f the world." Nevertheless, the historic
interest clustering about the island is very great. It was the seat of
the first Spanish colony founded in the New World. Its soil has been
bathed in the blood of Europeans as well as of its aboriginal
inhabitants. For three hundred years it was the arena of fierce
struggles between the French, Spaniards, and English, passing
alternately under the dominion of each of these powers, until finally,
torn by insurrection and civil war, in 1804 it achieved its
independence. The city of San Domingo, capital of the republic, is the
oldest existing settlement by white men in the New World, having been
founded in 1494 by Bartholomew Columbus. It contains to-day a little
less than seven thousand inhabitants.

We gave Cape Maysi a wide berth, as a dangerous reef makes out from
the land, eastward, for a mile or more. The fixed light at this point
is a hundred and thirty feet above sea level, and is visible nearly
twenty miles off shore.

We were running through the Windward Passage, as it was called by the
early navigators, and whence one branch of the Gulf Stream finds its
way northward. The Gulf Stream! Who can explain the mystery of its
motive power; what keeps its tepid waters in a course of thousands of
miles from mingling with the rest of the sea; whence does it come? The
accepted theories are familiar enough, but we do not believe them.
Maury says the Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is the
Arctic Sea. The maps make the eastern shore of Cuba terminate as
sharply as a needle's point, but it proved to be very blunt in
reality, as it forms the gateway to the Caribbean Sea, where the
irregular coast line runs due north and south for the distance of many
leagues. It is a low, rocky shore for the most part, but rises
gradually as it recedes inland, until it assumes the form of hills so
lofty as to merit the designation of mountains.

There was on board of our ship an intelligent resident of Santiago,
who was enthusiastic in his description of the plains and valleys
lying beyond the hills which stood so prominently on the coast,--hills
probably older than any tongue in which we could describe them. The
Scriptural Garden of Eden has absolutely been placed here by
supposition on the part of traveled people. The temperature is simply
perfect, if we are to believe our informant; the vegetation is of a
primitive delicacy and beauty unequaled elsewhere; the fruits are
fabulously ab