SAN CRISTÓBAL
DE LA HABANA
THE WORKS OF
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
NOVELS
- THE LAY ANTHONY [1914]
- MOUNTAIN BLOOD [1915]
- THE THREE BLACK PENNYS [1917]
- JAVA HEAD [1918]
- LINDA CONDON [1919]
SHORTER STORIES
- GOLD AND IRON [1918]
- THE HAPPY END [1919]
TRAVEL
- SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LA HABANA
Published in New York by
A L F R E D A. K N O P F
and for sale at all bookshops
SAN CRISTÓBAL
DE LA HABANA
BY
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
"Many yeeres since I had knowledge by
relation of that great and golden Citie
which the Spaniards call El Dorado."
Sir Walter Ralegh
NEW YORK
ALFRED · A · KNOPF
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
H. J. B. BAIRD
An
Havana
which he is free
to decline in every particular
save the
dedication
SAN CRISTÓBAL
DE LA HABANA
THERE are certain cities, strange to thefirst view, nearer the heart than home.But it might be better to acknowledgethat, perhaps, the word home has a wider anddeeper significance than any mere geographicaland family setting. Many men are alienin houses built from the traditions of theirblood; the most inaccessible and obdurateparts of the earth have always been restlesslysought by individuals driven not so much byexterior pressure as by a strange necessity toinhabit a barren copper mountain, a fevercoast, or follow to the end of life a river lostin a savage remoteness, hiding the secret oftheir unquenchable longing.
Not this, precisely, happened to me, approachingHavana in the early morning, nothingso tyrannical and absolute; yet, watchingthe silver greenness of Cuba rising from theblue sea, I had a premonition that what I sawwas of peculiar importance to me. I grew atonce impatient and sharply intent on the resolvingof a nebulous, and verdant mass intothe details of dense slopes, slopes that showed,from the sea to their crowns, no break in adark foliage. The sombreness of the leavesimmediately marked the land from an accustomedregion of bright maples—they were atonce dark, glossy, and heavy, an effect I hadoften tried to describe, and their presence insuch utter expanses filled me with pleasure.It was exactly as though the smooth lustroushills before me had been created out ofan old mysterious desire to realize them in