The absence of certain officers compelled the officials of our party to make a delay of nearly a week at Key West, which we improved by steaming across to Cuba. Looking back now over the delightful days spent in the “Ever Faithful Isle,” I recall, out of all the pleasant memories, one or two only of which it seems needful here to speak. The bull fight in Havana, with which the pious Spaniards closed their celebration of Ascension Day; the witchery of dark-browned, liquid-eyed Senoritas; the fashion and beauty of the evening fulldress display on the volante-crowded drive around the Plaza del Armas, and to the Captain-General’s country palace; the mysteries of shopping before breakfast, with clerks bringing out the goods into the street to your volante; the delicious absurdity of doing business in English or French with a shopkeeper who knows nothing but Spanish; the tropical scenery of the interior, the glorious palm groves, the lordly sugar plantations, the miseries of the slaves and the profits of their masters—have not all these been faithfully written down in every book about Cuba for the last dozen years?

But, after a tour of many hundred miles among emancipated slaves, it was a noteworthy sensation to be plunged again into the midst of a system of slavery as bad as the worst form which our nation ever suffered. The slaves seemed spiritless, where the emancipated negro had only been purposeless. The one was without hope, where the other had been disturbed only by the vague universality of his hopes. Both were polite, for courtesy seems native to the African disposition; but the courtesy of the freedman was cheerful, while that of the slave was only patient and submissive.

In Charleston and Savannah, however, we found the negroes in their churches. In Havana they were congregated, on a holiday, among the whites at the bull fight, while the flag of “most christian” Spain floated above this entertainment she had provided for her humble subjects, and Spanish bayonets guarded the entrance and preserved order throughout the assemblage. Our emancipated negroes had everywhere been striving for school-houses, and eagerly seizing every opportunity for learning to read, while the aspiration of every parent was that his children, at least, might acquire ‘white folks’ larnin’; these Cuban slaves knew so little about education that they seemed to have no special desire for it.

And yet it was not easy to tell how much of this apathy was reality, and how much of it was only cunning. Unless intelligent Cubans are greatly deceived, and, indeed, unless the keen-scented Spanish police are themselves at fault, many of the negroes are beginning to form secret societies among themselves, with a view to organization for a struggle for freedom. Their masters believe them to be well acquainted with the essential facts in our own great conflict, and the whole slave community is said to be fermenting with ideas engendered by American emancipation. With slavery summarily wiped out over an extent of adjacent country equal to a dozen Cubas, it is natural that they should begin to look for their own day of jubilee.

Meanwhile, the elements of revolution exist among the people far more conspicuously than in the days of Lopez and the “fillibusteros.” The antagonism between the Creoles and the Spaniards is greater than ever, and betrays itself in many unexpected ways. At Matanzas I was expressing, to a vivacious Creole lady, my surprise at the numbers of well-dressed and apparently respectable people who attended the bull fight in Havana, and cheered the matadors in a frenzy of delight at the brutal bloodshed. “You didn’t see a Cuban there,” she exclaimed, “unless, perhaps, some ignorant negroes, who, of course, can not be expected to be better than their masters. Such gloating over cold-blooded barbarity doesn’t belong to the Creoles; you find it only among the native-born Spaniards.”

The same aversion came out again and again. This municipal regulation ought to be amended. “But our Spanish masters never learn anything.” That institution is far behind similar ones in the United States. “But how could you expect anything better while we have to import officers from Old Spain to govern us?” The Custom House rules are needlessly vexatious. “But we shall manage things better when Creoles control Cuba.” An adjacent sugar planter wouldn’t make so bad a neighbor. “But then, you know, he is a Spaniard.” A certain ball would be pleasant to attend, but the Spaniards are to have the management of it; and sundry young men are quietly “cut” by their fair Creole friends for presuming to go.

Where a class, regarded with such feelings by the people, is held in power by influences from without, and exerted at a distance of thousands of miles, revolution is only a question of time. Some very intelligent Creoles now profess to believe it comparatively near. The downfall of our rebellion has given a fresh impulse to liberal ideas, and stimulated the feeling of resistance to the Spanish authorities. The swarms of secret societies among the Creoles have sprung up anew. Even on the north coast they are said to be abundant; but it is among the wealthy and isolated young planters of the south, removed from the embarrassments of commerce, and with ample leisure for intrigues, that they find their especial development. Here, the monotony of plantation life is relieved by plots against the Spaniards; and the possibility of growing sugar by free labor is set over against the necessity for the present constant importation of negroes from Africa, in defiance of the remonstrances and active efforts of Christendom.

Heretofore the Spanish authorities have had a short and simple method of quieting the rumors of rebellion. Arms were deposited under guard at various points throughout the island, and the significant declaration was made, that Spain would rather lose slavery than lose Cuba. Visions of armed negroes, drunk with their new-found liberty, and eager to please those who had conferred it by butchering their enemies, have crowded before the eyes of the Creoles and paralyzed their plans. But they have even an army of nearly two hundred thousand slaves in the United States, as orderly, as well disciplined, and, in the main, as efficient as any other troops; and they have naturally concluded that such allies are as available for their purposes as they were for ours. Convinced that their hope of success lies, therefore, in a hearty alliance with the slaves, they are said to be ready for the abolition of slavery, and anxious to encourage and hold communication with the negro secret societies.

Meantime the Spaniards, alive to the dangers which our success has brought to all slaveholding countries, and fully aware of the wishes, if not of the plottings of the Creoles, are themselves looking to the slaves as allies for the coming struggle. The Captain-General, himself, declared within the week of our visit, that the time could not now be far distant when Spain would voluntarily decree the emancipation of her slaves.

The negroes thus stand between two chances of freedom. An attempt at revolution, therefore, is certain to insure their emancipation; and that side will probably be successful, which secures their confidence, and thus their aid. Whether a rising of the Creoles, such as many of them now hope to bring about at some not very distant period, would or would not be successful, may admit of doubt; but it would seem that in either event, slavery in Cuba—the cruelest system of slavery now in existence—is henceforth doomed. Our Proclamation of Emancipation bore wider blessings than they knew who signed it. See appendix (D.)

All along the coast we had been hearing of the “Stonewall,” and, truth to tell, there seemed to have been no small panic about her.^[25] She had recently been surrendered to the Spanish authorities, and was lying in the harbor of Havanna. Our party went on board and inspected her. Captain Merryman gave it as his opinion (and the Spanish naval authorities agreed with him), that a single one of our first-class wooden ships of war could have sunk her. The Rebel game of brag had been played in her case, even more conspicuously than usual, and an abortion of wood and iron that could neither sail, steam nor fight, and was only fit for decoying unarmed and unsuspecting merchantmen under her guns, had been magnified into an iron-clad, before which our whole South-Atlantic squadron was to be swept away!

Blunders in foreign languages are the common entertainment of all travelers; but one of our party at Matanzas achieved a success in this line, which may fairly be considered uncommon. The Vice-Consul-General, the Consul at Matanzas, and some Cuban ladies, together with our own party, had gone out to the Valley of the Yumuri. Altogether we had six or seven volantes. Returning in the evening, mine happened to be the last in the procession. My companion had a theory of his own about the Spanish language, to wit: that all you had to do to make a Spaniard understand you was to add an “o” to every English word. Seeing one of the gleaming bugs, which strangers put in little cages, and carry off as curiosities, lit on the shoulder of our volante driver, he conceived this a good opportunity, and straightway shouted, “Catcho buggo.” Some word, faintly resembling one or the other of these, as we were afterward told, means, in Spanish, “faster.” The poor Cuban, perched on the back of the forward horse, eight or ten feet in front of us, looked around in astonishment, only to be met by the renewed exclamation, “Buggo, buggo, I say!” Ahead of him were six volantes, filling up the narrow road; we were at the top of a steep, stony hill, nearly two miles long; the road sides were precipitous, and even the track was filled with obstructions; but behind was the savage looking “Americano,” shouting, “Buggo, buggo.” So with a crack of the whip over the horse in the thills, and a cruel plunge of the spur into the heaving flank of the free one, away we went, past the nearest volante, and over the stones down the hill; looking back to see how his passengers appreciated his performance, the driver found one of them laughing immoderately, and the other still screaming “Buggo, buggo.” Greatly encouraged he gave the horses an extra lash, and whirled by the next volante, and the next, and the next. The example was contagious, the rest whipped up, and meantime we dashed ahead, careening over the sides of the hill, bounding off the great stones in the track of the wheels, jolting and clattering along at break-neck pace, past every volante; past amazed muleteers, coming in with their burdens of forage; past groups of countrymen, lassoing their young cattle; past the sword-bearing farmers, riding out from town to their country homes; past astonished negroes, and stupidly staring coolies on the roadside; across the bridge and into the narrow streets of the town; nearly running over some of the stately Senoritas at the Plaza del Armas, astounding the grave Spaniards, upsetting coolies that loitered about the crossings, raising such a racket as apparently Matanzas hadn’t seen for a twelve-month, and finally drawing up, seven volantes in succession, with unprecedented clatter, and whirl of dust, at the door of the “Leon d’ Oro.”

The moment we stopped, my persistent companion pounced upon the poor volante-driver, exclaiming “Buggo, buggo, I say.”

Of late, the cave near Matanzas has been much talked of, and all American tourists are urgently advised to visit it. They will find much that is beautiful, and some lofty passages deserving to be called grand; but whoever has seen our own great caves in the West will be apt to come away from that of Matanzas disappointed.