Rambles by Land and Water; or, Notes of Travel in Cuba and Mexico. Benjamin Moore Norman

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СКАЧАТЬ the gratification of rural tastes and pursuits. Surrounded by luxurious groves of orange and other fruit trees—by coffee and sugar plantations—in full view of the table lands, proximating towards the mountains, and enjoying from November till May, a climate unequalled perhaps by any other on the face of the globe; the fortunate visitor cannot but feel that, if earth produces happiness in any of its charmed haunts, "the heart that is humble might hope for it here;" and the invalid, forgetting the object of his pursuit, might linger forever around its rich groves and shady walks. During three months of the year, the thermometer ranges about 80° at sunrise, seldom varying more than from 70° to 88°. Nearer the coast, there is more liability to fever.

      In the trip to Guiness, we did not fly over the ground as we often do on some of the rail-roads of our own country, the rate seldom exceeding fifteen miles an hour. And it would be more loss than gain to the passengers to go faster. The country is too beautiful, too rich in verdure, too luxuriant in fruits and flowers, and too picturesque in landscape scenery, to be hurried over at a breath. Passing the suburbs of the city, and the splendid gardens of Tacon, the road breaks out into the beautiful open country, threading its arrowy way through the rich plantations and thriving farms, whose vegetable treasures of every description can scarcely be paralleled on the face of the earth. The farms which supply the markets of the city with their daily abundance of necessaries and luxuries, occupy the foreground of this lovely picture. They are separated from each other, sometimes by hedges of the fragrant white flowering lime, or the stiff prim-looking aloe, (agave americana,) armed on every side with pointed lances, and lifting their tall flowering stems, like grenadier sentinels with their bristling bayonets, in close array, full twenty feet into the air. Those who have not visited the tropics, can scarcely conceive the luxuriant and gigantic growth of their vegetable productions. These hedges, once planted, form as impenetrable a barrier as a wall of adamant, or a Macedonian phalanx; and wo to the unmailed adventurer, who should attempt to scale or storm those self-armed and impregnable defences.

      Within these natural walls, clustered in the golden profusion of that favored clime, are often seen extensive groves of orange and pine apple, whose perennial verdure is ever relieved and blended with the fragrant blossom—loading the air with its perfume, till the sense almost aches with its sweetness—and the luscious fruit, chasing each other in unfading beauty and inexhaustible fecundity, through an unbroken round of summers, that know neither spring time, nor decay. There is nothing in nature more enchantingly wonderful to the eye than this perpetual blending of flower and fruit, of summer and harvest, of budding brilliant youth, full of hope and promise and gaiety, and mature ripe manhood, laden with the golden treasures of hopes realized, and promises fulfilled. How rich must be the resources of the soil, that can sustain, without exhaustion, this lavish and unceasing expenditure of its nutritious elements! How vigorous and thrifty the vegetation, that never falters nor grows old, under this incessant and prodigal demand upon its vital energies!

      It is so with all the varied products of those ardent climes. Crop follows crop, and harvest succeeds harvest, in uninterrupted cycles of prolific beauty and abundance. The craving wants, the grasping avarice of man alone exceeds the unbounded liberality of nature's free gifts.

      The coffee and sugar plantations, chequering the beautiful valleys, and stretching far up into the bosom of the verdant hills, are equally picturesque and beautiful with the farms we have just passed. They are, indeed, farms on a more extended scale, limited to one species of lucrative culture. The geometrical regularity of the fields, laid out in uniform squares, though not in itself beautiful to the eye, is not disagreeable as a variety, set off as it is by the luxuriant growth and verdure of the cane, and diversified with clumps of pines and oranges, or colonnades of towering palms. The low and evenly trimmed coffee plants, set in close and regular columns, with avenues of mangoes, palms, oranges, or pines, leading back to the cool and shady mansion of the proprietor, surrounded with its village of thatched huts laid out in a perfect square, and buried in overshadowing trees, form a complete picture of oriental wealth and luxury, with its painful but inseparable contrast of slavery and wretchedness.

      The gorgeous tints of many of the forest flowers, and the yet more gorgeous plumage of the birds, that fill the groves sometimes with melody delightful to the ear, and sometimes with notes of harshest discord, fill the eye with a continual sense of wonder and delight. Here the glaring scarlet flamingo, drawn up as in battle array on the plain, and there the gaudy parrot, glittering in every variety of brilliant hue, like a gay bouquet of clustered flowers amid the trees, or the delicate, irised, spirit-like humming birds, flitting, like animated flowerets from blossom to blossom, and coqueting with the fairest and sweetest, as if rose-hearts were only made to furnish honey-dew for their dainty taste—what can exceed the fairy splendor of such a scene!

      But roads will have an end, especially when every rod of the way is replete with all that can gratify the eye, and regale the sense, of the traveller. The forty-five miles of travel that take you to Guiness, traversing about four-fifths of the breadth of the island, appear, to one unaccustomed to a ride through such garden-like scenery, quite too short and too easily accomplished; and you arrive at the terminus, while you are yet dreaming of the midway station, looking back, rather than forward, and lingering in unsatisfied delight among the fields and groves that have skirted the way.

      San Julian de los Guiness is a village of about twenty-five hundred inhabitants, and one of the pleasantest in the interior of the Island. It is a place of considerable resort for invalids, and has many advantages over the more exposed places near the northern shore. The houses in the village are neat and comfortable. The hotel is one of the best in the island. The church is large, built in the form of a cross, with a square tower painted blue. Its architecture is rude, and as unattractive as the fanciful color of its tower.

      The valley, or rather the plain of Guiness, is a rich and well watered bottom, shut in on three sides by mountain walls, and extending between them quite down to the sea, a distance of nearly twenty miles. It is, perhaps, the richest district in the island, and in the highest state of cultivation. It is sprinkled all over with cattle and vegetable farms, and coffee and sugar estates, of immense value, whose otherwise monotonous surface is beautifully relieved by clusters, groves, and avenues of stately palms, and flowering oranges, mangoes and pines, giving to the whole the aspect of a highly cultivated garden.

      I have dwelt longer upon the description of Guiness, and the route to it, because it will serve, as it respects the scenery, and the general face of the country, as a pattern for several other routes; the choice of which is open to the stranger, in quest of health, or a temporary refuge from the business and bustle of the city.

      One of these is Buena Esperanza, the coffee estate of Dr. Finlay, near Alquizar, and about forty miles from Havana. One half of this distance is reached in about two hours, in the cars. The remainder is performed in volantes, passing through the pleasant villages of Bejucal, San Antonio, and Alquizar, and embracing a view of some of the most beautiful portions of Cuba. Limonar, a small village, embosomed in a lovely valley, a few miles from Matanzas—Madruga, with its sulphur springs, four leagues from Guiness—Cardenas—Villa Clara—San Diego—and many other equally beautiful and interesting places, will claim the attention, and divide the choice of the traveller.

      An intelligent writer remarks that, "with the constantly increasing facilities for moving from one part of this island to the other, the extension and improvement of the houses of entertainment in the vicinity of Havana, and the gaiety and bustle of the city itself during the winter months, great inducements are held out to visit this 'queen of the Antilles;' and perhaps the time is not far distant, when Havana may become the winter Saratoga of the numerous travellers from the United States, in search either of health or recreation." He then proceeds to suggest, what must be obvious to any reflecting and observing mind, that those whose cases are really critical and doubtful, should always remain at home, where attendance and comforts can be procured, which money cannot purchase. To leave home and friends in the last stages of a lingering consumption, for example, and hope to renew, in a foreign clime and among strangers, the exhausted energies of a system, whose foundations СКАЧАТЬ