Coffee culture in the mountains and valleys lying between Trinidad and Sancti Spiritus, introduced by French refugees from the Island of Santo Domingo the first years of the last century, was at one time a very important industry. With the introduction of machinery for hulling and polishing the beans, and with better facilities for the removal of the crop to the coast, there is every reason to believe that this industry, in the near future, will resume some of the importance which it enjoyed half a century ago, or before the abolition of slavery rendered picking the berries expensive, since this work can be done only by hand. The growing of coffee offers a delightful and profitable occupation to large families, since the work of gathering and caring for the berries is a very pleasant occupation for women and children.

Owing to the fertility of the soil of Santa Clara, the abundance of shade, rich grass, and plentiful streams of clear running water flowing from the mountains, there is perhaps no section of Cuba that offers greater inducement to the stock raiser.

The breeding of fine horses, of high-grade hogs, of angora goats, sheep and milch cows, will undoubtedly, when the attention of capital is called to the natural advantages of this section of the country, rival even the sugar industry of the Province. In no part of the world could moderate sized herds of fine animals be better cared for than on the high table lands and rich valleys of Santa Clara.

Santa Clara bore its part in the trials and sufferings endured by the patriots of Cuba in the War of Independence. The range of mountains between Sancti Spiritus and Trinidad, during those four fearful years, furnished a safe retreat for the Cuban forces, when the soldiers of Spain, abundantly supplied with ammunition, which their opponents never enjoyed, pressed them too hard. It was in these dense forests and rocky recesses which Nature had provided that the great old chieftain, General Maximo Gomez, in the last years of the war, defied the forces of Spain.

CHAPTER VIII
PROVINCE OF CAMAGUEY

ACCORDING to the log of the Santa Maria, the first glimpse of the Island of Cuba enjoyed by Christopher Columbus, sailing as he did in a southwesterly course across the Bahama Banks, is supposed by many to have been at some point along the northern coast of what is now known as the Province of Camaguey. The area of this Province, including Cayos Romano, Guajaba, Sabinal and Coco, is approximately 11,000 square miles. The general trend of the coast lines is similar to those of the Province of Santa Clara, and the length of each is approximately one hundred and seventy-five miles. The average width of the province is eighty miles, although between the southern extension of Santa Cruz del Sur and the mouth of the harbor of Nuevitas, we have a hundred miles.

The same gentle graceful inoffensive natives were found in this section of Cuba as those who first received the Spanish conquerors at Baracoa and other places in the Island. Those of the great plains belonging to this province were known as Camagueyanos, and although for many years Spain called this section of the island Puerto Principe, the musical Indian term stuck, and with the inauguration of the Republic in 1901, the name of Camaguey was officially given to this part of Cuba.

In the year 1515, Diego Velasquez, with his fever for founding cities, established a colony on the shore of the Bay of Nuevitas, and christened it Puerto Principe. In those early days, however, there was no rest for the unprotected, hence the first settlement was moved in a short time to another locality not definitely known, but a year later the city was permanently established in the center of the province, about fifty miles from either shore, where it remains today, with many features of its antiquity still in evidence.

The first of the old Spanish adventurers who succeeded in making himself both famous and rich without flagrant trespass of law, was Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, one of the original settlers whom Velasquez left in the City of Puerto Principe founded in 1515. This sturdy old pioneer did not bother with gold mining, but succeeded in securing large grants of land in the fertile plains of Camaguey, where he raised great herds of cattle and horses, exercising at the same time a decidedly despotic influence over the natives and everyone else in that region.

Vasco, although spending more than half of the year in the cities of Puerto Principe and Sancti Spiritus, had a retreat of his own, probably some place in the Sierra de Cubitas, where he held princely sway and guarded his wealth from intrusive buccaneers and other ambitious adventurers of those times. It was he who, meeting Hernando de Soto on his arrival at Santiago de Cuba, escorted that famous explorer across the beautiful rolling country of Camaguey, which he seemed to consider as his own special domain, and finally accepted the position of second in command in that unfortunate expedition of De Soto into the Peninsula of Florida in 1539. Fighting the savage Seminoles was not however to his taste, and the old man returned to Havana inside of a year, mounted his horse and rode home, firmly convinced, he said, that Camaguey was the only country for a white man to live and die in.