Читать книгу A summer on the borders of the Caribbean sea - J. Dennis Harris - Страница 12

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FIRST RIDE IN THE COUNTRY—PASTORISA PLACE.

YANKEE is known by the shortness of his stirrups;” so they say here, and I do not know that the criticism is at all too severe. Except Willis and one or two others, who of the Americans know any thing about riding? The Dominicans are good on horseback. In fact, it is their boast that they can ride or march further in two days than Americans want to go in a week. On the other hand, if “Los Yankees” had this country they would soon fix it so that a man could go over it all before the Dominicans got breakfast. Señor Pastorisa, (of the firm of Pastorisa, Collins & Co., formerly of St. Thomas,) who married a native, is mounted on a cream-colored horse, (cost $300,) and wears behind him a sword in a silver-gilt case. Every male person wears a sword of some kind, even though it prove to be as useless as an old case-knife. It is an old, superannuated, hundred-years-behind-the-age custom; yet in some instances serves as their Court of Appeals. No one disturbs you, and you are expected to be as well behaved; but if not, the difficulty is generally settled at the sword’s point, and there it ends. How magnanimous even is this rude mode of settling disputes when compared to that of the one-sided, blaspheming, defrauding den of thieves called a court of justice in the States! Coming from a land where men kill each other without warning, instead of a sword which I would not know how to use, I buy a pair of holsters for horseman’s pistols, throw them across the saddle, and am ready.

Now there may be no pistols in these holsters, of course, but what is the difference so long as they are supposed to be there? I take it as one of the grand lessons which the world’s history teaches, that men are far more afraid of supposed and imaginary dangers than of those they know to be real. The number of backsliding sinners and snake-story witnesses are innumerable.

We were now at the base of the St. Mark’s mountain, which rises just back of the town of Porto Plata. The so-called road was no road at all. There were little narrow trenches running between the rocks, fit for pack-mules, but scarcely wide enough to allow one’s feet to pass. Up the mountain we came poco á poco. While passing these rocks the sun poured down with an intensity not previously experienced. But I had never been an alderman, and was not fat enough to melt; indeed, it might as well have shone on a pine knot. Ere long the sun hid behind a cloud, the thunder muttered a little, but pretty soon, as if by way of repentance, there came a restorative shower of tears. (Thank Heaven! the nigger question vanquished the sun.) Nothing is so calculated to make a man vain as a mountain shower. You enjoy its ineffable sensations yourself, while below you behold the poor valley fellows sweating in the sun. Or it may be they are drowning wet below, and you basking in the clear sunshine above. Either way, you are bound to rejoice and to look with contempt on the silly ones who make themselves miserable by regretting and whining over things that are in themselves unalterable, and need no change. The wise repine not.

Over the mountain and beside a stream, with limes scattered plentifully around, we stop a moment for refreshment. Lemonade is cheap, one would think; the limes are as free as the water. Had nature furnished the sweetening as well, we should have had a river of lemonade.

Here country settlements begin again, called estancias, which, if you will get a blackboard and a piece of chalk, I will explain. Mark off, say four acres of land, clear it up—let the fruit-trees stand, of course—enclose it, but plant nothing therein. In the centre of this piece erect a shanty. This much is called a conuco. Now go through the woods, say a mile and a half, clear up four acres more and plant tobacco. The next year or two this will be gone to weeds; you then (not knowing the use of a plow) go another half mile, clear up another piece and plant a new crop. The old place has gone to wreck, the new place is in its vigor; but neither is in sight of the house. This together is called an estancia, and I should have said before meant a farm, but it does not mean a farm in English by a good deal.

At this point we leave the “road,” and, under full gallop half the while, take through the wood, guided by a dim path which winds over the hills and down the dales with as careless an indiscrimination as ever road was trodden by a prairie herd. L’Ouverture’s feats or Putnam’s celebrated escape would do to read about, but this was reducing the thing to practice.

Five miles’ gallop over a level plain—thirty miles in all—and we have reached Pastorisa Place: it is a perfect Arcadia.

During leisure moments I shall probably look back to this day’s ride and to these enchanting scenes as one of the “gilt letter” chapters of my life; but at present, after a bath, the rapidity with which fried plantains, pine-apple syrup, and scorched sweet milk will disappear, would do a dyspeptic Northerner good to see!

The property comes by Señora Pastorisa. She is, perhaps, five-and-twenty. Her eyes are as bright and dark as even Lord Byron could have wished them to be. Her complexion is that of a clear ripe orange. The place is extensive, containing say nineteen thousand acres, in a valley five miles wide, fenced in on either side by a spear of mountains, with a limpid stream running through the centre. Mocking-birds enliven every thing; parrots and paroquettes go around in droves, screaming and squawking like a very nuisance. Back of the house is a grove appropriated to honey-bees. They swarm on every log. (There were certainly over one hundred swarms.) Honey is considered of but little value anywhere in the mountains, and is often wasted in the streams, the wax only being preserved. This comes of having pack-mules and goat-paths instead of wagons and wagon-roads.

Señor Pastorisa had informed me before of his desire to quit the town and improve his farm. All he needed was men who understood farming on the American plan. He has a plow, and intends harnessing an ox to-morrow to try the experiment of plowing. Now, it is clear that to plow the ground very successfully he will need at least a yoke of oxen—which he has, all but the yoke. This I would undertake to make, though I never did such a thing in my life, and always had a horror of an ox-yoke, anyway; but lo! there are no tools. So Señor Pastorisa needs hands, but with a very little a priori reasoning it will be seen there are other things needed quite as much. One is a road. There is a natural outlet to the valley—there must be. The stream before the door makes towards the Isabella river. The Isabella empties into the sea, of course.

I forgot to say Señora Pastorisa is “a little tinged”—the handsomest woman in the world.