Cuba Past and Present

Name: Cuba Past and Present
Author: Richard Davey

by Richard Davey

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Language: en1,063 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Cuba -- History Cuba -- Description and travel

In: History - Other·Environmental Issues·Archaeology & Anthropology

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #35872.

About this book

Richard Davey’s “Cuba Past and Present” is a travel‑history hybrid that blends personal observation with a collage of recent facts supplied by friends and a range of contemporary sources. The author opens by declaring the work a “result of personal observation… supplemented” with documents from the Genoese archives and other recent research, then proceeds to a detailed geographical and natural description of the island, from its serpentine coastline and mountain ranges to its flora, fauna, and agricultural products. The contents list reveals a structure that moves from broad surveys of the island’s geography and population to chapters on rebellion, city life, plantation culture, and even “weird stories,” capped by appendices on Columbus’s youth and unpublished West Indian documents.

Written in a late‑19th‑century prose style, the book carries the voice of a well‑traveled, earnest observer who mixes factual reporting with anecdotal flair. Its blend of geography, natural history, and sociopolitical commentary will appeal to readers who enjoy scholarly travel narratives, early Caribbean historiography, or anyone seeking a richly detailed portrait of Cuba as it was perceived in the era before modern tourism.

The opening · free to read

PREFACE.

Any contribution to Cuban literature cannot, if so I may call it, but possess considerable interest at this absorbing moment. The following pages embody the experience gathered during a visit to Cuba some years ago, and to this I have added many facts and memoranda bestowed by friends whose knowledge of the country is more recent than my own, and information collected from various works upon Cuba and West Indian subjects. I do not pretend that the book is an authoritative text-book on Cuban matters--I give it as the result of personal observation, so far as it goes, supplemented in the manner already indicated; and as such I believe it will not be found lacking in elements of interest and entertainment. Certain chapters on Columbus and on the West Indian Manuscripts in the Colonial Exhibition have been included as an Appendix.

The description of the youth of Columbus, the "Great Discoverer," has never, so far as I am aware, been attempted before in the English tongue. It appeared to me to be appropriate to a work on the island he was the first to discover, and I have therefore included it in this book. It is founded on original and authentic documents, discovered in the Genoese Archives by the late Marchese Staglieno. These I have carefully examined and verified, and to the facts therein contained I have added others, which I have myself unearthed in the course of my own researches in the CittA Superba.

The chapter on the Colonial Exhibition Manuscripts speaks for itself, and my readers will be struck by the fact that the condition of the British West Indian Colonies, at the close of the last century, resembled in many respects not a little that of Cuba at the end of ours.

The chapter on the Bahamas, which closes the volume, has been inserted to mark an evident contrast, and point a moral, which will hardly escape the thoughtful reader's eye.

I cannot forbear paying here a tribute to the memory of the very remarkable American gentleman, the late Mr George Wilkes, in whose company I first saw the beautiful "Pearl of the Antilles." On the important paper which he founded, the New York Spirit of the Times, I worked for several very happy years, and I take this opportunity of expressing to its present editor and to Mr Stephen Fiske, my gratitude for much and constant courtesy, shown me ever since I left its staff.