oom in it. He doubted whether
the steward could give me anything to eat, but I could take food enough
with me to last for a day or two, and as soon as possible arrangements
would be made to supply the club with provisions from the _State of
Texas_. Encouraged by this statement of the possibilities, I decided on
Tuesday morning to abandon the steamer and trust myself to the tender
mercies of the city and the Anglo-American Club. Hastily packing up a
couple of hand-bags, and hiring a ragged, dirty Cuban to carry them and
act in the capacity of guide, I left the ship, elbowed my way through
the crowd of people at the head of the pier, and entered one of the
narrow, ill-paved, and incredibly dirty streets which lead upward from
the water-front to the higher part of the city.

The first impression made by Santiago upon the newcomer in July, 1898,
was one of dirt, disorder, and neglect. It always had the reputation of
being the dirtiest city in Cuba, and at the time of the surrender it was
at its worst. I hardly know how to give an adequate idea of it to one
who is not familiar with Spanish-American cities and architecture, but I
will try. In the first place, the site of the city is the slope of a
hill which falls rather steeply to the water on the eastern side of the
bay. The most important streets, such as Enramadas and Calle Baja de la
Marina, extend up and down the slope at right angles to the water-front,
and are crossed at fairly regular intervals by narrower streets or
alleys running horizontally along the hillside, following its contour
and dipping down here and there into the gullies or ravines which
stretch from the crest of the hill to the shore of the bay. As a result
of the natural configuration of the ground there is hardly a street in
the city that is even approximately level except the wide boulevard
which forms the water-front. The east and west streets climb a rather
steep grade from this boulevard to the crest of the elevation, and the
north and south streets run up and down over the ridges and into the
gullies of the undulating slope, so that wherever one goes one finds
one's self either ascending or descending a hill. The widest streets in
the city--exclusive of the Cristina Boulevard--are hardly more than
thirty feet from curb to curb, and the narrowest do not exceed fifteen.
The pavements at the time of my visit were made of unbroken stones and
rocks from the size of one's fist to the size of a bushel-ba