CHAPTER XXIX.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.- Odious system of police surveillance. Streets of Havanna. Houses. Furniture. Dress of inhabitants of both sexes. Personal appearance and social characteristics of Spanish ladies and gentlemen. Managers of sugar estates. Peasants, &c. Public vehicles and drivers. Agriculture, trade, and commerce.

The characteristics of the original white inhabitants of Cuba (referring principally to those from old Spain) seem to have been pride and ambition. Their descendants exhibit to a still greater degree than their progenitors the Castilian sensitiveness and high punctillio, but also preserve much of that high sense of honour and integrity for which the Spanish character, among its best representatives, has ever been distinguished, and from which a singular taciturnity and hauteur would seem to have been always inseparable. The real Castilian and Andalusian hidalgoes are a class of men of whom it may be said, that if they have great pride, they have but little meanness. Their Cuban descendants differ widely, however, in energy and in some other respects from their ancestors, who, whatever may have been their morals, were men of consummate enterprise and bravery.

As in every country cursed with slavery, the principal inhabitants of Cuba are enervated by indolence and love of ease. An effeminate luxury distinguishes the residents of Havanna, in their houses, dress, pleasures, and occupations. Symptoms of satiety, langour, and dull enjoyment are everywhere exhibited,the expiration of the spirit, if not of the breath of existence, a kind of settled melancholy, the invariable effect of inactivity, especially of indolence coupled with vice. Like many others of our race in other countries, they seem to have drunk so deep in pleasure or voluptuousness, as to stir a sediment that renders the draught unpalatable.

All are addicted to games of chance, such as cards and lotteries, together with billiards and chess. With the love of bull-fights and cock-fights-those barbarous relics of a Vandal and savage age—they seem to be infatuated.

Although the Spaniards are a grave, yet they are a pleasureseeking people. They may be said to be eminently a dancing nation. This favourite national amusement in Cuba, as in old Spain, is often enjoyed in the open air to the guitar and tambourine, each dancer keeping time with the castanets fastened to his hands or heels. In some shady sequestered thicket, or near some shaded fountain or rivulet, where nature holds her holiday, such groups are often to be found. The guitar or tambourine on such occasions is seldom silent; and on moonlight evenings these revelries are often protracted to a late hour, and to the fancy of the traveller might call up the gay group of Comus, or that described by the Roman bard,—

"Jam Cytheria choros ducat Venus eminente Luna
Junctæque, Nymphæ, Gratiæque decentes

Alterno terram quatiunt pede."

Balls are a very common and favourite amusement here, as in all the West India islands; but, unlike the custom in English colonies, no invitation is required to attend them-a genteel dress is a sufficient introduction.

Music, also, is a favourite recreation; and musical instruments of various kinds and of extraordinary shapes and tones, are indispensable appurtenances to the boudoir of a Cuban belle. Guiltless of manual labour, in such trifling employments the life of these imprisoned beauties, these ladies of fashion, glides away with little variation; while that of the lower class is one perpetual scene of labour and exposure. But even the downtrodden slave has his seasons of amusement, few and far between as are the intervals of their recurrence; for even the broken spirit will sometimes regain its elasticity. Yes, the slave also has his concerts; but it must be confessed that no one with a musical ear, or unless he has resided many years in the country, and has discarded all European tastes and predilections, can be captivated with, or even patiently endure their attempts at harmony.

The more simple of the social amusements among the higher classes are the soft, light, airy dance of the bayadere to the cheerful sound of the castanets, the fandango, the sequidilla, or the more graceful bolero of their father land. The guitar is the favourite instrument of music with the ladies; and the pauses and cadences with which the fair Cubanas so feelingly yet so simply mark the more expressive parts of their plaintive airs, are indescribably soft and soothing; especially when sitting in

their verandahs in the calm stillness of a moonlight evening, —almost the only season of diversion and entertainment in the torrid zone,--and when the music, accompanied by the dulcet voice of the performer, is conveyed to a distance on the bland air. In family concerts, which are common, with the accompaniments of the tambourine and triangle, the rich notes swell upwards in their strength and sink in soft cadence to tones of melting harmony; now bursting forth in the full force of gladness, now blending together in dreamy, mellow music, and suddenly ceasing, or the soft but thrilling shake of one female voice rising upon the air, and its plaintive beauty stirring the very heart.

To a Cuban, or even to an European Spaniard, it scarcely need be said the practice of smoking cigars is common. Smoking would seem to a stranger to be a requisite of life to a Cuban; being indulged in, with few exceptions, from the highest to the lowest, at all hours, and in almost every place, at home and abroad. It has been said of the population of Cuba, that onethird is occupied in the preparation of cigars, and that the other two-thirds smoke them. It is a revolting practice when carried to excess, and much cannot be said in its favour under any circumstances; but when indulged in by ladies, it is intolerable. It is, however, very common among the senoritas of Havanna, both old and young. Those of the more respectable classes smoke tobacco in small cigars or cigarritos of paper, or inclosed in the leaves of maize called pachillos, and contained in a case of gold or silver, which latter receptacle is usually suspended by a chain or riband from the neck of the fair proprietor, and deposited in the bosom, from which they supply themselves or friends successively by a pair of tweezers of the same metal. This practice is so habitual to some of the fair sex, that it constitutes the employment of almost every leisure moment. Groups of them may be sometimes seen indulging this plebeian taste, sitting at the unglazed, prison-like windows of their domiciles at all hours of the day.

The propensity to gambling pervades all classes-the beggar as the prince, the duenna as the don. Hence it is not only exhibited in places of public resort and fashionable entertainment, but jugglers are to be seen in all parts of the city, seated upon a mat, on which are exhibited cards, dice, cups, balls, &c., and urging sailors, loose Spaniards, and all passers by, with considerable volubility of tongue and earnestness of gesture, to

try their fortunes; to which, whoever is beguiled, is so, almost inevitably, to his serious disadvantage. These are chiefly Sabbath recreations, along with the bull-fights, which take place once a month, or more or less frequently, on that sacred day. And so deeply are the feelings of the populace wound up and centered in this last-named Sabbath recreation, that to interdict or even to control it would probably produce a revolution in the island.

The respect and devotion with which the fair sex are treated is especially remarkable, and is a Spanish characteristic which both history, romance, and poetry have combined to celebrate. A woman is regarded as a sacred object by a Cuban as by a Spaniard, and a true hidalgo would shrink from committing the slightest outrage on her person.

White hands can never offend," is the universal consolation, even when feminine indiscretion becomes ungentle. The Spanish drama is crowded with incidents and beautiful sentiments founded on the extraordinary influence of women. The power of beauty and the influence of kings are the two great subjects of the Spanish stage.

Spanish courtesy or gallantry to a lady, indeed, is often, as would be thought at least in England, carried to an extreme. Hence, at an inn, or at a place of public entertainment, if in the presence of gentlemen, ladies are seldom allowed to pay their share of the charge, although the party may be strangers to each other. It is sometimes even so in the fashionable bazaars: one or more of the gentlemen present delicately signifies to the waiter, by a private sign, in order that he may receive no thanks, his intention to satisfy the demand, so that the waiter, on a request by his fair purchaser for his account, politely replies that the repast, or entertainment, or purchased article, of whatever kind, "costs nothing."

The inhabitants of Havanna, like those of almost all the regions within the tropics, can scarcely be said to have any literature. A few daily and weekly journals, added to European intelligence, supply almost all the taste for letters that is found in this metropolis of the West Indian archipelago. The arts and sciences, and historical recollections and facts, seldom disturb the thoughts of the enervated and avaricious population: they divide their time between effeminate pleasure, amassing wealth, and the gaming-table.

It has been questioned by some writers, but with no sufficient

NEGLECT OF EDUCATION.

423

reason, whether the physical influences of a tropical climate are not such as almost to preclude the probability of high literary efforts ever being made among a people subject to its enervating power. No doubt, however, but that some literary and scientific men, wherever educated, are to be found, in both the higher and middling classes of society. To expect to find literary attainment among the mass would be as unreasonable as for one to expect to reap where he had not sown, and to gather where he had not strawed."

Out of a population of perhaps 500,000 free inhabitants, both white and coloured, about 1,000 only receive the blessing of lettered education of any kind; and more recently it has been proved, that there are only 10,000 children out of about 100,000 under tuition—the remaining 90,000 being abandoned to ignorance and vice. With this indifference to education in general, it is scarcely to be expected that the city is adorned by any of those literary and benevolent institutions which add such a lustre to the cities and towns of England and America, and which diffuse around them an atmosphere of moral energy and hope. No Bible, Tract, or Missionary societies, and but few, if any, Orphan asylums, or associations for the aged, infirm, and destitute, are to be found in Havanna any more than in anti-christian, or even than in once pagan, Rome.

It can scarcely be said that a liberal education is anything like universally diffused even among the higher classes, while there is but little taste for reading among those who have acquired the accomplishment. How the Cuban fair especially contrive to pass away their time without the aid of books, or the business engagements which occupy their sex in Protestant countries, is a mystery that few strangers can unravel. As before intimated, the church, the cigarretto, the guitar, and the siesta, are almost the only daily pastimes;-the excitements of love and convivial entertainments are left to the twilight and the midnight hour. These can occupy but a small portion of the day, -how fill up the immense vacuum? How complete the dies solidus without glancing into any book more interesting and instructive than the " Rosario de la Virgin," or the Horas Castellanos,"-how eke it out in counting beads, though these are still more in use than prayer-books?

If it is a truth that the order, the moral habits, the piety, and the happiness of families are more emphatically under the control of females than of the other sex,-if, apart from the