22 



THE CUBA REVIEW. 



Charms of Santiago de Cuba. 



The hand that should have dci)ic;cd San- 

 tiago was Lafcadio liearn's. He was color 

 mad, and a genius, too. In hues exquisite 

 he has painted most of the Antillean cities. 

 If he had seen Santiago he would have 

 made the brain swim with rapture. Hearn 

 really died without knowing how dreaming 

 houses could be done in colors that haunt 

 one. Santiago reminds us of another writer 

 in whose books quaint and human houses 

 and overlooked nooks in cities are treas- 

 ured — Mr. George Cable. Into what trans- 

 ports bosky dwellings on side streets in 

 Santiago would throw him. We know of 

 an advocate's house under the cathedral's 

 shadow that in tantalizing conceit of archi- 

 tecture and profusion of caressing roses 

 and jasmines and other brilliant tlowers 

 rivaling it in their tints would make any- 

 thing in the Creole quarter of New Orleans 

 garish and obtrusive. The lure of this place 

 would have transfixed Cable and spellbound 

 him. 



If one could lead the spirit of John Ruskin 

 round the corner to the little laurel shaded 

 plaza which receives its hourly benediction 

 from the cathedral, we wonder whether he 

 would not improve upon his description of 



the tower of gaunt Calais church, of which 

 one never forgets "the large neglect, the 

 noble unsightliness of it, the record of its 

 years written so visibly, yet without sign 

 of wca!<ness and decay, its stern wasteness 

 and gloom." We believe Ruskin would have 

 done even better with the cathedral on the 

 hill where Diego Velasquez was buried 

 1522. Of the illustrious ghosts Velasquez 

 is only one of many, although most of the 

 others are visitors. No one standing in a 

 turret of crumbling Morro and from that 

 vantage point surveying the majestic am- 

 phitheatre of mountains, the town asleep 

 down there by the Marina among its palms, 

 the mirroring harbor flowing in and out 

 among the foothills, the rock guarded eddy- 

 ing channel that gives its waters passage 

 to the Caribbean, and the mirage blue of 

 that silent waste of sea — no one feeling the 

 spell of all this can forget the illustrious 

 shades of Santiago : that here Hernando 

 Cortez, the ever valiant, was alcalde, and 

 through that harbor mouth steered his cara- 

 vels to the conquest of Mexico ; that Gri- 

 valja went hence to the loot of Yucatan ; that 

 Hernando De Sota, of Estramadura, was 

 Governor in the palace before he passed to 

 the quest that brought him to the bank of the 



A Street in Santiago de Cuba. 



