ver took a rarely
traveled trail, but, at one point, an opening in the trees showed a snug
little town nestling by a landlocked harbor of unusual beauty.

"What place is that?" queried Stuart, though not expecting a response.

To his surprise, the driver answered promptly.

"That, Senor," he said, "is Baracoa, the oldest town in Cuba, and the
only one that tourists seldom visit."

Whereupon, breaking a long silence, Vellano--for so he had given his
name to Stuart--proceeded to tell the early history of Eastern Cuba with
a wealth of imagery and a sense of romance that held the boy spellbound.
He told of the peaceful Arawaks, the aboriginal inhabitants of the
Greater Antilles, agriculturists and eaters of the cassava plant,
growers and weavers of cotton, even workers of gold. He told of the
invasion of the meat-eating and cannibal Caribs from the Lesser
Antilles, of the wars between the Arawaks and Caribs, and of the
hostility between the two races when Columbus first landed on the
island. He told of the enslavement of the peaceful Arawaks by the
Spaniards, and of the savage massacres by Caribs upon the earliest
Spanish settlements.

From that point Vellano broke into a song of praise of the gallantry of
the early Spanish adventurers and conquerors, the conquistadores of the
West Indies, who carried the two banners of "Christianity" and
"Civilization" to the islands of the Caribbean Sea. He lamented the
going of the Spaniards, took occasion to fling reproach at France for
her maladministration and loss of Haiti, and, as Stuart was careful to
observe, he praised England and Holland as colonizing countries as
heartily as he condemned the United States for her ignorance of
colonization problems.

This fitted in exactly with Stuart's opinion of the plot of which Cecil
was the head. Here, in Vellano, was an underling--or another
conspirator, as it might be--favorable to England, resentful of the
United States, and probably in a spirit of revolt against existing
conditions in his own country. The boy decided to test this out by
bringing up the subject a little later in the journey.

Presently the road turned to the westward, following the valley of the
Toa River. Duala, Bernardo and Morales were passed, the road climbing
all the time, the mountain ranges of Santa de Moa and Santa Verde rising
sentinel-like on either side. The trail was obviously one for the saddle
rather than for a cart, but Stuart rightly guessed that