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Updated: May 23, 2025
Symes," said J. Collins Prescott after he had been duly presented with a cabana by that gentleman, "and it is v-very attractive, I might say a-alluring." Symes beamed benignly. "You think so? I tell Mudge there's one fault I have to find with it it's too conservative." "A good fault," commended Mr. Prescott.
Grey remarked, "Quite right, as Henry Clay once said, 'There is nothing as melancholy as the old age of a dinner; who, sir, shall pronounce its epitaph? That, sir, I call eloquence. No more wine, thank you." As he spoke, he drew a large Cabana from his waistcoat pocket and lighted it from one of the candles on the table. Rivers remarked, "We will find it warmer in the library."
I have heard well-informed French engineers observe that an enemy should begin his operations by taking the town, in order to bombard the Cabana, a strong fortress, but where the garrison, shut up in the casemates, could not long resist the insalubrity of the climate.
From the Cabana we walked along the macadamized road to the Morro Castle, a long distance it seemed to me in the heat; but we left the hard and glaring road and walked over the grass, following the line of the subterranean passage, which made a sort of mound, and finally reached Morro Castle.
Upon entering, the enormous extent of the work begins to be perceived, parapet within parapet, galleries, casemates, and terrepleins almost innumerable, all of stone and useless. There are no earth covers or traverses, and no protection against modern artillery. Cabana is the prison for offenders against the State, and the scene of innumerable executions.
It is 187 feet above sea level and completely dominates Havana, the bay, Morro, Cabana, the coast northward, Atares, and from east around to south, the approaches of the Marianao Road, Cristina, and the Western Railroad for about 3 kilometers, i.e., between Cristina and a cut at that distance from the station.
Having passed this narrow entrance, leaving on the north the fine castle of San Carlos de la Cabana and the Casa Blanca, we reach a basin in the form of a trefoil of which the great axis, stretching from south-south-west to north-north-east, is two miles and one-fifth long.
Cabana, finished in 1774 at a cost of $14,000,000, lies some 500 yards southeast of El Morro, on the east side of Havana Bay. Toward the city it exposes a vertical stone wall of irregular trace, with salients at intervals. Toward the Morro is a bastioned face protected by a deep ditch, sally port, and drawbridge. Eastward and southward a beautifully constructed land front incloses the work.
The three fortresses of El Morro, La Punta and La Cabana were built before the end of the sixteenth century and still were standing as the most effective defenses of Havana when our war with Spain began. It was during the same period, that African negroes were first introduced into Cuba.
In four days the English took "la Cabaña," which Prado, the governor, considered the key to the city. For some unexplained reason the Spanish fleet became useless; but Captain Louis Velasco defended the Morro, and for two months and ten days he kept the English at bay, till they undermined the walls of the fort and blew them up.
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