To Cuba and Back — Background and Themes

A Sailor's Eye on the Steamer

Dana, best known for Two Years Before the Mast, brings a mariner's vocabulary to his description of the steamer Cahawba. He notes that the ship 'swings off, gathers way, and enters upon her voyage, in a quiet like that of a bank or counting-room.' The simile is telling: the voyage is a business transaction, not a romantic adventure. He contrasts the silent, sign-based commands of the crew with the 'tearing and rending escape of steam' common on other vessels, implying a preference for order and competence. The passengers are catalogued with dry precision: 'shivering Cubans, exotics that have taken slight root in the hothouses of the Fifth Avenue,' Yankee shipmasters, invalids, and a 'mere vacationmaker, like myself.' This self-deprecating aside is one of the few personal notes; Dana generally keeps himself in the background, letting the scene speak.

The Tropical Orchard and Its Proprietor

On a visit to a coffee plantation, Dana describes the landscape as 'a huge, dense, tropical orchard' rather than a forest, a distinction that reflects his taxonomic habit of mind. The avenue of royal palms is 'as clear and straight and wide as a city mall,' and the plants are listed in a lawyerly enumeration: 'oranges and limes, bananas and plantains, cocoas and pineapples, and of cedar and mango, mignonette and allspice.' The proprietor appears 'in the exact dress and with the exact manners of urban life,' and his politeness is 'truly French.' Dana captures the tension between the idyllic setting and the economic pressures that threaten it: the aged owner 'cannot find the heart to lay it waste for the monotonous cane-field.' The passage reveals Dana's sympathy for the old horticultural order and his unease with the industrial sugar ingenio.

The Sugar Plantation's Daily Rhythm

At the sugar plantation, Dana records the evening routine: 'distributing food, turning on the night gang for night work, and closing the gates.' The phrase 'night gang' is stark, and the gates suggest confinement. An alarm sends the hounds out; Chartrand, the companion, investigates. Dana speculates on the possibilities: 'A Negro may have attempted to steal out, or some strange Negro may be trying to steal in, or some prowling white, or free black, has been reconnoitering.' The list is deliberately inclusive, but the repeated 'Negro' underscores the racialized surveillance. Dana adds, 'These are the terms on which this system is carried on,' a terse judgment that avoids moralizing while making the system's coercive nature clear. The morning departure includes a glimpse of the enslaved workers kneeling for 'la benedición' and saying 'Buenos días, Señor'—a ritual that Dana records without comment, letting the reader infer the power dynamics.

Dana's Diction: Precision and Restraint

Dana's word choices often carry implicit critique. He describes a neglected burying-ground that the planter 'is ashamed to have me see,' and notes that the padre 'takes big fees for burials, and lets it go to ruin.' The economic language—'taxed,' 'fees'—frames neglect as a financial transaction. When he writes of the 'life-consuming toil of the ingenio,' the compound adjective is unusual for Dana, who generally avoids hyperbole. His descriptions of the Cuban landscape are similarly exact: the red earth, the winding lanes, the 'green-leaved, the evergreen-leaved coffee plant.' This botanical precision contrasts with the vagueness of social categories he encounters, such as 'free black' or 'mulatto.' Dana's restraint—his refusal to editorialize—gives his observations the weight of testimony.

Dana's narrative is less a travelogue than a series of sketches held together by a lawyer's cross-examining eye. Readers attuned to the interplay of description and silence will find a work that documents Cuba on the eve of great change, filtered through a consciousness shaped by the sea and the courtroom. The book rewards attention to its small, telling details: the engineer who will return to the Merrimack in May, the hounds in the dark, the kneeling slaves at dawn.