San Cristóbal de la Habana

San Cristóbal de la Habana

To H. J. B. BAIRD An Havana which he is free to decline in every particular save the dedication THERE are certain cities, strange to the first view, nearer the heart than home. But it might be better to acknowledge that, perhaps, the word home has a wider and deeper significance than any mere geographical and family setting. Many men are alien in houses built from the traditions of their blood; the most inaccessible and obdurate parts of the earth have always been restlessly sought by individuals driven not so much by exterior pressure as by a strange necessity to inhabit a barren copper mountain, a fever coast, or follow to the end of life a river lost in a savage remoteness, hiding the secret of their unquenchable longing. Not this, precisely, happened to me, approaching Havana in the early morning, nothing so tyrannical and absolute; yet, watching the silver greenness of Cuba rising from the blue sea, I had a premonition that what I saw was of peculiar importance to me. I grew at once impatient and sharply intent on the resolving of a nebulous, and verdant mass into the details of dense slopes, slopes that showed, from the sea to their crowns, no break in a dark foliage. The sombreness of the leaves immediately marked the land from an accustomed region of bright maplesthey were at once dark, glossy, and heavy, an effect I had often tried to describe, and their presence in such utter expanses filled me with pleasure. It was exactly as though the smooth lustrous hills before me had been created out of an old mysterious desire to realize them in words. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 38445
Author: Hergesheimer, Joseph
Release Date: Dec 30, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English