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First Events and Early Influences

The Discovery--Columbus Enchanted--His Dreams--Beauty of Earth, Ocean and Sky--The Gentle Natives Smoke Cigarettes--Some Slow Centuries--The British Conquest--Dawn of Revolution in the Ever Faithful Island--The Slavery Embarrassment--Thomas Jefferson and Charles Summer--A Despotic Political Economy.

WHEN Christopher Columbus found Cuba he was in the midst of his wonderful dream of the Indies, and all the world had for him become enchanted. He sailed on his immortal voyage, believing that he would find the beautiful country of which he had read in the story of Marco Polo, and as he sailed from island to island, finding each new discovery more romantic than the last, he interpreted all the incidents to confirm his belief that he was nearing Cipango, and would very soon have the opportunity of delivering the letters, with which he was equipped from Ferdinand and Isabella, to the Great Khan. He and his followers asked the simple natives, whether meeting them in their canoes or under their fruit-trees, for gold, and thought the responses meant that a great country was close at hand, and that could be none other than the mysterious land of whose fabulous riches the most famous of wanders, who had traveled furthest East, had told.

The Island that he called Isabella, for the beloved sovereign of Castile, his benign patroness, proved especially captivating to the great navigator, and he wrote of it: "Everything is green as April in Andalusia. The singing of the birds is such that it seems as if one would never desire to depart. There are flocks of parrots that obscure the sun. There are trees of a thousand species, each having its particular fruit, and all of marvelous flavor." Inspired by his eastern romance, he detected in the air "spicy odors," and enjoyed a fragrance from the blossoming groves, that he said "was the sweetest thing in the world," and there were many precious trees of which he knew nothing, but that they would be of great price in Spain; and that was so, both of the wood and of the fruit. The GREAT LAND, a little way over the exquisite waters, of which he heard continually, was CUBA, and when at last he saw it on the morning of the 28th of October, 1492, he was not surprised, but his soul was sailing along the shores of Japan, half around the world away. He was in the midst of the season of rains in the Indies he was discovering, and in the very month destined to celebrity for awful hurricanes in that region, but the ocean was as silk under his adventurous prow, the water was almost transparent as the air, and places of anchorage were chosen by the appearance of the bottom of the sea. At first view the Cuban mountains reminded the discoverer of those of Sicily, so lofty were they in the crystal sky. He sighted land near Neuvitas del Principe, and thought he found "noble and profound rivers," whose shores were overhung with blooming trees, and he was struck by the extraordinary wealth of color of the flowers, and the majesty of the royal palms. He called the Island Juana, for Prince Juan, and then, when Ferdinand died, the name was changed to Fernandina, and then Santiago, and then for the Holy Virgin; but the old Indian name, Cuba, conquered all competition, and has asserted itself triumphantly for four hundred years; typically, we may trust, after the sorrowful centuries of its final American destiny.

As Columbus sailed along the splendid shores, he fancied he was about to find the city where the Great Khan dwelt, and sent expeditions of inquiry, and as they sought the kingdom of the far East, they were particularly anxious for gold--a few ornaments made of that metal appealing to the imagination. The messengers hunting the Khan--who was only 13,000 miles away--made a great discovery, that of the Indians smoking tobacco, nearly in the form that is the favorite indulgence of the Cubans to this day--the cigarette. The exaltation of mind of the Discoverer influenced every scrap of his writings. The wings of his fancy were broad and free as he followed his false clue. The realities around him surpassed the creations of fancy, and there was an ineffable harvest of glory, but it did not enter into his visions that he had found a hemisphere. The nature of the people of this marvelous land, dwelling in houses built of palms, and living on a bill of fare of fruits afforded nowhere else, seemed to the great Genoese, whose romances compete with his history in their benignity, to be admirable material to become children of the Church, and he beheld in the riches unfolded before his eyes the resources that should enable him to snatch the Holy Sepulchre from the grasp of the infidel.