The desperate Cangalito fought like wild beast. Defeated he fled to the iungles, where scores of pursuers fell by his hand before his own life paid the forfeit. To this day the saying, "Eres mas malo que Cangalitol" CtYou are worse than Cangalito!'0 is com mon one among the proYincialisnns of the re- zion as reminder of the Revolucion del Quemado, and were you here in quaint old La Vijia upon the heights you would see, away there to the north, mighty tower, Manaca Isnaga, another relic of that tragic time. It is fortified tower four hundred feet high, built there immediately after the uprising of '33. At it's top is a monstrous bell which can be heard five leagues in any direction. Twenty four strokes of it's giant tongue were to warn the whites in the region about Trinidad of another RevoIucion del QueEado. But the enslavement of blacks by Cubans ceased when the worse enslave- ment of Cubans by Spain began; and the tolling of the great bell has never been heard through the beautiful valley.
 EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.