It is an easy one-day excursion of about sixty miles, by rail to Guanajay, by carriage to Marianao, and return to Havana by rail. Morning trains run to Guanajay, through a region generally attractive and certainly interesting to the novice, by way of Rincon and San Antonio de los Banos, a somewhat roundabout route, but giving a very good idea of the country, its plantations, villages, and peasant homes. At Guanajay, an early lunch, or a late breakfast, may be obtained at the hotel, before or after an inspection of the town itself, a typical place with its little central park, its old church, and typical residences. Inquiry regarding the transportation to Marianao by carriage should not be too direct. It should be treated as a mere possibility depending upon a reasonable charge. I have sometimes spent a very pleasant hour in intermittent bargaining with the competitors for the job, although knowing very well what I would pay and what they would finally accept. Amiably conducted, as such discussions should be in Cuba, the chaffering becomes a matter of mutual entertainment. A bargain concluded, a start may be made about noon for a drive over a good road, through a series of typical villages, to Marianao, in time for a late afternoon train to Havana, reaching there in ample time for dinner. Along the road from Guanajay to Marianao, Maceo swept with ruthless hand in 1896, destroying Spanish property. Here the Spaniards, no less ruthless, destroyed the property of Cubans. It is now a region of peaceful industry, and little or nothing remains to indicate its condition when I first saw it. The little villages along the way were in ruins, the fields were uncultivated, and there were no cattle. At intervals there stood the walls of what had been beautiful country estates. Only one of many was left standing. At intervals, also, stood the Spanish blockhouses. All along that route, in 1906, were the insurrectos of the unfortunate experience of that year. In the village of Caimito, a short distance from Guanajay, along that road, I visited Pino Guerra at his then headquarters when he and his forces so menaced Havana that Secretary Taft, in his capacity of Peace Commissioner, ordered their withdrawal to a greater distance. The trip by rail and road, exhibits most of Cuba's special characteristics. There are fields of sugar cane and fields of tobacco, country villages and peasant homes, fruits and vegetables, ceiba trees, royal palms, cocoanut palms, and mango trees. There is no other trip, as easily made, where so much can be seen. But there are other excursions in the vicinity, for many reasons best made by carriage or by private hired automobile. Within fifteen miles or so of the city, are places like Calvario, Bejucal, and Managua, all reached by good highways through interesting and typical country, and all well illustrating the real life of the real Cubans. It was in the vicinity of those places that Maximo Gomez operated in 1895 and 1896, terrorizing Havana by menacing it from the south and the east while Maceo threatened it from the west. Another short and pleasant trip can be made around the head of the harbor to Guanabacoa, and thence to Cojimar. Another interesting and easily reached point is Guines, a good example of places of its size and class.
Of Cuba's larger cities, there are a score that would demand attention in a 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.
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.