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National Geographic : 1920 Jul
Contents
CUBA-THE SUGAR MILL OF THE ANTILLES the other end free. The crescent is only about a foot long and three inches thick. A team of two players has to protect an area of 7,500 square" feet, and some times is forced to catch a ball on the re bound from the wall at the far end of the court. To do this with such a narrow instrument as the cesta requires the ut most agility, the closest calculation, and the most astute judgment. "MORE EXCITING THAN BASEBALL" Speaking of the game, a recent writer says: "Jai alai, the national game of Spain, is one of the most delightful things Americans discover in Cuba. It is more exciting than baseball, squash, and polo combined. Resembling tennis, inasmuch as it is played on courts by four men, it carries the onlooker on the crest of a wave of such suspense and thrills that he is enervated at the end of each game from sheer emotion. "Americans who have been content to howl 'take him out!' and 'attaboy!' stand on their feet and yell half an hour at a time when they see the four players from Spain in a contest that strains every mus cle and forces the perspiration from every pore, so that the clothing is drip ping by the time the first round is played. Not one frenzied spectator of the 4,000 ever sits down or stops yelling except in the intermission. Jai alai is no place for a contemplative attitude." SOME O' THE WORLD'S LARGEST CLUBS IN HAVANA Havana has some of the largest clubs in the world. There are no more clan nish folk anywhere than the people from the several provinces of Spain. Those who have come from Galicia and their descendents have their club; those from Asturias have theirs, and so on. The Centro Gallego, or club of Galicia, has 43,000 members, and its club - house, which includes the National Theater, cost nearly a million dollars. The Centro Asturiano has a membership of 36,000. The Clerks' Club has a membership of 30,000. The dues in each club are $1.50 per month, and each maintains its own hospital and sanitarium. Cuba has six provinces, the largest, Oriente, having an area somewhat larger than the State of Maryland, and the smallest, Havana, being slightly larger than Delaware. Yet each is so different from the other five that it is hard to dis miss them with a word. The very at mosphere seems different. At the westernmost end of the island is the province of Pinar del Rio. It pro duces less sugar than any other province, and therefore is the least prosperous, even though it does produce the finest tobacco in the world. As one travels through the province, all the intrusions of American civilization are left behind, the terminal moraines of Anglo-Saxon culture are swallowed up in the plains of native life, and the only thing that sounds or looks homelike to a Washingtonian is the whistle of a loco motive and an occasional box-car, bearing the name of a railroad in the States, which came across Florida Straits on the Key West-Havana ferry, loaded with flour, and will carry a load of sugar back to the Middle West. The towns are thoroughly Latin, and the country districts, except for an oc casional tobacco plantation and a few sugar centrals, seem entirely given over to a black and mulatto population, which appears content to live in thatch-roofed shacks. PIGS, PONIES, AND GOATS The animal life of Pinar del Rio prov ince consists largely of dogs, chickens, pigs, ponies, and goats, in numbers rank ing in the order named. Dogs one sees everywhere-little dogs, big dogs, lean dogs, fat dogs, but all of them lazy dogs. Of chickens, each shack-hold has a few, none of which would take a prize at a poultry show, though some of them might hold their own at a cocking main. There are many pigs to be seen as one journeys through the country, but most of them are of an architectural outline that makes the Appalachian razor-back seem a prosperous porker. Each one of them is anchored fast to a peg in the ground, tethered by a rope. This is made fast to the pig in a fearful and wonderful way. If the noose were fastened around the neck only, his porkship could back out without difficulty, since his head is usually smaller than his neck. So it is passed around the pig in front of one shoulder, and behind the opposite leg,
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