In all Cuba, island of bewitching vistas, there is no other
Yumuri, and in all the wide world, perhaps, there is no valley of
moods and aspects so varying. You should see it at evening, all
warm and slumberous, all gold and green and purple; or at early
dawn, when the mists are fading like pale memories of dreams and
the tints are delicate; or again, during a tempest, when it is a
caldron of whirling vapors and when the palm-trees bend like
coryphees, tossing their arms to the galloping hurricane. But
whatever the time of day or the season of the year at which you
visit it, the Yumuri will render you wordless with delight, and
you will vow that it is the happiest valley men's eyes have ever
looked upon.
Standing there beside the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrate, you
will see beyond the cleft through which the river emerges another
hill, La Cumbre, from which the view is almost as wonderful, and
your driver may tell you about the splendid homes that used to
grace its slopes in the golden days when Cuba had an aristocracy.
They were classic Roman villas, such as once lined the Via Appia--
little palaces, with mosaics and marbles and precious woods
imported from Europe, and furnished with the rarest treasures--for
in those days the Cuban planters were rich and spent their money
lavishly. Melancholy reminders of this splendor exist even now in
the shape of a crumbled ruin here and there, a lichened pillar, an
occasional porcelain urn in its place atop a vine-grown bit of
wall.
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