CHAPTER IV

_Magnum iter adscendo; sed dat mihi gloria vires._

—Propertius.

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All ruts, except those made by ox carts, are merely imitations. The country through which we were passing soaks water like a sponge in the wet season. It dries quickly. When the red soil is soft, the immense, heavily-laden carts sink into and cut gashes three or four feet deep in the face of the earth. These parallel, intersect, and cross one another. There is only one way to drive a car over them; that is to always keep the wheels on the high spots. Sometimes the high spot may be wide; sometimes narrow as the wheel; sometimes it may be the sloping side of a gully. On these ruts and on the rocks we tore tires off the wheels at two miles an hour.

From Tosca to Macagua is sixty miles of ruts. As we left the region where the road is over bare rock, we began to work into a region where the ruts alternate with mud. For a short distance the ground had been untraversed for a long time, and was hard and fairly smooth. We enjoyed the rare experience of “beating it,” which down there meant eighteen to twenty miles an hour. This respite from the usual difficulties was brief, for the road finally became merely an opening between sugar fields.

The cane, sweeping the car on either side, rose far above our heads and for many miles it was never possible to see in front of us farther than a few hundred yards. Leaving the sugar cane for short drives over open ground, we noticed that this must have been a particularly patriotic section during the fighting with Spain. Most of the scattered houses were of stone or boards, calcimined white, light blue, or yellow, and nearly each one bore the roughly painted sign: “Viva Cuba Libre.”

Lunch was eaten in a street café at Colon, and while there we became acquainted with the four-hundred of a typical inland city. Politicians in such localities bear reputable names socially and lead the village society. We needed gasoline and were told that there was a private supply owned by a man who was then at the home of the mayor, on the outskirts, where the beaux and belles of Colon had been invited to a dinner party by his honor. We were asked to join the festivities, but excused ourselves and took the oil monopolist back to the town that he might sell us one of his precious ten-gallon cans of gasoline.

The people of the farms that we had met had been picturesque and interesting. The social leaders of this small city were very ordinary types in their commonplace imitation of American dressing. They are uninteresting anomalies, striving for a conventionality of which they know little. They have a color line which does not exist in the country. Out among the hills, the only line of demarkation is the age limit above which it is considered proper and right that little boys and little girls should wear clothes.

We were now running comparatively near the railway and small stations were frequent. To most of these, mahogany was being brought up from the forests of the south, one immense log at a time being hauled on a cart drawn by from four to a dozen oxen. The progress is about two miles an hour when the road is not muddy.

More ruts, open fields covered with loose rocks, mud holes and, then, Macagua, a town to remember. It boasted an hotel, which was club, general store, saloon and salon to the village and surrounding country. We had beds for the first time in Cuba, but our real experience that evening was not in them. Being Sunday, it was a day of celebration.

There had been a baseball game in which the Pinks beat the Blues. Cuba is baseball crazy. Each country team has dainty cotton-flannel suits, which they put on after the game for the purpose of parading around the town. There was a balloon ascension at dusk—a hot-air balloon of red, white, and blue paper going up in flames. The star number on the program was the evening dance. The orchestra, composed of the blackest of Cuban negroes, came early with its kettle drums, cornet, clarinet, gourd and trombone. The tunes were of local invention. A file drawn across the teeth gives the same sensation as the rasping noise they made.

Local society took possession of the hotel floor. They danced a slow, sleepy, never-ceasing, never-changing two-step. The black rabble stood outside, watching the scene through open doors and windows. When each dance was done, the couples marched around in an endless parade. Then the young swains exchanged partners or managed to select the maidens of their respective hearts’ desire. If a young man wanted a certain girl, he grabbed her partner by the unengaged arm, made a few farcical bows, which the grabbed party would duplicate and then withdraw, it being considered highly improper to protest the transfer. By the way of an extra for the edification of the entire party, the American embassy rang in a cake walk.

Our beds were on the balcony which surrounded the second floor of the hotel building. We slept as men will who have not slept in four days.

Tosca to Macagua—sixty miles.

[Illustration: “_Palm trees by the thousand, and, scattered among them, small ponds made by heavy rainfall._”

SEE PAGE 65.]

[Illustration: “_The car looked like some big black beast, wallowing along in boundless marsh._”

SEE PAGE 65.]

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