Feb. 5, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
209 
we suffer surprise, if not a feeling of incredu¬ 
lity, when we come to find horrors of the dark 
continent barbarously interlaced with doctrines 
of the church, and all within the precincts of 
what is looked upon as a civilized country. 
As I said before, the inhabitants of San Diego 
were wont to go abroad in the hours of twi¬ 
light. Usually a small crowd gathered about 
the door of the hotel; and, indeed, the place 
seemed to play the part of a menagerie or 
zoo for these simple-minded mountain folk. 
Often, while we were seated at the supper table, 
a round-eyed contingent of women and boys and 
little girls would stand on the outskirts and 
with docile curiosity watch us eat. No doubt 
our presence afforded them some entertainment, 
and while they continued to gaze we, feeling 
freshened and hearty after a ride in the moun¬ 
tains, ate the savory Spanish viands that Fran- 
throng of listeners appeared to fire the planter. 
He played tempestuously and phrased ferocious¬ 
ly, reeling off waltz after waltz until the very 
walls shook. Then he plunged into Cavalliera 
Rusticana and his crescendoes rose and fell until 
I watched the piano keys, fearful lest they should 
fly off. Nevertheless he had many admirers. 
The old senora rocked to and fro in her chair, 
listening with evident pleasure; his companion 
sprawled against one end of the piano in rapt 
attention, while outside the people stood quietly 
about, attending his thunder strokes in solemn 
appreciation. At length, having exhausted his 
repertoire, he rose from the piano, and with the 
manner of an artist bringing his concert to a 
conclusion, bowed himself out and mounted the 
stairs to bed. 
It was full moon' when we were at San Diego, 
and what with the sun-flooded noons and raoon- 
ened and swam in a gulf of shifting rose and 
gold and lavender. Far over the east luminous 
shades of purple and violet pulsed and waned 
and brightened until you felt as though you 
were looking into the depth of a magic sea or 
the well springs of some vast enchantment. Fre¬ 
quently against this wall of beautiful color, or 
hanging in the path of a shred of burning 
cloud, you would see great flocks of buzzards, 
sailing, swinging, soaring, as in the skies of 
early morning. Then abruptly twilight would 
fall into the blue-black solitudes of night, star- 
girdled and calm. 
Every evening about this time we walked 
down the road toward Paso Real to watch the 
moon rise. It was as if this old goddess of 
romance had been blown up like a soap bubble 
from the under world, so lightly and buoyantly 
did she float into the sky. 
rv 
SCENES AT SAN DIEGO DE LOS BANOS. 
cesco set before us, drank Rioja claret and lis¬ 
tened to the bubbling rhapsodies of a dozen or 
more thrushes hung outside in the court yard. 
Later in the evening, if someone by chance sat 
down to the piano, the audience immediately in¬ 
creased, and from behind every window bar a 
dark face would eagerly peer. 
The second night after our arrival two plant¬ 
ers stopped off for a meal and a bed before 
continuing their journey to Pinar del Rio. They 
were booted and travel-stained, wore broad- 
brimmed panamas and white clothes, which they 
carried off with a certain amount of good breed¬ 
ing. The elder was a thick set man with a 
walrus mustache. His near-sighted eyes ap¬ 
peared strangely magnified through a pair of 
large spectacles, and all the while he conversed 
fluently and continuously in Spanish with the in¬ 
mates of the house. His companion was tall, 
spare and cut somewhat of a romantic figure. 
He had a mass of glossy black hair, dreamy 
brown eyes and an esthetic cast of features. 
You might have taken him for a budding poet 
or a musician, but after supper it was the older 
man who turned to the piano. At the first notes 
a dozen heads flashed in the doorway, and by 
the time a few bars were finished a consider¬ 
able audience had gathered. The presence of a 
lit nights, the days were richly provided. We 
ate, slept and rode; we bathed in the luxuriant 
sulphur springs; on the broad-shaded balcony 
upstairs we took our ease, letting our glance 
wander over the wide spaces of palm country 
to the verduous slopes of the Sierra de los Or- 
gano and over the little garden at our feet, 
with its oranges hanging like golden balls in 
the sunlight, and a summery flavor of growing 
things abroad upon the air. Once, when we 
were walking under these same orange trees 
our companion, who was a Cuban and well ac¬ 
quainted with the history of San Diego, stop¬ 
ped before the butt of an old tree which had 
evidently been cut down for some years. 
“On theese tree a Spanish doctor keel him¬ 
self,” said he. “You see, hang by thee neck. 
It was very sad. I know him myself. After¬ 
ward they cut thee tree down to make thee 
garden forget.” 
Westward from the hotel stood a grove of 
venerable palms over which the sun nightly low¬ 
ered his colors. The trees stood close together, 
their sleek, ringed boles looking like pillars of 
chalk, and the glossy fronds waving like a sea 
of wonderful green feathers. Shortly after the 
sun had gone down a sheet of glowing color 
ran up into the sky, while the palm tops dark- 
/ 
Often, as we walked, a party of Cubans passed 
us on the road going into San Diego, the ponies 
looking shadowy and unreal and the riders loom¬ 
ing up like giants. You could hear them com¬ 
ing perhaps a mile or so away, jabbering loudly 
and going at a canter over the hard, smooth 
road. One night a man rode by on a pony no 
bigger than a goat, and in a voice tremulous 
with pride bade us “Good night” in English. 
Sometimes our presence sent a big steer stumb¬ 
ling out of the ditch close beside us, and I re¬ 
call one time when the silence of the night was 
broken by the sound of dancing at a distant 
plantation, and the peculiar scraping throb of 
Cuban music. 
As we went further away the lights of the 
town grew beady and motionless; now and then 
the pungent smoke from a bush fire, or the 
roaming sweetness of tropical blossoms assailed 
our nostrils, and strangely and potently the near¬ 
ness of the sea, or the illusion, whichever you 
care to call it, would come to play on one’s 
imagination. The mountains, it appeared, were 
only large doors, against which it knocked and 
rumbled and dreamily rolled its frothy combers. 
Always I shall think of San Diego as intimately 
connected with this ocean spell as bearing on 
its mountain airs the influence of vast engird- 
