Pioneering in Cuba A Narrative of the Settlement of La Gloria, the First American Colony in Cuba, and the Early Experiences of the Pioneers

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

Arrival of the Colonists in Nuevitas Harbor.

Just after noon on January 4, 1900, the ancient city of Nuevitas, Cuba, lazily basking in the midday sunshine, witnessed a sight which had not been paralleled in the four hundred years of its existence. A steamer was dropping anchor in the placid water of the harbor a mile off shore, and her decks were thronged with a crowd of more than two hundred eager and active Americans. They wore no uniforms, nor did they carry either guns or swords; and yet they had come on an errand of conquest. They had fared forth from their native land to attack the formidable forests and to subdue the untamed soil of the province of Puerto Principe—a task which required scarcely less courage and resolution than a feat of arms might have demanded in that locality two years before. Well aware that there was a hard fight before them, they were yet sanguine of success and eager to begin active operations. It was the vanguard of the first American colony planted in Cuba.

The vessel that lay at anchor in the beautiful land-locked harbor of Nuevitas was the screw steamer Yarmouth, a steel ship which, if not as fast and elegant as the ocean greyhounds that cross the Atlantic, was large and fine enough to have easily commanded the unbounded admiration and amazement of Christopher Columbus had he beheld her when he landed from the Santa Maria on the coast of Cuba near this point more than four centuries ago. Great changes have been wrought since the days of Columbus in the manner of craft that sail the seas, but less progress has been made by the city of Nuevitas in those four hundred long years. The Yarmouth, substantial if not handsome, and safe if not swift, had brought the colonists to this port without mishap, thus redeeming one of the many promises of the Cuban Land and Steamship Company. Since early morning the vessel had been slowly steaming along the palm-fringed coast of the "Pearl of the Antilles," daybreak having revealed the fact that the boat was too far to the eastward, and late in the forenoon we entered the picturesque bay of Nuevitas, took on a swarthy Cuban pilot, and, gliding quietly past straggling palm-thatched native shacks and tiny green-clad isles, came to anchor in plain view of the city that Velasquez founded in 1514. We had passed two or three small circular forts, any one of which would have been demolished by a single well-directed shot from a thirteen-inch gun. These defenses were unoccupied, and there was naught else to threaten the established peace.

The day was beautiful, freshened by a soft and balmy breeze, with the delightful temperature of 75 degrees. Far back in the interior, through the wonderfully transparent Cuban atmosphere, one could see the light blue peaks of lofty mountains, standing singly instead of in groups, as if each were the monarch of a small principality. Their outlines, as seen at this distance, were graceful and symmetrical, rather than rugged and overpowering like some of their brother chieftains of the North. Near at hand the listless city of Nuevitas extended from the water's edge backward up the hillside of a long, green ridge, the low, red-tiled houses clinging to what seemed precarious positions along the rough, water-worn streets that gashed the side of the hill. To the right a green-covered promontory projected far into the bay, dotted with occasional native shacks and planted in part with sisal hemp. The colonists on shipboard, ignorant of the appearance of this tropical product, at first took the hemp for pineapple plants, but soon learned their mistake from one who had been in the tropics before. Viewed from the harbor, Nuevitas looks pretty and picturesque, but once on shore the illusion vanishes. Mud meets you at the threshold and sticks to you like a brother. The streets, for the most part, are nothing more than rain-furrowed lanes, filled with large, projecting stones and gullies of no little depth....