Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1888-03-31
OTHER INTERESTING PLACES.


These three villages of western central Gu
ba are exceptionally winsome. There are
others more interesting, for instance Santa
go, where the wonderful banos or baths are
found, and the walled town of Holguin over
to the east, near the impenetrable jungles of
Sepa, where the denizens live in more COM
plete isolation from the outer world than the
swarthy hordes of Morocco. But the ordina-
ry Cuban village-particularly all those dot
ting at intervals the two thousand miles of
island coast-line, where sugar, molasses, ba-
nanas, cocoanuts ana pines are brought to
tide-water, and from thence to the greater
seaports by the dainty Spanish coasters-is
as dreary and lugubrious place in appear
ance as could be easily found. It is as when
one comes upon some deserted farm house,
where nature seems to strive for the conceal
ment of desolation, and in its wild luxuri-
ance serves but to dolefully emphasize it.
Their contemplation from little distance
impresses one painfully. Through this rare
and radiant atmosphere, which has the weird
quality of giving objects at distance
stran gely increased and almost grotesquely
huge proportions, the few fat-roofed, one
storied and profusely pillared structures of
the Cuban village loom and grow into tre-
mendous seemings, until the imagination ir-
resistibly receives them as apparitions of stu
pendous temples reared by lost peoples in the
night Of the ages, suddenly and magically
and 1uxuriance.
Little or big, they are all on the same plan.
If you have known one You have known all.
There is the plaza, around which the aristoc-
racy live, and where few filthy shops exist.
Inevitably and universally are a half dozen
palms, half hundred varieties of tropical
shrnbs and flowers, countless birds of pleas
ant notes or gay plumage, grimy posada y
bodega or inn where nobody ever comes,
half-ruined fountain, a market abandoned to
filth and decay, o church and cockpit. A
squad of Ia guardia civil Continually chang
ing to prevent filtration and treason) occupies
some confscated quinta, and its jangling-
spurred members, who have long since robbed
everybody in the village, make excursions of
pillage in all directions, constituting, as the
armed representatives OF Spain, the only
genuine bandits and highway robbers from
which Cuba ever really suffered. Knowing
all this well, comprehending the relation of
government to people and people to condi-
tions, the marvel of it all is the patience and
good nature of this peasantry. That pleas
ure or 1ight-heartedness can still exist is i'm
comprehensive. 1t would almost seem that
the burdens, outrages and desperations of
Cuban people had been SO supreme that at
last had come universal Indifference, sue
ceeded by the reckless gaiety of irretrievable
and repellant hopelessness. No one can
starve in Cuba The fendish rapacity of
inhuman tyranny and bad government, which
in our northern lands, where climatic rigors
add savage necessities, would drive less
patient people to madness and murder, is
here defeated, as if by the hand of God,
through nature SO bountiful in her gifts
that even music and feasting and song, though
pathetic plants be there, may still remain
until the awakened conscience of the nations
shall drive the murderess, Spain, from this
fair and beautiful land.
EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.