"There Goes Cuba!" Naturalist at Large

by THOMAS BARBOUR

1

ON OUR first trip to Soloclad, Cuba, Rosamond and I stayed with a Captain Beal at Guabairo. He was a retired Danish sea captain who had charge of the colonia or section of the plantation with the lovely name, “The Whippoorwill.”We went over from Soledad on a track car and walked up to the house late in the afternoon. We ensconced ourselves very comfortably, found that evening that the captain had a most excellent cook, and looked forward to what the morrow might bring.

We arose early to a hurried breakfast and set out afoot as dawn was breaking, that loveliest time of a tropic day. Wisps of fog were rising from the fields of cut cane. Far away on the horizon we could see a feather of smoke above the tall smokestack of the mill on the adjoining plantation. It had rained during the night, and we turned and walked down a long lane bordered by the living fence posts so characteristic of Cuba. Fence posts here are placed in the ground to sprout and grow, and so are protected from the ravages of termites.

I remember that the bien vestida or well-dressed lady — Gliricidia—was in bloom. Gaudy orioles were pecking at the blossoms on the pinon posts — the rich crimson flowers of an Erythrina. In the spring the hedgerows built of the Gliricidia are masses of pale mauve flowers, not unlike wistaria. These make the roadsides gay with color, for an enormous number of the tropical trees planted for roadside shade or for ornament are of somber green, a darker green than we are accustomed to see here in the North.

We had been more than half an hour from the house when I found a rather damp spot in the woods where there were a lot of loose flat stones. I began turning these over and before long was entranced to find a number of tiny frogs, rich maroon in color with golden-yellow stripes which ran from the tip of the snout down each side of the body. These were lovely little frogs, scarce a quarter of an inch long from stem to stern, and I knew at once that we had rediscovered Phyllobates limbatus. This particular frog had been lost sight of for sixty years. Cope in 1862 described it as originating in Cuba. But Stejneger and I suspected that it was wrongly labeled and that its home was Central America, not Cuba. Now we were proved wrong. We got a good series, and it was well that we did, as the type specimens in the United States National Museum from which the species had been originally described were dried up and worthless.

We collected other things — I remember a new fresh-water crab — but the finding of this lovely little frog, the smallest frog which I know of in the world, was certainly the high light of this particular journey to Cuba. Later I found that they were quite abundant in the rocky area which we keep as a wild plant preserve in the Botanic Gardens and there countless students have had a chance to collect and observe this charming little creature.

Years earlier Stejneger and I in our conversations concerning the Cuban fauna doubted the locality of another creature taken there years before by Don Juan Gundlach, a German naturalist long resident in Cuba. Our doubts concerned the little lizard of a very archaic family whose representatives are rare denizens of scattered localities between Southwestern United States and Panama. We should have known better, as a matter of fact, for old Don Juan Gundlach did not make mistakes in the localities of the species which he described. He said this came from Cabo Cruz, the extreme southern tip of the island. To verify this, Don Carlos de la Torre and I set out on a survey trip, he to collect, mollusks and I to see if I could turn up Cricosaura.

We went to Manzanillo and then by launch down the coast to Niquero, where we got a sailboat to go to the Cape. We were late getting started, and of course the wind died out. So our boatman and I rowed Don Carlos until about midnight, when we found a landing place behind the hook on which the great lighthouse stands. Our journey was delightful. The sea was as calm as calm could be, phosphorescent, like molten silver. I believe we could have read a book by the light produced each time we dipped our oars, and each fish that darted from our bow was like a meteor in the sky.

Once a pez agujón, one of those hopping billfishes, came skittering along on its tail, half out of water, and struck the gunwale of our boat, if it had been a few inches higher out of water it might have injured one of us badly, for these long, slim fishes (this one was two and a half feet long), with a beak like an ice pick and curious bright green bones, propel themselves with incredible speed. This one had been frightened by a porpoise or some large fish, and came skittering right against the side of our little dinghy. Of course we carried no light, as that would have invited visits from other billfish.

We came ashore to hear the clanging of iron shutters. The lighthouse keepers, who had heard the bow of our craft scrape on the beach, were taking no chances, and we sat outside on the concrete platform around the lighthouse for a long time before Don Carlos finally persuaded them that we were not bandits. In due season we were taken in and given hammocks.

The next morning, bright and early, I was out rolling stones, and within an hour had turned up a tiny, slender lizard with a coral-red tail, our long unknown friend Cricosaura. I saw several others, but they were fast little devils and I got only the one. However, this one was as good as a thousand in establishing the fact that Gundlach was right. This creature has one of the most restricted ranges of any reptile in the world, being confined to an area in the immediate neighborhood of Cabo Cruz not much bigger than Beacon Hill in Boston.

Cuban soil is extremely fertile and there are many fields on which cane has been cut for a hundred years without replanting. I know a valley west of Havana where the topsoil is sixty feet deep, and while I miss now the high forests which I used to see on my visits to Cuba thirty or more years ago, I still enjoy the plantations of mango and other fruit trees which are found about villages and sugar mills.

The mango is one of the finest shade trees of the whole world, and the tender roseate hue of the long drooping leaves on the new-grown shoots is singularly lovely. It is strange how many tropical trees have this habit of putting forth quick-growing shoots with long, limp, slender leaves, pink or even bright red in color, which finally harden up and become the firm, typical adult foliage of dark green.

I think of the Browneas, with their great red pompons of flowers, delicate little trees and hard to grow, and of that most glorious of all the flowering trees of the entire world, Amherstia, which we cannot make grow in Cuba. We flowered it only once in Soledad. Perhaps you may have seen it at Castleton Gardens in Jamaica or in Trinidad, or best, of all in its native home in Burma. The flowers are borne each like a tiny bird mounted on a wire and each wire attached, as it. were, to a long strand which hangs down from the end of the limb, each little bird crimson, with boldly painted golden spots.

Unfortunately Amherstia, even in Burma, seldom if ever sets seeds, and the little plants obtained by inarching or layering are extremely delicate. Thus its introduction into Cuba has proved very difficult because the atmosphere there is so dry and the rainfall so scant. All in all we have brought six or eight plants to the island but none survive today. I remember one really fine, well-grown plant given us at Jamaica when I was on the Utowana. Mr. Armour agreed to carry it direct to Cienfuegos.

A drop of salt water splashed on it while we were taking it ashore to Soledad and withered one of the main branches of the plant in an instant. The trunk and other branches were untouched, however, and we found a damp spot for it under a giant Pithecellobium tree. This plant lasted for several years and flowered once, but was ruined with its giant protector by the hurricane of 1935. This was a sad blow. We have never since been able to secure a really well-established specimen.

2

WHO has not read Turtle Eggs for Agassiz? I have read it time and again. The yarn I am about to tell has no such charm. George Howard Parker was the best lecturer to whom I ever listened as an undergraduate, so I was naturally inclined to help him when he asked me for a boa. He wanted the longest unbranched nerve he could lay hands on, to study the elaboration of carbon dioxide under electrical excitation. I was going to Cuba. With luck, I might get a large boa. When it was anesthetized and put under water, the long vagus nerve being dissected out and electrically stimulated, bubbles of carbon dioxide could be readily caught as they issued from the water, and their volume measured. Now the vagus nerve activates the diaphragm, and the diaphragm of a snake is well aft. Moreover, this nerve is unbranched. Parker yearned for a boa.

At Soledad, in Cuba, I passed out word through the countryside that I was interested in getting a large Maja, as boas are called locally, and was not in the least interested in small ones. Soledad in Cuba is the site of Harvard’s only little ward of Paradise, a lovely botanic garden which I have been privileged to visit for years. While I was sitting on the front porch of Harvard House one hot and sultry afternoon, two countrymen came up to the door, politely doffing their hats, and took from their shoulders a pole from which hung a large sack.

The spokesman of the twain indicated that the sack contained the father of all boas. We struck a bargain and the snake was mine. I dumped him out of the sack in the dark room, a little detached stucco-and-concrete building next to the laboratory. It was clear at first glance that the snake had dined sumptuously and I was not surprised when looking at him the next day to see that excitement or nervousness had given him indigestion. Obviously he had consumed no fewer than three hutías. These savory rodents abound in the wilder parts of Cuba and each one of these was about the size of an able tomcat.

Time to leave. With some help, I crowded Epicrates, as I may call our victim, for this is his generic scientific name, into a strong carton and tied up the bundle. I was forced to Spend a few days in Havana, and Epicrates resided under my bed in the Inglaterra Hotel. The next day I crossed to Key West.

Prohibition was in full swing and no customhouse official was going to pass a carton on my mere statement that it contained a snake; but one peek settled the matter and the bundle was re-corded and carried to the train. I had the southernmost lower in the northbound car for Palm Beach. We left in the evening and the car was to reach Palm Beach early the next morning and to be placed on a siding for the convenience of its passengers.

I walked around Key West to kill time, got aboard, and turned in as the train was leaving. I am a very light sleeper, and slept perhaps a little more lightly than usual on this occasion. At any rate, in the dead of night I heard a sudden sharp yelp. I knew at once that something was wrong. I reached over and twiddled the carton. It was obviously empty. Nothing to do but wait till morning.

The hours dragged, but finally daylight came. I waited until everyone left the car; then I went and asked the porter what had happened. He said that lie had been asleep in the men’s washroom, having set his alarm watch so that he would have time to clean the shoes of the passengers who were to get off at Miami. He awoke and, lo and behold, there was the snake, which had escaped from my carton, crawled the whole length of the car, and entered the men’s washroom, where it frightened the Negro almost to death. The adjoining car was the diner. The porter rushed in and got a cleaver, chopped the head off the snake, opened the vestibule door, and pushed the carcass out.

I protended to be tremendously surprised. I was carrying the empty carton and told the porter it contained objects too fragile to entrust to anyone else.

3

THE history of the Garden at Soledad in Cuba has been written over and over again. The story of how Mr. Edwin F. Atkins acquired the Soledad Plantation is told in his book Sixty Years in Cuba, one of the best books on the island that have ever been written; how he consulted Professor Goodale and Professor Oakes Ames, got Mr. Gray to be Superintendent, hybridized sugar canes, and over forty years ago began the gradual accumulation of a colled ion of tropical plants.

I first visited Soledad in 1909, and as I was specializing in a study of the fauna of the West Indies and for many years studied the fauna of Cuba intensively, I came more and more to avail myself most gratefully of the Atkinses’ hospitality at Soledad Plantation. During the years of the last great war I was in Cuba all the time as a government agent and frequently spent week-ends at Soledad. I became more and more interested in the possibilities of the place.

In time Mr. Lowell appointed me Custodian of the Garden and I have had to do with planning its development in a fairly intimate way for some twenty years or more. I have built dams and made ponds and watched their borders change from those of poor old worn-out cane fields lo veritable fairylands. From time to time, until he died, I begged more and more land from Mr. Atkins, always with success, and since then from his son-in-law, William H. Claflin. These friends have always given me wholehearted and enthusiastic appreciation of any plans I had to offer for the development of what is now one of the great tropical gardens of the world.

Harvard House, its laboratory, airy dining hall, and accommodations for six persons, soon became outgrown, for while this offered sufficient accommodation for the visitors who came during the wintertime, in summer groups of students with an instructor made increasing use of our facilities. Then Mrs. Atkins and I built Casa Catalina on the top of a high ridge looking out over the Garden to the Trinidad Mountains. Here there are a big dormitory and several private rooms, so that now we can take care of as many students as we are ever likely to have.

Our collection of palms is only exceeded in variety by that of Colonel Robert. H. Montgomery at Coconut Grove in Florida, and our ornamental and useful hardwood trees — teak and the like — are now big enough so that we can supply seeds to anybody who needs them. Soledad Plantation itself has flourishing forest plantings to provide future railway ties grown from our seed. For this Garden is not simply ornamental, but serves a useful purpose, introducing and testing economic plants from all over the tropical world.

I thought the place was ruined when I saw it after the great hurricane of 1935, but in 1941, when last I was there, all signs of the hurricane were completely gone, such is the rapidity of plant growth in the tropics. The stately clusters of bamboo, the flowering trees of early spring, the ponds reflecting the magnificent trees which grow on their banks, afford scenes of extraordinary loveliness. Moreover, now there is a good road to our very door and one can motor out from Havana in about seven hours without unreasonable haste. As the beauty of the Garden becomes more widely known, the number of visitors increases, and anyone who is really interested in Harvard College can be proud of its lovely outpost in Cuba.

4

SOME years ago the University of Havana celebrated its two hundredth anniversary. After the party was over and the delegates had gone home, James Brown Scott of our State Department and I remained behind, for we had been told that we were to receive honorary degrees at a special convocation. I wired Boston, and my wife came down with my gown. No gown in Havana would fit my bulk.

The fateful day was still and coppery hot — one of those spring mornings in the tropics when it wants to rain but can’t and the trade wind forgets to blow. I put on my gown and fell in line. The ceremony was dignified and colorful in the extreme. Scott wore the red cape of a Doctor of Laws and I the sky-blue cape of a Doctor of Science. The placing of the biretta on our heads was the mark of the bestowal of the degree.

Scott went through his paces first, made a good speech, was orated at, and received the degree. He was just about the same size as the Rector of the University. Then came my turn. I made an oration in my most polite Spanish. My old friend, Don Carlos do la Torre, made me turn as red as a lobster by the things he said about me. And my wife, who was sitting in the front row before us, buried in a mass of tropical floral tributes, blushed as Don Carlos recalled that the cannibals of New Guinea had said they preferred to look at her, which was why she was not eaten.

Don Carlos finally sat down, and I rose for the embrace. I stepped forward and put my arms around the Rector and patted him three times on the back, according to ancient usage. Well, he completely disappeared, for I am distinctly outsize, being almost six feet six in height, while the Rector was short even for a Cuban. A voice from the gallery said in Spanish, “There goes Cuba!” This was just about the time that the “Octopus of the North” was disciplining Haiti and San Domingo, for excellent reasons, and Cuba was inclined to take sides with its neighbors.

In a second, however, the Rector was unfolded and breathing again. I sat down, the biretta on my head, and as I did so the sweep of my ample sleeve tipped a gargantuan goblet of water into the lap of the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, who was sitting beside me. He was extremely polite, but a little annoyed. I felt like an ass; in reality it was the proudest clay of my life — the first really distinguished honor I ever received.

Now the scene changes. I am back in Boston and it is the Harvard Commencement season. On the Sunday evening before this event I sat in what was called the Sunday School at the Somerset Club, a pleasant after-dinner gathering. I was telling my friend Herbert Leeds about the Havana ceremony;

I described the gown. This is of shiny, lustrous silk, full in the skirt but with tight sleeves, decorated with a deep lace cuff, white on the black. A sky-blue cape is worn over the shoulders, while the headdress or biretta is of blue silk with a large pompon of blue silk threads which reminds one somewhat of the rear end of a Pomeranian.

Mr. Leeds said, “ I have twenty-five dollars which says that you won’t dare wear that next Thursday.”

I said, “You’re on.”

Commencement Day came. I went to Cambridge, put on my regalia. I was to be Marshal for the candidates for the degrees from A.M. to Theology; in other words, the second half of the candidates’ procession. What I didn’t know, however, was that because Harvard’s former Treasurer, Charlie Adams, had been made Secretary of the Navy and was to receive an honorary degree, the press cameramen were to be allowed in the Yard for the first time in history. A platform had been made at the corner of University Hall on which they might stand.

Ten o’clock struck, the band started up, and Roger Merriman led off the A.B.’s. All went well until Lewis Bremer and I, with our second division of the procession, reached the front of the press stand. Then something happened; the line halted. A rich Irish voice, subdued but yet quite audible, said to its neighbor, “Who the hell is the big bloke wrapped up in the blue diploma?" The answer also was clear: “His name is Barbour and he runs the Agassiz Museum.”

At this point, thank God, the line began moving. I vowed never to wear that gown again, though I have from time to time sported the blue muzetta with my ordinary American doctor’s gown. This does not have tight sleeves with a deep border of white lace and a skirt effect that looks extraordinarily as if one were wearing a bustle under a Mother Hubbard.

I suppose if we wanted to indicate that a man had become a real North Carolinian we should say that he had tar on his heel. In the same way the Cubans speak of a person as being aplatanado, that is, “bananaed,” to indicate colloquially that he has become completely acclimated. Well, my Cuban friends say that I am ”un hombre bien aplatanado.” Personally, I consider this a great compliment. If I grow loquacious and prolix when it comes to talking about Cuba I do not care a rap, for I love the country with a deep, passionate affection. I have no hesitation in saying so.