THE CUBA REVIEW 



19 



HAVANA FROM THE HARBOR 



[Elbert F. Baldwin in The Outlook'] 



"Are you a Cuban?'' I asked of the 

 sailor who was taking me about Havana 

 harbor. 



He answered my question with another : 

 '"Can a Cuban sail a boat?" 



Then he added, "No, Senor ; we have 

 to come over here from Spain to sail the 

 Cubans' boats for them. And there are 

 many of us in Cuba for that and for other 

 labors — more than a hundred thousand. 

 Some come from Galicia, where I come 

 from, some from the Canary Islands." 

 All this in Castilian Spanish. I had sus- 

 pected as much. Looking more closely 

 at the sailor, I saw that his lean face re- 

 sembled those of the north of Spain. 

 There are, as he said, very many Span- 

 iards still in Cuba — and, for their benefit 

 to the opportunities of boating hereabouts, 

 it is not to be regretted. 



Only as you sail about in one of these 

 little blue-painted 1 oats do you really ap- 

 preciate the harbor of Havana. Its great 

 sight, until its removal and impressive 

 burial at sea, was, of course, the "Maine." 

 In the midst of the harbor's commercial 

 shipping stood the dams and cranes and 

 rafts and dredges about a battleship's 

 grave. What a reminder in life of death 

 — and of dreadful death! As one stood 

 on the bank of the artificial circular island 

 here constructed and looked down at that 

 naked, dismembered, rusted body, he felt 

 a sense of the force that was and is no 

 more. As a ruin, the "Maine" seemed 

 more melancholy than the Roman Forum 

 itself as you view it from the Capitohne 

 Hill. 



Every day, about noon, a breeze springs 

 up here. It cools you a bit after the great 

 heat of the city — much too hot for most 

 northerners — and you sit for a long time 

 in your sailboat, tacking about the two 

 and a halfmile wide inner harbor, loth to 

 go on shore. Perhaps you may sail to 

 Regla, opposite Havana, across the harbor, 

 or down to the weather-beaten fortress 

 of Cabana, with Morro Castle at the 

 harbor's entrance. 



Then you sail back to Havana, and op- 

 posite the landing-place enter a quaint 



restaurant. Mounting to the second-story 

 esplanade, you order your fish-in-a-paper- 

 bag and other sea delicacies, and then, 

 looking out from amidst the potted shrubs, 

 settle down to the enjoyment of a new 

 view of the harbor. It is a remarkably 

 widespread view. Beyond Regla there is 

 a grove of palms ; otherwise there is 

 little of the tropical in the vegetation as 

 seen from this distance save that it is 

 green in December. 



In the harbor are craft of all sorts — 

 from transatlantic steamers of ten to fif- 

 teen thousand tonnage and the great 

 Standard Oil boats (like floating docks in 

 their immense length) to the coastal steam- 

 ers and freighters, to the harbor lighters 

 and guadafios (heavily built passenger 

 boats), to the motor boats and yachts, to 

 the sailboats and rowboats with that 

 fascinating cover over the aft part, like 

 the craft on the Italian lakes, to keep off 

 the Southern sun from the too sensitive 

 voj'ager. 



The harbor unites the strenuous with the 

 serene. Unloading and loading mean a 

 lot of labor. And yet the labor seems 

 to go on unnervously, perhaps because of 

 the tropical climate, which discourages 

 over-exertion. Certainly the labor is not 

 accompanied by as many shrill sounds as 

 one might expect from the rather raucous 

 voices of the Cuban children and women — - 

 the men's voices seem better modulated. 

 Now and then one hears a guttural excla- 

 mation from a Spanish sailor, and then 

 the creaking of the rigging from a near-by 

 sail as the boat comes smoothly into port. 

 And one hears constantly the cries of the 

 drivers below in the busy San Pedro (the 

 street connecting all the docks and ware- 

 houses), and the cracking of whips, and 

 occasionally the honk-honk of an auto- 

 mobile — a strange sight in the old town — 

 and always the crunching of heavy loads 

 over the cobble-stone pavement ; always, 

 too, the puffing of motor boats and tugs. 

 But when one thinks of the hubbub about 

 the quays of Naples or Barcelona, Havana 

 does not seem noisy, but there is plenty 

 of business activity nevertheless. 



HAVANA S BUDGET 



The budget of Havana for the new fiscal 

 year amounts to $3,882,981. There was 

 some opposition in the City Council about 

 passing the budget because the calculated 

 income of the city for the same length of 

 time is $3,327,602, without taking into ac- 

 count that part of this income, amounting 



to approximately $335,890, is in the form 

 of deposits and will have to be paid back. 

 Unless the income of the city is increased, 

 these figures show a deficit of about 



$891,269. _ 



The value of United States exports of 

 sewing machines to Cuba in the last fiscal 

 vear amounted to $364,030. 



