A Cuban City in the United States
Key West, February, 1891.
Key West, in Spanish Cayo Hueso (Bone Island), derived its name, so says history, from the fact that the island was strewn with human bones. The conquerors didn’t take time to bury the bones of the conquered. The change, corruption Spaniards call it, from Cayo Hueso to Key West was easy.
The United States bought the island from Spain in 1816. The formation is coral and it contains about two thousand acres. The Hon. C. B. Pendleton, editor and proprietor of the Equator-Democrat, and a man of culture who has served in the State Senate, showed me an island, or key, as they call it in these parts, distant from Key West five miles, and which he believed to be the most southerly point in the United States. Another authority informed me that Cape Sable, distant from Key West about sixty miles, is the most southerly point.
To quote Editor Pendleton, Key West is distant from the tropical line only thirteen miles. Doctors will differ; another authority gives it as sixty miles. I am inclined to think that on the tropical question my editorial brother is correct in his estimate, because Key West is only distant from Cuba eighty or ninety miles.
The climate is about the same as that of Havana. In the Cuban capital the mercury never goes below sixty degrees; in Key West the lowest point recorded is fifty-one.
Key West is the ninth port of entry in the United States, collecting more import duty than all the other ports in the States of Florida and Georgia and one-half of Alabama combined.
In 1860 the population was about two thousand, one-quarter of whom were colored; but in 1869, after the rebellion in Cuba, the population of the island began to increase and now it numbers twenty-two thousand, and they claim that it is the largest city in Florida.
The inhabitants are mixed, very much mixed—Cubans, negroes, Americans, Chinese, etc. The negroes come from Nassau, Cuba and other places.
Key West was bought of Spain, as before remarked; the island is nearer Cuba than any other land, it is not in any sense American except that it flies the American flag, and it seems to be now, to all intents and purposes, a foreign place—a Spanish colony, as it once was. Spanish is the prevailing language, and Cubans predominate. All the public notices and handbills are printed in two languages, several newspapers are printed in Spanish, and only one, the Equator-Democrat, in English. It is difficult to make a purchase or to transact any business unless you speak Spanish, and there are few drivers or conductors of street cars who can understand you if addressed in English. The car drivers swear at their patient, sadly abused mules in hard Spanish. All the American residents and business men speak the prevailing tongue, or are learning it as fast as they can, for without it they cannot so readily conduct business.
Speaking of the street cars, they are all open, of course, winter and summer. In fact, there is never anything resembling northern winter weather in Key West; light summer clothes and Panama hats are worn the year round.
But you are not obliged to patronize street cars. Riding in private conveyances is at a cheaper rate of fare than even in London, or in a country town on the Continent. In London the smallest cab fare is one shilling (twenty-five cents); in Key West you can ride a short distance for a dime, and a longer distance for fifteen cents. The conveyance is a very light and very dirty wagonette on four wheels. The driver is as dirty as his vehicle, and his horse resembles those poor skeletons which are blindfolded and pushed into the arena at a Cuban bull fight.
Such tropical fruits as the sugar apple, the guava, mango, the soft and sweet sapadillo, thrive in Key West. The climate and salt atmosphere combine to make it the home of the palm. There are many tall, slender and beautiful cocoanut trees, some with their graceful leaves waving as high as eighty feet in the air, making an interesting and pretty picture against a cloudless sky.
But the cultivation of the cocoanut in Key West might be made very profitable as well as picturesque. At present there are comparatively few of such trees; their cultivation ought to be encouraged. The tree has no tap root, and will thrive on a thin soil. It comes into bearing eight or ten years from the nut; and after that the fruit grows and increases every month in the year. Like the orange tree, the older it gets the more it bears. A bearing cocoanut grove costs less to care for than an orange grove, and the revenue therefrom is greater. It requires no cultivation, and is as hardy in its section as the cabbage palmetto, that grows everywhere in Florida. Besides, cocoanuts can be shipped in any month of the year; they require no packing, no care in handling, and they will bear transportation for thousands of miles. There is a good market for green cocoanuts in these parts as well as for matured ones. When the nut is fully grown, but green, it contains about two glasses of clear juice, milk we call it in the North. It is considered a healthful beverage in the tropics and sells per glass in the streets of Havana for the equivalent of five cents.
Nature has favored Key West with a perfect climate. It is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico, as blue and as beautiful as the famous Danube. Nature in fact has done everything she could to make the place desirable as a residence for man, but man has done little or nothing for himself, thus far, and if the truth must be told, notwithstanding its favorable natural conditions and its lovely surroundings, Key West is not yet a desirable place to live in. It has no sanitary laws, for nothing whatever has been done with a view to sanitation, and yet with the salt ocean all around the little island, how easy it would be to make it healthy and clean, for it is neither one nor the other. There is no such thing as system, no sewerage whatever in the town excepting one iron pipe which leads from one hotel, the Russell House, to the sea, and even that one pipe is allowed to clog occasionally.
A liberally illustrated and large edition of the Equator-Democrat was issued in 1889, which presents a very rose-colored view of Key West. In that paper I find that “the pleasant streets running at right angles are as smooth and hard as adamant.” I am not certain that I am very well acquainted with adamant, but I know that the streets of Key West are unpaved and that they are the roughest and the dirtiest streets I ever saw. As I have lived in Baltimore, in New York and in New Orleans, my testimony ought to be accepted on such a theme. I speak of Key West in fine weather; what it must be in wet weather I don’t like to imagine. If nothing but very deep ruts, holes and great gullies in the roadway resemble adamant then is Key West adamantine beyond doubt.
There is not a boot-black in the town; none is needed. Nobody thinks of blacking his shoes; it would be absurd. I spoke on this point with a young New Yorker who hails from the fashionable precincts of Madison avenue. He is a business man who is liberal in the matter of money, usually dressy, and extremely neat in his person. He has been in Key West six months, and in all that time not a brush has passed over his shoes.
I regret to differ with my learned and courteous friend, the editor of the Democrat, on the subject of hotels. Let him speak for himself. He says that “The Russell House, the leading hotel in the city, is second to none in the State in accommodations.” Now I had an idea that St. Augustine and Jacksonville and Tampa were in Florida, and that there were such hotels “in the State” as the Ponce de Leon and The Cordova at St. Augustine, and the new Tampa Bay Hotel at Tampa Bay, not to mention a number of other first-class houses “in the State.”
Directly opposite the Russell is the Duval House. You may never have heard of it; it is not one-third the size of the Russell House. I know nothing of the apartments of the Duval. for I investigated no further than the dining-room, but that was enough to establish its good reputation. It will be a long time before I forget how beautifully garnished a dish they made at the Duval of a red snapper, and the delicious flavor of their omelette soufflée remains with me still. The Duval is presided over by a Cuban lady, Mrs. Bolio, who kept for years one of the leading hotels in Havana. She is evidently a woman who knows what good living is.
Cigar-making is a very large and important industry in Key West. The place was selected for cigar-making because the climate is suited to the “curing” of tobacco in the leaf, and because it is near Havana. There is something also in the name. Everybody does not know that this (Spanish) island is United States territory, and some smokers if they see a “Key West” label on a box of cigars believe, without stopping to think, that they are smoking a foreign-made cigar. Now a Key West cigar if made from Havana tobacco of fine quality has just as good a flavor as if it were made in Cuba, but the Key West cigar can be sold at a lower price because the import duty on cigars is much higher than the duty on the raw material.
Having the same climate as Havana, the best climate in the world for tobacco curing, and the cigars being made by Cubans, who are the best cigar-makers in the world, Key West turns out just as good cigars as can be produced anywhere—provided always that tobacco of the first quality is used. And the cigar need not consist entirely of Havana tobacco. A cigar of choice flavor is made of a mixture of tobaccos—Havana “filler” and “binder,” with, say, a “Connecticut seed” or Sumatra wrapper.
The manufacture of cigars has without doubt aided largely in building up the business of Key West. One authority says that there are two hundred factories, employing five thousand operatives, and transacting a business amounting to seven millions of dollars annually. But this report may be exaggerated. However, here are some more figures, and if the reader is mathematically inclined he can draw his own conclusions: Key West during 1890 turned out one hundred and forty millions of cigars.
There are very few Spanish or American cigarmakers in Key West; the majority are Cubans, with a very small sprinkling of negroes. There are so many factories and so many operatives that, although it is a cigar-producing place, very few cigars indeed are sold at retail. Everybody smokes, every one invites you to smoke; cigars are almost as free as the air. It would be a paradise for a young dude who has a slender purse and who is addicted to the weed.
Upon the courteous invitation of P. Pohalski & Co., who have a branch in Havana, with headquarters in Warren street, New York, I paid a visit to their factory, which is one of the largest in Key West, and I was much interested in what I saw. Pohalski & Co. erected their own factory, upon their own ground, and it is one of the most imposing edifices in Key West. They also built upon their own land a number of small houses which they rent to their workmen at a moderate figure; for its size it is quite a respectable colony.
Although very large, employing several hundred hands, the factory is orderly, exceedingly clean and neat, showing good government. Perfect system reigns throughout the entire establishment. The first floor is used for the business offices, for cases of tobacco and for the “strippers;” the whole of the second floor is occupied by cigar makers, and the third floor is used by the “packers,” also for curing leaf tobacco and for storing cigars in boxes.
A “stripper” is one who, with the dexter finger and thumb of the right hand pulls the stem from the leaf while the leaf is damp, the leaf being held in the left hand. It is done by a dexterous and quick movement, not a vestige of the leaf remaining on the stem. The most costly leaves, for wrappers, are only entrusted to experienced operators. The strippers in this factory are numbered by scores. They are all females, all Cubans, and range in age from ten years old to women of fifty.
It is not a pleasing sight to one who associates woman with habits of refinement, to see the older women, while at their work of stripping, smoke long, thick cigars. They hold the cigar between their teeth and seldom remove it, not even to talk. They are rough-looking cigars, rolled into shape by the women themselves from the leaves they are stripping.
A more pleasing picture is presented on the cigar-making floor, above. You will be surprised upon entering to see a man standing erect in the centre of the room, book in hand, reading aloud. You cannot help but notice, although Spanish may be Greek to you, that the reader’s voice is powerful and well trained, reaching to the extreme corners and to the most distant ears on the vast floor. He is a professional reader. The several hundred men club together, each paying a nominal sum for the reader’s services. In this way, while engaged in their work, they hear the news of the day and are regaled with the latest Spanish novel.
“Packing” cigars is a technical term. It is not simply to tie them up with pretty silk ribbons and place them neatly in a box. A packer is one who assorts the colors also. It is a very nice and delicate piece of work. It demands a good eye for color and long experience, and then it can only be done in a certain light, of course not by artificial light, nor unless the day is bright.
An overcast, murky and heavy sky is not good for packing—assorting, it might be called. In a few hundred loose cigars placed on a table ready for “packing,” the casual observer will probably see only three or four colors. They are first assorted roughly to bring together those of decided colors—light brown, medium, dark brown, etc. Then a pile of dark or light shades is gone over again and again until the different piles of cigars are alike, as if they were all made from one leaf and turned out by machinery. The packer also discards a cigar that is not perfectly made, or one not uniform with the rest. A special few, exact as to form and hue, are selected for the top row, to catch and please the eye of the smoker when the lid of the box is raised. A good packer is paid better than any other operative in the business. Men and women are employed in it, some of them earning as high as twenty-five or thirty-five dollars per week.
The sponge trade is also a very large and important industry here. The sponges are found in this part of the Gulf of Mexico, and the trade gives employment to a great many people. I visited the largest sponge house, that of Arapian & Co., and saw there in different stages, sponges valued at a quarter of a million dollars. Such a stock of sponges, as you can easily imagine, occupies much space. My only surprise was to find such valuable merchandise housed in a light frame building. A fire would spread easily, and the whole would be rapidly consumed.
I have spoken of the dirty, unpaved streets of Key West; it would be unfair not to mention a lovely drive which you can take for a few miles on the edge of the Gulf. You go around the old forts, you see lighthouses and other interesting objects en route, the bracing air from the Gulf fans your cheeks, the ocean is spread out before you, and if you return in the early evening, and near dinner time, you will most likely be favored with a grand sunset, and you will surely have a keen appetite.
Key West is reached from New York by steamers of the Mallory line, and from New Orleans by New Orleans and Havana steamers, but decidedly the best and most luxurious way of going to the island is by the Plant line of steamers which leave Tampa, Florida and Havana, Cuba, three times a week. The “Mascotte” and “Olivette” were built for this route. They are both staunch, swift, beautifully appointed ships, whose commanders were in the Atlantic service for years, the “Olivette” being the fastest boat of her size in the world—a model vessel.
If you are going to Key West for pleasure—it is possible for people to go there with that end in view—you will go from New York to Jacksonville via the Pennsylvania and Atlantic coast lines and there take the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railroad, although part of this “railway” journey consists of a sail on the Gulf of Mexico, from Tampa.
The island, with all its objectionable features, has churches of different denominations, it has convents, good schools, and has one large substantial and beautiful brick and stone building for a custom house, for which the government appropriated one hundred thousand dollars.
Key West has a police force numbering fourteen officers, including men of all colors and several nationalities.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
AN ANCIENT CITY MODERNIZED.
St. Augustine, Fla., Feb. 8, 1891.
What a contrast, to leave the dust and dirt of Key West, its unpaved roadways, full of deep ruts, large holes and great gullies: Key West, with its mixed population of twenty thousand negroes, Cubans, Chinamen and white folks: Key West, minus sidewalks, and minus many evidences of a high state of civilization: what a contrast is it to arrive in this beautiful city of the South, with its smooth-paved streets, its clean and aristocratic air, and its three wondrously beautiful Spanish hotels, all within speaking distance of each other. It is like leaping, if I may use such an expression, from hades to heaven.
The changes here within the past three years are great. Most important to the tourist is the erection of a railway bridge which crosses the St. John’s River. Three years ago you were obliged to stop at Jacksonville if you approached from the north; if from the south, you steamed across on a ferry-boat from Palatka. Now you take your seat in a drawing-room car at Jersey City, in the North, or at Tampa, if you approach from the South, and you need not leave the car until the conductor calls out “St. Augustine”—thirty-one hours by vestibuled train from New York, twelve hours by the West India Fast Mail from the Gulf, at Tampa.
As to other changes, much land has been reclaimed from the river, miles of roadway have been asphalted and paved with wooden blocks; the old fort is being restored, for which work the government has appropriated $15,000; many new houses have been built, all of coquina and in the Moorish style; to the oldest house in the town has been added a new stone tower; there has been erected a new City Hall, which includes a fine market; and to crown it all, as it were, there is a new church, a Memorial Presbyterian Church, built in memory of the beautiful daughter Mr. Flagler lost two years ago. The structure is so attractive, so pleasing to the eye, that in driving away from it you find yourself constantly turning around to keep its graceful architectural lines in view as long as possible.
It is probably not possible to enhance the splendor of the Ponce de Leon Hotel, the drawing-room of which, with its magnificent proportions, its onyx fire-place, its ceiling decorations, its rich carpets and furniture, and its rare paintings by Bridgman, Koppay, and other artists, is not rivalled by any other hotel in the world. To call it palatial is no compliment to “the Ponce” parlor, for I have seen no apartments in royal palaces that are more pleasing, and I have been favored with a view of many palaces in many countries. But the approaches to the great hotel and its own grounds have been improved and are now finished.
The same remarks will apply to the exterior of the Alcazar Hotel, the smooth and pleasant walk around the outside of which measures just half a mile. The colored boys know: they use it semi-occasionally for a foot or bicycle race: “twice around the Alcazar is one mile” they will tell you.
One of the novel features of this establishment is a swimming pool, into which the sulphur water rushes up from the artesian well with great force. There is room in the pool (40 by 120 feet) for scores of swimmers, and there is always a number of visitors looking from the galleries above on the lively scene below. With the mercury ranging between 70 and 80 the sulphur water is indeed refreshing; and they say it is quite invigorating. Temperature of the water, 75 degrees.
In the Hotel Cordova you will notice some changes, for the indefatigable manager, E. N. Wilson, is never content with his efforts. There is a new dining-room for instance. The best seems not good enough for Mr. Wilson, and his critical eye is always finding some way to improve the house and to add to its comfort. He has redecorated the parlor. The walls are now richly papered but the tints are not satisfactory—to Mr. Wilson. The furniture and carpets are in dark colors, so Mr. Wilson later on contemplates covering the walls with white and gold for an artistic contrast. Expensive? Yes, I should say so, but who cares for the expense? Mr. Flagler has a very long purse and Mr. Wilson has carte blanche. If the owner in planning these hotels had thought only of pecuniary profit probably they would never have come into existence in their present form. It is an idea with him to beautify the ancient city, and a half million dollars more or less make little or no difference to Mr. Flagler. Yet his hotels are conducted with a careful regard of business-like methods, although this is not apparent to the casual observer.
By the way, I have the very best of reasons for knowing that Mr. Flagler’s private acts of charity are many and munificent. After making full and proper inquiry into a case presented to him he always responds, but he never wants his generous acts to be made public. He will not thank me for this “mention,” I feel sure, but it is his due and possibly no harm can come from printing it.
Mr. Flagler has bought all the land around and about his three hotels, so that nobody can erect anything anywhere near him. He is not the man to do anything by halves.
The sitting-room in which this is penned is one of a suite I occupy in the castellated tower on a corner of the Hotel Cordova. The walls of the building are of gray coquina. Outside each window is a small and separate “kneeling balcony,” protected by ornamental iron railings, painted a reddish brown—such balconies as you see in some buildings in Madrid. The windows have white lace curtains and the shades are alternate blue and crimson—contrasting pleasantly with the neutral tint of the outer walls. To the east, within stone’s throw, is Cordova Park; to the west, the same distance, is the one-acre park of the Alcazar, with its tropical foliage, pretty walks and handsome fountain; while diagonally opposite, same distance again (about one hundred feet), loom up the terra-cotta turrets, towers, arches and gabled roofs of the Ponce de Leon Hotel, with its grand park of four and a half acres. This may convey some idea of the situation; to describe the scene requires the pen if not the pencil of an artist.
The Cordova drawing-room has its tables and chairs, and it contains some books also; not odd volumes picked up haphazard, but books bought and selected by an artist, book-worm and connoisseur. In the Cordova library you will find “Burke’s Peerage,” “Almanach de Gotha,” “Webster’s Royal Red Book,” “Kelly’s Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes,” “The County Families of the United Kingdom,” Debrett’s “House of Commons and the Judicial Bench,” “Castles and Abbeys of England” and “Stately Homes of England.” I have enumerated only a few of the ordinary volumes relating to Great Britain, but there are also rare and valuable tomes richly and beautifully illustrated, descriptive of life and scenes in different countries. For instance, one set in three volumes is “Masterpieces of Industrial Art and Sculpture at the International Exhibition,” by J. B. Waring, published in 1862. This mammoth work is richly illuminated, bound in red morocco, picked out with gold, and measures one foot by a foot and a half. It probably cost in London twenty-five pounds, and gives one some idea of the money and good taste expended in selecting the Cordova library. If one is fond of instructive books his taste can be gratified at the Cordova.
At the majority of hotels you eat ordinary oranges, brought to the table direct from the store-room: at the Cordova only Indian River oranges are used, selected “Indian Rivers,” and instead of coming direct from the store-room they come from a refrigerator. After this process they become Grateful and Comforting, to quote the names which Epps, the famous cocoa man, gave his two daughters. Perfect quiet reigns in the dining-room. The waiters are governed, well governed, by a head waiter whose head is level. He would even satisfy that “cranky critic,” as he has been called, Max O’Rell. The men, when serving dinner, wear dress coats, black trousers and white cravats. Instead of a loose waistcoat they wear a broad black sash around the waist, and instead of noisy boots they wear shoes having cloth uppers and rubber soles—black tennis shoes. Not a word is heard from the servants, except in polite response to an order, and they glide about like dark angels.