CHAPTER VII
SANTO DOMINGO
My father was greatly disappointed when Congress, under the whip of Charles Sumner, quashed President Grant’s plan for the annexation of Santo Domingo by refusing to ratify the treaty signed by Grant and the Dominican president, Baez. The friends of annexation, however, still had hopes of bringing the little republic under the eagle’s wing; it was probably in this interest that President Baez invited my father to revisit Santo Domingo in the winter of 1872 and bring his family with him. On the ninth of February, the day of a terrible blizzard, I sailed from New York with my father, mother, and a gay company of girl cousins and friends. Our steamer, the old _Tybee_, was a small crank tub; the twelve days’ passage was more uncomfortable than any ocean crossing I have ever made. My journal records that on the second day out I had not yet taken off my boots, and that on the fifth I was undressed for the first time since sailing. The captain, a quaint Yankee skipper of the old school, was so touched by my suffering that he sent two sailors to carry me from the “Black Hole of Calcutta”, six feet by eight, where three of us languished, to his own breezy deck cabin. Here I soon began to pick up. My strongest impression of the voyage is of the beauty of the Gulf Stream, crossed in cloudless weather. The intense blue of the sea, the golden gulf weed, the dazzling color of the sky were my first taste of tropical splendors.
“I am sure that water really is blue,” I said to the captain. “That color cannot be merely the sky’s reflection.”
“Here, boy! Fill a bucket over the side and show it to the young lady.”
The water in the bucket close at hand looked like any other, save for a strand of floating gulf weed.
“They do say,” the captain volunteered, “that the yarns about mermaids grew out of some sailor’s mistaking that gulf weed for a girl’s hair.”
Among the passengers were several interesting people; Colonel Fabens of Salem, an idealist, interested like my father in the uplift of the Dominicans and convinced of the future importance to our country of the splendid harbor of Samana Bay; Judge O’Sullivan, a mysterious man, who either was, or assumed to be, very deaf, and yet knew everything that was whispered on the ship; and whose interest in annexation was more practical and not quite so disinterested as Colonel Fabens’ and my father’s. Germany was even then plotting against American influence in the island, and a few years later German intrigue brought about a revolution that sent Baez into exile, and placed a very inferior man in his place. A group of young naval officers on their way to join their ship, the _Nantasket_, at Puerta Plata, were pleasant additions to the company. One of these, George W. DeLong, later became famous as an Arctic explorer. At this time DeLong was twenty-eight years old, tall, blond, with a firm, underhung jaw, the veiled blue eyes of a dreamer, and a spirited bearing that somehow set him apart from the other young officers.
The twelfth day after leaving New York the _Tybee_ dropped anchor in the harbor of Puerta Plata. Lieutenant DeLong was in the boat that took us ashore. I remember his sympathy with our delight at the picturesqueness of harbor, landing place, and town. Mount Isabella rose steeply from the shore, its lower slopes fringed with fan and coconut palms, the upper reaches dark with the rich foliage of the mahogany, satinwood, mango, and logwood trees. The color of the sea was now like molten emerald, sapphire, and turquoise. In spite of these shifting jewel tints, looking down from the little boat the water was crystal clear. It seemed as if I could reach out my hand and pick up the coral on the yellow sands, fathoms below. The white belly and cruel jaw of a shark appeared below us, and the hand was quickly withdrawn.
Three days later we sailed into the harbor of Santo Domingo, to find midsummer weather, a land breeze scented with the perfume of unknown fruit and flowers. Our captain pointed to the mighty stump of an ancient tree on the bank of the Ozama River.
“The folks here claim Columbus tied his boat to that tree first time he came ashore. He set great store by this island, gave it the name of Espanuela, which, I reckon, means little Spain.”
I remembered my father’s writing me, a year before:
“This is one of the most beautiful islands of the world, ever warm, ever clad in rich foliage, ever abounding in luscious fruits.”
A white handkerchief fluttered between the iron bars of a seaward-looking window, high up in an old gray stone building:
“A welcome from the prison,” the captain murmured. “Poor Peynado, he always salutes the _Tybee_ when she comes and as she goes; he’s shut up for some political business, I’m told.”
“Do many ships touch here?” I asked.
“Only a few coasting craft like the _Alice_ there; you’ll get no news, neither letters nor papers, till I bring them to you six weeks from now; not even a telegram; there’s no cable!”
This gave our adventure a delightful tinge of aloofness. We slept on board that night, and the next morning watched our belongings carried ashore,--trunks, band-boxes, tables, chairs, beds, mosquito nettings, and a grand piano. My father did not love music, but it was part of the family creed that Mama could not exist without a piano. “She shall have music wherever she goes!”
Our arrival had a quasi-official character; we were the guests of the President, who had lent my father one of the presidential palaces for our residence. The palace was built Spanish fashion around a patio. A wide corridor surrounded the court on the second story, from which opened our living rooms. A guard of honor, half a dozen ragged soldiers and their horses, were lodged on the ground floor. I still remember the strong impressions of this, my first day in a foreign country. I can see the picturesque streets of the oldest European city in the new world, for many years the most important place in the Western hemisphere. Its character and language are Spanish, its people of mixed blood are of every shade of complexion, their manners truly Spanish, courtly, grave, and kindly.
We landed on the morning of the twenty-second of February; that evening we celebrated Washington’s Birthday by a dinner at the hotel. There were speeches, red fire, toasts, and a general jollification. The _Tybee’s_ officers and passengers were all present, as well as the few Americans established at Santo Domingo, among whom were a Mr. and Mrs. Shumacher and a couple by the name of Gabb. The men all wore white linen, the women white muslin.
The two months that followed were among the most delightful of my life. We enjoyed a series of calm summer days, only broken by an occasional violent thunder shower in the afternoon. Very quickly the old palace became homelike with flowers, birds, and friendly visitors at every hour of the day and evening. Grave men, like Don Leonardo Delmonto, the land agent, Señor Gauthier, the Secretary of State, Curriel, the Minister of War, who came to consult with Papa; lonely men, exiles from every corner of the world, who came to talk with Mama, and a shoal of girls and boys who came to play and dance with “las muchachas” (the girls)!
Our day usually began with an excursion to the bathing beach. The first trip was made in an antediluvian hack, the only vehicle in the city; after that we rode our little Dominican ponies, Arabians with the _paso Castiliano_, a sort of delicious canter, the best imaginable gait for a warm climate. The bathing place was a beautiful little basin under a beetling crag; the sands were fine and gold-colored, the water warm as the Lido in August. We might not venture to swim outside this basin on account of sharks. On the way home we halted at a coconut grove, where a tall, barefoot boy swarmed up a palm tree and brought down fresh green coconuts, still cool with the night’s dew. He bored a hole in the rough outer shell with a gimlet; the fresh coconut milk glug-glugged into the tiny calabash I carried at my saddlebow, and I drained a draft that is the nearest thing to nectar I have known.
There were often guests at the eleven o’clock breakfast, where many native dishes were served. We came to like the cassava bread, the rice cooked in coconut milk, the fried plantains, and the orange wine. The cuisine was a combination of Creole and Spanish cookery, much to my liking. The long table was spread in the open corridor with the big columns, between which swung gilded cages with bright plumed birds and porous earthenware jars in which our drinking water was cooled. Ice was a luxury, reserved for great occasions. Every day some of our new friends sent a basket of wonderful strange fruit, sapotes, custard apples, caweelias, endless varieties of bananas; the best of these I have never seen since,--a tiny yellow kind, called the fig banana.
After breakfast came the Spanish lessons; indeed these went on most of the day, for our young friends could speak no other language and we were soon all chattering like magpies. In the evening Papa read Don Quixote aloud, so it was in a truly Spanish atmosphere that I first learned to love the great Don and all his company. At four o’clock, when the sea breeze sprang up, the horses were brought round and the whole party rode out into the country, attended by a large escort. Whatever else our Dominican friends lacked, they had plenty of time to devote to us. There was always at least one Cabinet officer in our group of cavaliers.
Our longest expedition was to the little town of San Cristoval, five hours distant from the capital. We started at four in the morning by bright moonlight and rode through the sleeping town. At the city gate a sentinel challenged:
“Who goes there?”
“_Amigos._”
“What is your errand?”
“We escort the _convita_ of American visitors to San Cristoval.”
The sentinel seemed dissatisfied. Just then Señor Curriel, the fiery little Minister of War, rode up and gave the watchword. The sleepy soldier called his two companions from the guardhouse, and the three oddly equipped figures, dressed in seersucker, with palm-leaf hats, stood at attention as we clattered through the gateway and out to the bridle path that led to San Cristoval. The journey was full of small adventures; we were caught in a violent thunder storm and drenched to the skin, my saddle girth broke, my reins gave out and were replaced by a pair made from a clothesline borrowed at an _estancia_, where we halted for a few minutes. So much stands out clear, in the full limelight of memory; the rest of the trip is dim and shadowy. I remember that San Cristoval was a poor little place, with a miserable apology for a hotel where we ate; that we slept in hammocks in a native _bohie_, a hut made of palm wood and thatched with palm leaves; that we were enchanted with the beauty of the country, the friendliness of the people, and the glory of the tropical moonlight nights.
During Holy Week we haunted the old gray stone cathedral, where for centuries the body of Columbus had lain beneath the chancel. The ceremonies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday were full of interest, for I had never before been inside a Catholic church.
Shortly after our arrival, the _Nantasket_ came to Santo Domingo, bringing Lieutenant DeLong and the other young officers whose acquaintance we had made on the _Tybee_. We gave a ball for the officers and the townspeople, the large rooms of the palace serving excellently for the festivities. The American officers danced with the pretty Dominican girls, who wore fireflies in their dark hair for jewels; for ribbons garlands of flowers twined about their waists and shoulders.
The day after the ball I experienced my first earthquake. It was a breathless afternoon, and I was taking the inevitable siesta. As I lay asleep under my mosquito bar, I heard a low rumbling sound, unlike anything I had ever known before. I recognized it as instinctively as the horses screaming in their stalls below. I sprang up and rushed to the open corridor to see the great stone columns shaking like palm trees in a wind. That night I saw visions; the figure of a nun stood for a moment at the foot of my bed, looked at me intently, then vanished. Her place was taken by a young soldier with a mass of blond hair blown back like a plume; he too looked hard at me, then melted from my sight; last I saw the face of a friend lying in her coffin. When the _Tybee_ arrived with mails from home, she brought the news that this friend had died.
We said good-by to Santo Domingo very regretfully. We had fallen under the spell of the Antilles. There was something almost virginal about the island with its primeval forests of precious trees, mahogany, logwood, and many another whose name I have forgotten. The population was of the scantiest; whole tracts of forest land had never known a woodsman’s ax. There were very few foreigners. We had stumbled by chance upon this happy isle; it had no place in travelers’ tales or guidebooks; its silver sands knew no tourists. We had found a bit of Spain transplanted in the fifteenth century to an enchanted isle of the Caribbean Sea. The founder, Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher, died here in 1515. Sixty years later the great English adventurer, Sir Francis Drake, sacked the city, which from that day to this, save for the inevitable revolutions and the perennial squabble with its big, black, half-savage neighbor, Hayti, has known a slumberous existence. The Spanish language has absorbed the dialects of the gentle natives, so dear to Columbus, and the Spanish blood has kept the mixed population from relapsing into the semi-barbarism of Hayti.
When I think of the people I knew there, the kindly Dominicans, the American planters, and business men thrown together in that remote corner of the world, one figure stands out, clear-cut and apart from all the rest,--George DeLong, the arctic explorer. He was a vigorous, ambitious man, full of discontent with the small chance of advancement the navy then offered. Dissatisfied with the slow promotion from rank to rank, he was already casting about for a chance to distinguish himself. The next year brought his opportunity. He obtained permission to join the arctic exploration expedition led by Captain Braine, in 1873, and proved himself so capable that in the year 1879, when James Gordon Bennett fitted out the ill-fated _Jeannette_ for her trip to the arctic, DeLong was given command of the expedition. The cruise of the _Jeannette_ is one of the most thrilling chapters in the history of arctic discovery. The ship sailed from San Francisco for a three years’ voyage, and proceeded to Cape Serdze Kamen in Siberia, whence she steamed northwards until beset by ice. For two years she drifted in the terrible ice pack, always farther and farther north, until she was crushed by the ice, and the party were forced as a forlorn hope to take to their sledges and make a long journey across Siberia. In the last extremity they took refuge in a cave, where DeLong and his fourteen men slowly starved to death. The story of every day’s trial is told in great detail in DeLong’s journals. The men died like heroes, dominated to the last by the courage and spiritual superiority of their leader. The story is a magnificent example of discipline and devotion to duty in the face of the most cruel suffering. When DeLong felt he was dying, with his last remaining strength he threw the precious journal in which he had made his last record over his head far into the interior of the cave, where it was protected, and found by the relief expedition he knew would be sent in search of him. They found him lying with his arm still above his head, his hand pointing to the journal that gave his story to the world and won for him that fame for which he had so hungered!
Before sailing for his first arctic trip DeLong came to see us at our house in South Boston. I still remember his enthusiasm for the adventure. What is the magnet that draws so many high-spirited, courageous men to the doom that still awaits the majority of arctic explorers, in spite of Nansen and Peary? I have talked with DeLong, Shackleton, Peary, and the Englishman, Leigh Smith, of their arctic experiences, and in each case have felt a certain quality they all possessed in common, something remote and stellar that seems to set them apart from their fellows and makes them, perhaps, sensitive to the steady pull of the polar magnet.
Admiral Schley, in describing his expedition for the relief of Greeley, once told me that during the last lap of his voyage, in order to make greater speed, he blew his way through the ice with dynamite. When he found Greeley and his men, there was not twenty-four hours’ life in any of them. If he had not put on that extra spurt of speed, he would have come too late.
“What made you think of using the dynamite?” I said.
The Admiral answered with an inscrutable look. I saw that I had touched the edge of one of those mysteries men do not talk about to a chance acquaintance, even a young lady, at a dinner party.
From Santo Domingo we set sail for Cuba, then a province of Spain, ruled by a despotic Spanish governor, who was cordially hated by the Cubans. All the offices of trust or power were held by Spaniards, who had come to Cuba bent on making their fortunes and caring little for the development of the beautiful island intrusted to their care. The Cubans to whom my father brought letters were mostly planters, farmers, or lawyers. With the exception of a few navy officers, I do not remember having made the acquaintance of a single Spaniard.
I was fortunate in making friends with a famous Cuban belle under whose protection I caught some glimpses of the _beau monde_ of Havana. In the afternoon I drove with her in a _volante_ on the fashionable _paseo_; in the evening we drove again through the gaily lighted plaza, the center of the city’s social life. The _volante_ would draw up outside one of the chief _cafés_; here ices were served to us as we sat in the carriage, which was quickly surrounded by a group of young men. A certain handsome officer, named Antonio Sarabria, paid us distant and respectful court in true Spanish fashion. For several afternoons and evenings he followed our carriage in a cab, and when we stopped for ices sent us each a bouquet of gardenias with his compliments. We visited a Spanish warship, the _Saragossa_, lying in the harbor near the Moro Castle. Though the officers were friendly and hospitable, the visit proved a disappointment, for I had vainly hoped to find Antonio Sarabria on board! The same afternoon we were made welcome on a Prussian man-of-war, where a pompous young German officer did the honors. He spoke English fairly well but had an irritating habit of answering every remark with, “Why, of course they are,” or “Why, of course it is!”
I remember a visit to our fair friend at her own house. She received us in a perfumed boudoir where the toilet apparatus, basin, pitchers, mugs, as well as combs and brushes, were of handsome wrought silver. The Cuban beauties, with their _mate_ skins and languorous eyes, dressed in the latest Paris fashion except on Sundays, when at mass the mantilla took the place of the bonnet. The only religion tolerated by the government was the Roman Catholic. With my friend I visited the cathedral, where for a second time I stood beside a tomb of Columbus; this mausoleum really contained the Great Adventurer’s dust, brought here from Santo Domingo in the year 1796. In Havana I saw my first convent, where the nuns showed me a _crêche_, and explained the working of the cradle, which at night was turned outward into the street to receive the little foundlings committed to their care.
My father meanwhile was making a thorough study of the work of the newly formed _Sociedad Economica_, whose object was the improvement of public education and popular industry. I remember his saying that not a tenth part, even of the children of free parents, received any education whatever. Current literature can hardly be said to have existed in Cuba at this time. There were a few daily and weekly papers, rigidly censured, and as far as we saw, little other reading matter.
We made several expeditions from the capital, visiting Matanzas, where we stayed at the Golden Lion, a pleasant hotel, and were shown the sights by Mr. Hall, the American Consul. The visit to the great caves whose entrance lies three hundred feet below the earth’s surface made a deep impression upon me. The stalactites hanging from the roof of the cavern, the stalagmites rising from the floor to meet them, were of the color and texture of yellow alabaster. I dreamed so often of this cavern that it is now inextricably confused with my childish ideas of Aladdin’s Cave. At Matanzas we saw a large plantation worked by Chinese coolies whose condition, little better than slaves, roused my father’s indignation. Of an expedition to Toledo Marinao I remember little save the visit to the sugar factory. The slender record of my journal says:
“Our _cicerone_ was kind Mr. Salmon. We saw a great many Chinese, as well as negro slaves; the former are much the best workers and are, I believe, more valuable. We saw the whole process of sugar-making, from the grinding of the cane to the final packing of the white sugar.”
Our departure from “the Havana” was hastened by an incident, for which I was to blame. I accompanied my father on a visit to the prison. Here we saw huddled together in a miserable cell a group of boys of about my own age; one indeed was much younger, being only fourteen years old. These poor lads were under a sentence of death for a trifling offense, the desecration of the grave of some official who had oppressed the people. The boys had broken or overturned the tombstone on one of the Cuban holidays, as their part of a political demonstration against the tyranical Spanish officialdom. I was so much wrought up over the fate of these youths that I talked unguardedly about them to my friends and later managed to send to the prison a gift of tobacco and fruit. In consequence of this expression of sympathy, my father received a warning from the Cuban authorities, and without waiting for a second hint, he bundled us out of Cuba and over to Key West, much to my regret. Havana, with its bullfights, cock fights, Spanish officers, languid beauties, water ices, and guava marmalade, was an attractive place to a young traveler on her first journey!
My journal reads:
Key West, May 9, 1873.
Arrived here at about five A.M., after a nearly sleepless and utterly wretched night. Passed the flagship _Worcester_ and three other navy ships, the _Canandaigua_, _Bache_ and _Terror_. Papa had important business with Admiral Lee, and we were very much afraid the flagship was about to sail as she was getting up steam. It proved she was only coming up to the wharf. Papa was much relieved.
My journal makes no further mention of my father’s business with the Admiral. It gives a list of every officer on board the ships, from the captain to the youngest midshipman, and detailed accounts of the hops and other festivities the hospitable officers arranged for us on board and on shore. Reading over the record all these years after, certain phrases suggest to me that my father’s business with the Admiral was connected with those poor boys under death sentence in the Havana prison. I know he never forgot them, and I believe that he made an effort to secure American intervention on their behalf.
We had turtle steak for dinner at Key West, turtle stew for supper, turtle hash for breakfast! That is all that I remember of the place, at this time our most important naval station in southern waters.
After leaving Key West we stopped at Cedar Keys and broke the journey to Boston into several stages, stopping at Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. At the latter place we visited the _New Hampshire_, described in my journal as, “A splendid old line-of-battleship, with four decks. I rang the fire quarters, and was alarmed at the rushing and scattering of the officers and men. They all tore about the ship, putting out the supposititious fire. The first stream of water came from the hose just two minutes after I sounded the alarm.”
We called the journey from the South to the North “Our jaunt with Spring”, for we traveled hand in hand with her, halting when she halted, pushing on with the first roses and strawberries all the way from Florida to Massachusetts, to find the best of both in our own garden.
This, my first experience of foreign travel, was doubly precious because I was thrown so much with my dear father. During our four months’ absence from home we were constantly together. He taught me how to travel, to take the open road with an open mind and an open hand, not a bad rule for the journey of life and an invaluable one for a young traveler, who like Kipling’s soldier, takes as his motto;
For to admire and for to see, For to be’old this world so wide-- It never done no good to me, But I can’t drop it if I tried!