There are approximately 200 permanent residents in this little settlement, which has been laid out to advantage with its Plantation House, hotel, church, stores, etc., and a very neat railway station. The buildings are nearly all frame, painted white with green trimmings. In Bartle, as in all colonial settlements in Cuba up to the present, the planting of citrus fruit seems to have been the aim and ambition of the settlers, who are about evenly divided between Canadians and Americans.
Just south of Bartle are a number of small estates on land that belonged to the late Sir Wm. Van Horne, father of the Cuba Company Railroad.
Twenty miles further east a colony has been established at Victoria de las Tunas, one of the storm centers of the various revolutionary movements on the part of the Cubans against Spanish control. There are some 800 or 900 acres of citrus fruit groves, in various stages of production, within a radius of fifteen miles surrounding the town of Victoria de las Tunas. In nearly all of the American and Canadian colonies in the Province of Oriente, settlers have learned, at times through bitter experience, that it was an economical mistake to devote all of their energies to the production of citrus groves that could give them no returns inside of five years, and that, with the exception of the local markets of Camaguey, Manzanillo and Santiago de Cuba, neither oranges nor lemons would bring a sufficient price to pay for the cost of packing, transportation and sale. Grape fruit usually yielded a profit, if the market happened to be just right; or in other words, if competing shipments from Florida and California did not lower the price below the margin of profit.
Twenty-two miles still further east we find the colony of Omaja, boasting a population of nearly 300 people, most of whom are Americans, although a number are from England and Canada. A small group of hard working Finlanders, too, have joined their fortunes with the settlers of Omaja. The surrounding country is quite attractive, and was at one time a huge cattle ranch, covering some 50,000 acres of land, divided between heavy forests and open savannas.
Omaja has the usual complement of post-office, school-house, churches and stores, with a sufficient variety of creeds to satisfy almost any community. Some 700 or 800 acres of citrus fruit have been planted in Omaja, about one-half of which is grape-fruit and Valencia oranges. Omaja has an encouraging amount of social and musical activity which lightens the more serious burdens of life in the colony.
Some 30 miles north of Santiago de Cuba, and 50 miles south of Antilla, the shipping point on Nipe Bay, are two small colonies only a few miles apart known as Paso Estancia and Bayate. There are some 40 or 50 permanent settlers in Paso Estancia, Americans, Canadians and English. They have made clearings in the thick virgin forests and made for themselves comfortable and rather artistic little homes; frame buildings covered with zinc roofs, perched on hillsides, convenient to swift running streams.
The “Royal Palm” Hotel, a cement building, furnishes accommodations for newcomers and guests. The view from the hotel, looking across a delightful panorama of forest covered hills and valleys, gives a certain lasting charm to the vicinity.
The settlers of this section evidently were advised of the mistakes made in other parts of the Island, and while the growing of citrus fruits seems to have been the main object, food products, corn, vegetables, coffee, cacao, cattle, hogs and forage were not neglected.
A few miles south is the colony of Bayate, settled very largely by Swedish Americans, whose programme has been quite a departure from that of other colonists in Cuba. Their children are being taught Spanish in the schools so that they may bring their parents more closely in contact with their Spanish speaking neighbors. There are approximately 200 settlers in this community, most of whom have devoted their energies to growing sugar cane, for which the land in the neighborhood is excellently adapted. The Auza mill, twelve miles further down the railroad, buys all of the cane they can raise, giving them in exchange 5½ lbs. of sugar for every 100 pounds of cane. There is a very decent little hotel, built of mahogany and cedar, furnishing accommodations to guests who may happen to stop.
Bayate has its school house, for which the Cuban Government furnishes two teachers, one of whom teaches in Spanish and the other in English. Most of the settlers have their own cows, pigs and an abundance of chickens. Some of them are planting coffee and cacao on the hill sides. Two crops of corn may be easily grown in this section, and nothing perhaps in Cuba, brings a better price, especially in the western end of the Island.