Cuba also had an immediate and present interest. Before the American civil war it was on the point of being absorbed into the United States. The Spanish Cubans had afterwards a civil war of their own, of which only confused accounts had reached us at home. We knew that it had lasted ten years, but who had been the parties and what their objects had been was very much a mystery. No sooner was it over than, without reservation or compensation, the slaves had been emancipated. How a country was prospering which had undergone such a succession of shocks, and how the Spaniards were dealing with the trials which were bearing so hard on our own islands, were inquiries worth making. But beyond these it was the land of romance. Columbus and Las Casas, Cortez and Pizarro, are the demigods and heroes of the New World. Their names will be familiar to the end of time as the founders of a new era, and although the modern Spaniards sink to the level of the modern Greeks, their illustrious men will hold their place for ever in imagination and memory.
Our own Antilles had, as I have said, in their terror of small-pox, placed Jamaica under an interdict. The Spaniards at Cuba were more generous or more careless. Havana is on the north side of the island, facing towards Florida; thus, in going to it from Port Royal, we had to round the westernmost cape, and had four days of sea before us. We slid along the coast of Jamaica in smooth water, the air, while day lasted, intensely hot, but the breeze after nightfall blowing cool from off the mountains. We had a polite captain, polite officers, and agreeable fellow-passengers, two or three Cubans among them, swarthy, dark-eyed, thick-set men--_Americanos_; Spaniards with a difference--with whom I cultivated a kind of intimacy. In a cabin it was reported that there were again Spanish ladies on their way to the demonic gaieties at Darien, but they did not show.
Among the rest of the party was a Canadian gentleman, a Mr. ----, exceptionally well-informed and intelligent. Their American treaty having been disallowed, the West Indies had proposed to negotiate a similar one with the Canadian Dominion. The authorities at Ottawa had sent Mr. M---- to see if anything could be done, and Mr. M---- was now on his way home, not in the best of humours with our poor relations. 'The Jamaicans did not know what they wanted,' he said. 'They were without spirit to help themselves; they cried out to others to help them, and if all they asked could not be granted they clamoured as if the whole world was combining to hurt them. There was not the least occasion for these passionate appeals to the universe; they could not at this moment perhaps "go ahead" as fast as some countries, but there was no necessity to be always going ahead. They had a fine country, soil and climate all that could be desired, they had all that was required for a quiet and easy life, why could they not be contented and make the best of things?' Unfortunate Jamaicans! The old mother at home acts like an unnatural parent, and will neither help them nor let their Cousin Jonathan help them. They turn for comfort to their big brother in the north, and the big brother being himself robust and healthy, gives them wholesome advice.
