guide-book. Just as there is a certain similarity in most American cities,
in that they are collections of business and residence buildings of
generally similar architecture, so is there a certain sameness in most of
Cuba's cities. To see two or three of them is to get a general idea of all,
although each has its particular features, some particular building, or
some special charm of surroundings. The most difficult of access are
Baracoa, the oldest city of the island, and Trinidad, founded only a few
years later. Glancing at some of these places, in their order from west
to east, the first is Pinar del Rio, a comparatively modern city, dating
really from the second half of the 18th Century. It owes its past and its
present importance to its location as a centre of the tobacco region of the
_Vuelta Abajo_. From comfortable headquarters here, excursions can be made,
by rail or road, through what is perhaps the most attractive, and not
the least interesting section of the island. To the north are the Organ
Mountains and the picturesque town of Vinales, one of the most charming
spots, in point of scenery, in Cuba. To the west, by rail, is Guane, the
oldest settlement in western Cuba, and all around are beautiful hills and
cultivated valleys. Eastward from Havana, the first city of importance is
Matanzas. Here is much to interest and much to charm, the city itself, its
harbor, its two rivers, the famous valley of the Yumuri, and the caves of
Bellamar. The city, founded in 1693, lies along the shore of the bay and
rises to the higher ground of the hills behind it. It lies about sixty
miles from Havana, and is easily reached by rail or by automobile. The
next city in order, also on the north coast, is Cardenas, a modern place,
settled in 1828, and owing its importance to its convenience as a shipping
port for the numerous sugar estates in its vicinity, an importance now
somewhat modified by the facilities for rail shipment to other harbors.
Seventy-five miles or so further eastward is Sagua la Grande, another point
of former convenience as a shipping point for sugar. The city itself is
located on a river, or estuary, some ten or twelve miles from its mouth.
Forty miles or so further on are Remedies and Caibarien, a few miles apart,
the latter on the coast and the former a few miles inland. Caibarien, like
Cardenas and Sagua, is chiefly notable as a sugar port, while Remedios is
the centre of one of the great tobacco districts, producing a leaf of good
quality but generally inferior to the _Partidos_ of Havana Province, and
quite inferior to the famous _Vuelta Abajo_. Southward of this region, and
about midway the width of the island, somewhat more than two hundred miles
eastward of Havana, is the city of Santa Clara, better known in the island
as Villa Clara. The city dates its existence from 1689. It lies surrounded
by rolling hills and expansive valleys, but in the absence of extensive
plantations in its immediate environs, one is led to wonder just why so
pleasant a place should be there, and why it should have reached its
present proportions. For the tourist who wants to "see it all," it is an
excellent and most comfortable central headquarters.
[Illustration: A VILLAGE STREET _Calvario, Havana Province_]
From Villa Clara it is only a short run to Cienfuegos, the "city of a
hundred fires," a modern place, only about a hundred years old. There is
every probability that Columbus entered the harbor in 1494, and perhaps
no less probability that Ocampo entered in 1508, on his voyage around the
island. The harbor extends inland for several miles, with an irregular
shore line, behind which rises a border line of hills. The city itself
is some four or five miles from the entrance to the harbor. It came into
existence, and still exists, chiefly by reason of the sugar business. It
is an important outlet for that industry, and many estates are in its near
vicinity. The old city of Trinidad is reached, by boat, from Cienfuegos, or
rather its port city, Casilda, is so reached. Presumably, it was the port
city that Velasquez founded in 1514, a location a few miles inland
being chosen later, as being less exposed to attacks by the pirates and
freebooters who infested the Caribbean Sea for many years. It is said that
Cortes landed here and recruited his forces on his way to Mexico, in 1518.
The city itself stands on the lower slopes of the hills that form its
highly effective background. Its streets are narrow and tortuous. Like most
of the cities of the island, and most of the cities of the world, it has
its humble homes of the poor, and its mansions of the rich. Immediately
behind it stands a hill with an elevation of about nine hundred feet above
sea-level. Its name indicates the reason for its application, _La Vigia_,
the "lookout," or the "watch-tower." From its summit, we may assume that
the people of earlier times scanned the horizon for any sign of approaching
pirates by whom they might be attacked. It serves a more satisfactory
purpose nowadays in that it affords one of the loveliest panoramic views to
be found anywhere in Cuba. Not far away, and accessible from the city, is
the Pico de Potrerillo, about 3,000 feet elevation, the highest point in
Central Cuba. Northeast of Trinidad, and reached by rail from Villa Clara,
is Sancti Spiritus, Trinidad's rival in antiquity, both having been
founded, by Velasquez, in the same year. Here also are narrow, crooked
streets in a city of no mean attractions, although it lacks the picturesque
charm of its rival in age. It is an inland city, about twenty-five miles
from the coast, but even that did not protect it from attack by the
pirates. It was several times the victim of their depredations.
VII
_AROUND THE ISLAND: Continued_
The next city, eastward, is Camaguey, in many ways doubtless the best
worth a visit, next to Havana, of any city on the island. It is a place
of interesting history and, for me personally, a place of somewhat mixed
recollections. The history may wait until I have told my story. I think
it must have been on my third visit to the island, early in 1902. On my
arrival in Havana, I met my friend Charles M. Pepper, a fellow laborer in
the newspaper field. He at once informed me that he and I were to start the
next morning for a three or four weeks' journey around the island. It was
news to me, and the fact that my baggage, excepting the suitcase that I
carried, had failed to come on the boat that brought me, led me to demur.
My objections were overruled on the ground that we could carry little
baggage anyway, and all that was needed could be bought before starting, or
along the way. The next morning saw us on the early train for Matanzas. We
spent a week or ten days in that city, in Cardenas, Sagua, Santa Clara, and
Cienfuegos, renewing former acquaintance and noting the changes effected by
the restoration from the war period. That was before the completion of the
Cuba Railway. To get to Camaguey, then known as Puerto Principe, we took
the steamer at Cienfuegos and journeyed along the coast to Jucaro. There,
because of shallow water, we were dropped into a shore boat some four or
five miles from the coast, and there our troubles began. Fortunately, it
was early morning. We got something to eat and some coffee, which is almost
invariably good in Cuba, but when we meet nowadays we have a laugh over
that breakfast at Jucaro. I don't know, and really don't care, what the
place is now. After some hours of waiting, we secured passage in an
antiquated little car attached to a freight train carrying supplies and
structural material to Ciego de Avila, for use by the railway then being
built in both directions, eastward and westward from that point. The line
that there crosses the island from north to south was built in the time
of the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) as a barrier against the revolutionists
operating in eastern Cuba. It was restored for use in the revolution of
1895, but its blockhouses at every kilometre, and its barbed wire tangles,
were entirely ineffective against Gomez and Maceo and other leaders, all of
whom crossed it at their own sweet will, although not without an occasional
vicious little contest. We reached Ciego de Avila soon after noon, and had
to wait there over night for a further advance. The place is now a thriving
little city, but it was then a somewhat sprawling village with a building
that was called a hotel. But we got food and drink and beds, all that is
really necessary for experienced campaigners. For the next two days, Old
Man Trouble made himself our personal companion and did not lose sight of
us for a single minute.
Through personal acquaintance with the railway officials, we obtained
permission to travel over the line, on any and all trains, as far as it was
then built, some forty miles or so toward Camaguey. Through them, also, we
arranged for saddle horses to meet us at railhead for the remainder of the
journey. There were no trains except construction trains carrying rails,
ties, lumber, and other materials. We boarded the first one out in the
morning. We had our choice of riding on any of those commodities that we
might select. There was not even a caboose. We chose a car of lumber as the
most promising. For four or five hours we crawled through that country,
roasting and broiling on that pile of planks, but the ties and the rails
were even hotter. The only way we could keep a place cool enough to sit on
was by sitting on it. I once occupied a stateroom next to the steamer's
funnel. I have seen, day after day, the pitch bubble between the planks of
a steamer's deck in the Indian Ocean. I have been in other places that I
thought plenty hot enough, but never have I been so thoroughly cooked as
were my companion and I perched on the lumber pile. On top of that, or
rather on top of us, there poured a constant rain of cinders from the
locomotive puffing away a few cars ahead of us. The road-bed was rough, and
at times we had to hang on for our very lives. We can laugh about it now,
but, at the time, it was no joke. At last we reached the end of the line,
somewhere in a hot Cuban forest, but there were no horses. We watched the
operation of railway building, and took turns in anathematizing, in every
language of which we had any knowledge, the abandoned ruffian who failed to
appear with those horses. Before night, we were almost ready to wish that
he had died on the way. At last he came. Our baggage was loaded on a
pack-horse; we mounted and rode gallantly on our way. We had about thirty
miles to cover by that or some other means of locomotion. Before we had
gone a mile, we developed a clear understanding of the reasons for the sale
of those horses by the Government of the United States, but why the United
States Army ever bought them for cavalry mounts we could not even imagine.
There was no road. Most of the way we followed the partly constructed
road-bed for the new railway, making frequent detours, through field or
jungle, to get around gaps or places of impossible roughness. Before we had
covered two miles, we began to wish that the man who sent those horses, a
Spaniard, by the way, might be doomed to ride them through all eternity
under the saddles with which they were equipped. We were sorry enough for
the poor brutes, but sorrier still for ourselves. For several days, I
limped in misery from a long row of savage blisters raised on my leg
by rawhide knots with which my saddle had been repaired. An hour after
starting, we were overtaken by a heavy thunder-shower. At nightfall, after
having covered about fifteen wretched miles, we reached a construction camp
where an American nobleman, disguised as a section-boss, gave us food and
lodging in the little palm-leaf shack that served as his temporary home. It
was barely big enough for one, but he made it do for three.
[Illustration: STREET AND CHURCH _Camaguey_]
Early in the morning, we resumed our journey, plodding along as best we
could over a half-graded "right-of-way." A couple of hours brought us to
a larger construction camp where we halted for such relief as we could
secure. We then were some twelve or fourteen miles from our destination. We
discussed the wisdom of making the rest of the way on foot, as preferable
to that particular kind of saddle-work, leaving our baggage to come along
with the horses when it might. But fortune smiled, or it may have been just
a grimace. Word came that a team, two horses and a wagon, would go to the
city that afternoon, and there would be room for us. We told our pilot,
the man with the horses, just what we thought of him and all his miserable
ancestors, gave him a couple of _pesos_, and rejoiced over our prospects of
better fortune. But it proved to be only an escape from the fire into
the frying-pan. I have driven over many miles of South African _veldt_,
straight "across lots," in all comfort, but while the general topography of
Camaguey puts it somewhat into the _veldt_ class, its immediate surface
did not in the least remind me of the South African plateau. The trip was
little short of wonderful for its bumpiness. We got to Camaguey sore and
bruised but, as far as we could discover, physically intact, and, having
arrived, may now return to its history and description. May no "gentle
reader" who scans these pages repeat our experience in getting there. It
is supposed that here, or immediately here-about, was the place of "fifty
houses and a thousand people" encountered by the messengers of Columbus,
when he sent them inland to deliver official letters of introduction to the
gorgeous ruler of the country in which he thought he was. Different writers
tell different stories about the settlement of the place, but there is no
doubt that it was among the earliest to be settled. Columbus gave to a
harbor in that vicinity, in all probability the Bay of Nuevitas, the name
Puerto del Principe, or Port of the Prince. He called the islands of the
neighborhood the Gardens of the King. On that bay, about 1514, Diego
Velasquez founded a city, probably the present Nuevitas, which he is said
to have called Santa Maria. Somewhere from two to ten years later, an
inland settlement was made. This developed into the city that was afterward
given the name of Santa Maria del Puerto del Principe, now very properly
changed to the old Indian name of Camaguey.
If the idea of an inland location was, as it is said to have been,
protection against pirates and buccaneers, it was not altogether a
success. The distinguished pirate, Mr. Henry Morgan, raided the place very
effectively in 1668, securing much loot. In his book, published in 1871,
Mr. Hazard says: "Puerto Principe (the present Camaguey) is, probably, the
oldest, quaintest town on the island,--in fact, it may be said to be a
finished town, as the world has gone on so fast that the place seems a
million years old, and from its style of dress, a visitor might think he
was put back almost to the days of Columbus." There have been changes
since that time, but the old charm is still there, the narrow and crooked
streets, forming almost a labyrinth, the old buildings, and much else that
I earnestly hope may never be changed. There is now an up-to-date hotel,
connected with the railway company, but if I were to go there again and the
old hotel was habitable, I know I should go where I first stayed, and where
we occupied a huge barrack-like room charged on our bill as "_habitaciones
preferentes_," the state chamber. It had a dirty tiled floor, and was the
home of many fleas, but there was something about it that I liked. I do not
mean to say that all of Camaguey, "the city of the plain," is lovely, or
picturesque or even interesting. No more is all of Paris, or Budapest,
or Amsterdam, or Washington. They are only so in some of their component
parts, but it is those parts that remain in the memory. The country around
the city is a vast plain, for many years, and still, a grazing country, a
land of horses and cattle. The charm is in the city itself. If I could see
only one place outside of Havana, I would see Camaguey. A little less than
fifty miles to the north is Nuevitas, reached by one of the first railways
built in Cuba, now if ever little more than the port city for its larger
neighbor. Columbus became somewhat ecstatic over the region. Perhaps it was
then more charming, or the season more favorable, than when I saw it. I
do not recall any feeling of special enthusiasm about its scenic charms.
Perhaps I should have discovered them had I stayed longer. Perhaps I should
have been more impressed had it not been for the impressions of Camaguey. I
saw Nuevitas only briefly on my way eastward on that memorable excursion by
construction train and saddle. The only route then available was by boat
along the north shore, and it was there that we caught the steamer for
Santiago.
That sail along the coast would have afforded greater pleasure had it
lacked the noisy presence of an itinerant opera company whose members
persisted, day and night, in exercising their lungs to the accompaniment of
an alleged piano in the cabin. I have a far more pleasant recollection, or
rather a memory because it stays with me, of music in those waters. The
transport on which I went to Porto Rico, in the summer of 1898, carried,
among other troops, a battery of light artillery. It had an unusually good
bugler, and his sounding of "taps" on those soft, starlit nights remains
with me as one of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard. The shrieks,
squalls, and roars of those opera people were in a wholly different class.
About seventy-five miles east of Nuevitas is Gibara, merely a shipping port
for the inland city of Holguin. The former is only one of a number of such
places found along the coast. Most of them are attractive in point of
surrounding scenery, but little or not at all attractive in themselves,
being mere groups of uninteresting structures of the conventional type.
Holguin is perhaps two hundred years old, quite pleasantly situated, but
affording no special points of interest for the tourist. The city is now
easily reached by a branch of the Cuba Railway. It is worth the visit of
those who "want to see it all." Beyond Gibara is Nipe Bay, not improbably
the first Cuban harbor entered by Columbus. Nipe Bay and its near neighbor,
Banes Bay, are the centres of what is now the greatest industrial activity
of any part of the island. Here, recent American investment is measured in
scores of millions of dollars. Here, in the immediate neighborhood, are
some of the largest sugar plantations and mills on the island, the Boston
and the Preston. A little to the west of Gibara are two others, Chaparra
and Delicias. Hitherto, the western half of the island has been, the great
producing district, but present indications point to a not distant time
when the eastern district will rival and, it may be, outstrip the section
of older development. The foundation is already laid for an extensive
enterprise. Nature has afforded one of the finest land-locked harbors in
the world at Nipe, and another, though smaller, a few miles away, at Banes.
The region now has railroad connection with practically all parts of the
island. Around those bays are sugar lands, tobacco lands, fruit lands, and
a few miles inland are the vast iron ore beds that, as they are developed,
will afford employment for an army of workmen. Nipe Bay is the natural
commercial outlet for a vast area of richly productive soil. At present,
the region affords nothing of special interest except its industrial
activities, its miles and miles of sugar cane, its huge mills, and the
villages built to house its thousands of workmen.
Seventy-five miles or so eastward of Nipe, lies one of the most charming
and interesting spots on the island. This is old Baracoa, the oldest
settlement on the island, now to be reached only by water or by the
roughest of journeys over mountain trails. The town itself does not amount
to much, but the bay is a gem, a little, circular basin, forest-shaded to
its border, its waters clear as crystal. Behind it rise the forest-clad
hills, step on step, culminating in _el Yunque_, "the anvil," with an
elevation of about eighteen hundred feet. Baracoa is supposed to be the
place about which Columbus wrote one of his most glowing and extravagant
eulogies. Whether it is really worth the time and the discomfort of a
special trip to see it, is perhaps somewhat doubtful. It is a place of
scenery and sentiment, and little else. There is an old fort on a hilltop,
not particularly picturesque, and an old church in which is a cross quite
doubtfully reported as having been furnished by Columbus. Sometime, years
hence, there will be easier communication, and the fertile hillsides and
still more fertile valleys will supply various produces for consumption in
the United States. About twenty-five miles east of Baracoa is the end of
the island, Cape Maisi. Swinging around that, the coasting steamers turn
due west along the shore to Santiago, passing the harbor of Guantanamo,
with its United States naval station. That place is reached by rail from
Santiago, a highly picturesque route through the Guantanamo valley. Besides
the naval station, the place is a shipping port, affording nothing of
special interest to the traveller who has seen other and more easily
accessible cities of its type. It always seems to me that Santiago, or more
properly Santiago de Cuba, would be more engaging if we could forget the
more recent history of this city, known to most Cubans as Cuba (pronounced
Cooba). No doubt, it is a much better place in which to live than it was
twenty years ago, and much of its old charm remains. Its setting cannot
be changed. It is itself a hillside town, surrounded by hills, with real
mountains on its horizon. The old cathedral, a dominant structure, has
been quite a little patched up in recent years, and shows the patches. The
houses, big and little, are still painted in nearly all the shades of the
spectrum. But there is a seeming change, doubtless psychological rather
than physical. One sees, in imagination, Cervera's squadron "bottled up" in
the beautiful harbor, while Sampson's ships lie outside waiting for it to
come out. It is difficult to forget San Juan Hill and El Caney, a few
miles behind the city, and remember only its older stories. A good deal of
history has been made here in the last four hundred years. Its pages
show such names as Velasquez, Grijalva, Hernan Cortes, and Narvaez, and
centuries later, Cespedes, Marti, and Palma. Here was enacted the grim
tragedy of the _Virginius_, and here was the conflict that terminated
Spain's once vast dominion in the western world. My own impression is
that most of its history has already been written, that it will have no
important future. As a port of shipment, I think it must yield to the new
port, Nipe Bay, on the north coast. It is merely a bit of commercial logic,
the question of a sixty-mile rail-haul as compared with a voyage around the
end of the island. Santiago will not be wiped from the map, but I doubt its
long continuance as the leading commercial centre of eastern Cuba. It is
also a fairly safe prediction that the same laws of commercial logic will
some day operate to drain northward the products of the fertile valley of
the Cauto, and the region behind old Manzanillo and around the still older
Bayamo.
[Illustration: COBRE _Oriente Province_]