OCR Text |
Show 204 CUJJA. n· nported m· to those 1·slands. The late Governor of Porto Rico is said to have retired, in consequence, with an immr.nse fortune. The price of connivance, now fixed in Cuba, is reported to be twelve dollars per slave-a sum which is, I believe, shared by sub. ordinate officers. The profits of the slave trade are such as to render thC'se iniquitous allowances, but a trilling per centage. The streets of the city of Havana are extrrmely narrow, and we found the heat opprrssive ; but excellent quartrrs were obtained for us at a boarding house kept by an agreeable American family of the name of West; and locomotion is rendered easy, by the numerous volantes-small one-horse carriages, with overshadowing leather tops and enormous wheels, driven by negro postilions, in high Spanish hoots. The streets are thronged by a busy population-all talking Spanish. Every thing in Havana is entirely foreign to the eye and car of an Englishman or American, and it was well that our friend Cabrera had been training some of us to the utterance of a few broken scntC'nces, in the language of the country. In the evening, under the guidance of the British Consul's agreeable lady, we visited the Passeo, a public road and promenade formed of late years, under the Government of Tacon, a Spaniard of extraordinary energy, who is said to have found Cuba a den of thieves and robbers, and to have left it, when he finally resigned his trust, in comparatively good civil order. He made examples of some notorious offenders of high rank, instituted an effective police, built a great prison, and gave much attention to roads and other CUBA. 205 necessary internal improvements; but he is said to have been no enemy to the slave-trade. At the end of the Passeo is Tacon's villa and garden-the latter laid out, though on a small scale, after the style of the gardens at Versailles. After a walk through this scrne of somewhat formal beauty, we ascended the hill on which stands Fort Principe. Here we obtained a noble view of the city, the harbor, the abundant shipping, the Mora Castle, the Cabanas on the opposite heights, and the sea as the boundary of the prospect. In general however the country round Havana is far from being picturesque, and is cultivated chiefly with maize for fodder. Many miles must be travelled inland, before one can reach either a mountainous district, or those luxuriant fields of sugar-cane, which are managed by a mere process of rattooning, without the insertion of new plants, for twenty, or even thirty years in succession. Rattooning is the annual raising of fresh canes from the same plant, and the number of years during which it may be carried on, is an index of the strength and richness of the soil. While this process may be continued in Cuba for so great a length of years, the virgin land is so rich, that a mere touch of the hoe is sufficient to prepare it for the reception of new cane. In most of the British colonies the rattooning lasts only three or four years; and the ground requires the laborious process of holing, or some adequate substitute, as a 'preparation for planting. No wonder therefore, that the sugars of our colonies have always been undersold by the planters of Cuba. |