The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-04-27
A SUNDAY In CUBA
VERY FET ATTEND Ed THE CLURCH
SERYICE,
hut Everybody Went to the Dance at
the Priests House linn ediately After
ward

ward.
sixty-five hundred, and is made up
very largely Of negroes, mulattoes,
quadroons or persons with some admiX-
lure OF African blood. The dress of the
common people, although well adapted
70 the climate, is neither striking nor
unusual, and there is little display Of
bright color even in the gowns and
headgear of the women; most of the
white men wear either the conventional
dress of the civilized world or the Gu
ban uniform of brown linen, while the
poorer blacks are clothed only in
coarse, Whitish-gray shirts and trous-
ers-the former worn outside the lat
ter, in Russian fashion-and a wealth
er-stained straw or palmleaf sombrero.
The next Sunday after my arrival in
Baracoa. was New Years day, and
thinking that on such an occasion l
should see a considerable part of the
population, in holiday attire, at church.
attended divine service that morning
in the dilapidated, barn-like old edifice
on the plaza, few steps east of the
Twentieth Century hotel The interior
of the building was as bare and taW-
dry as its neglected exterior had led me
to expect. There was the usual high
altar, covered with tinsel and artificial
flowers, behind the cast iron chancel
rail; few long yellow candles We're
burning here and there in front of
smoky pictures Of the Madonna; a
stone front stood near the door; coarse
pictures, representing stations of the
cross, hung around the dingy walls,
and there were half dozen implanted
wooden benches up near the chancel
under the high side pulpit; but the
church, as whole, in point of furnish
Ing and decoration, would have been
Disc editable to Roman Catholic
community of five hundred souls in a
small American village. And yet it was
the only place of worship in Baracoa-
d town of six thousand five hundred in
1labitants. The congregation was made
up of a dozen or more negro and mulat-
to boys hanging over the chancel rail,
seventy-five or hundred women of all
shades of complexion, who brought
with them cane seated chairs of their
own, as well as thin rugs or doormats
to kneel on, and perhaps dozen men
and half-grown boys, standing here and
there along the side walls and about
the wide-open door.
The service was conducted by a sin
y gle priest with an assistant to hand
him his robes and vestments and
small boy to swing the censor, and it
did not differ essentially from the Ro
inish services in our own churches, ex-
cept that the languages used were Lat
in and Spanish instead of Latin and
English. The choir, which occupied a
position near the end of the chancel,
was composed of two or three unculti-
waited male voices supported by saxo-'
phone, e-drun, a big brass
horn and gourd rattle. and the music
consisted of series of slow, mean-
choly chants, interrupted and enlivened
now and then by what sounded like
march from comic opera. For two
or three minutes at a time the voices
would sing dolefully to the accompani-
ment of saXophone and horn, and then
the whole orchestra would dash sud-
denly into the quicker and more cheer
full melody of the march, whose strong
31y marked time was accentuated by the
measured throbs of the deep-toned ket-
tie drum and the sharp, staccato clicks
of the gourd rattle. ! subsequently
learned that what / mistook for an
opera bouffe march was the Cuban ma
tional air, known as the "Bayamesa,"
but, as I had never heard it before, of
course did not recognize it. The ser
vice was chiefly interesting to me as
showing the unimportant part that the
church plays in Cuban life, and the in
significant influence that it eXerts upon
the Cuban population. Out of the six
ty-fiye hundred inhabitants of Bara
Goa there were only twelve or fifteen |
men and seventy-five to hundred Wo |
men who cared enough about the |
church to attend an important Sunday |
morning service on the first day of the |
new year. About II o'clock the small |
CONGREGATION was dismissed and most |
Of the young girls, with few of the |
men and the whole ecclesiastical or |
chestra, marched across the street to- |
the house of the priest where they were
going to have a holiday dance. A dance |
at II O'Clock in the forenoon, in the |
house of the priest and with the church |
choir and orchestra to furnish music,
was an entertainment novel enough, |
thought, to justify me in breaking the
Sabbath-if participation as a specta-
tor could fairly be called Sabbath
hreaking-and at the invitation of Dr.
lie Hardy went with him to see the
performance. Perhaps it was not ex-
actly the thing to Go on Sunday morn
ing: but, as Captain Sigsbee said when
criticised for attending a bull fight on
that day in Havana, sit was my duty
10 ascertain the character and temper
of the people, and, moreover, a Sun
day dance was likely to be quite as
profitable to me-even spiritually as
an unintelligible church service con-
sisting chiefly of sacerdotal mummery
enIivened with opera-bouffe music from
a saxophone, a kettle drum, gourd
rattle and brass horn.
So far as one could judge from the
the priests dance was a
great deal more popular than his
church service. There was crowd of
interested spectators of both sexes, all
ages, and all shades of chocolate
brown. opposite the wide-open door of
the front parlor; the parlor itself was
filled with young men and women, who,
when arrived, were marching solemn
lv around in circle to the strumming {
of a deep-toned Cuban guitar and in
the back parlor. or dining room, the =
priest himself with perspiring face,
,vas smokius a cigarette and opening !