y years. The
configuration lent itself excellently to such a system, and not at all
well to any other. A railway map of such a system shows a line, generally,
through the middle of the island along its length, with numerous branch
lines running north and south to the various cities and ports on the coast.
The plan, broadly, is being carried out. A combination of existing lines
afforded a route to the city of Santa Clara. From these eastward, the Cuba
Company, commonly known as the Van Home road, completed a through line in
1902. In its beginning, it was a highly ambitious scheme, involving the
building of many towns along the way, the erection of many sugar mills, and
the creation of a commercial city, at Nipe Bay, that would leave Havana in
the back-number class. All that called for a sum of money not then and not
now available. But the "spinal railroad" was built, and from it a number of
radiating lines have been built, to Sancti Spiritus, Manzanillo, Nipe
Bay, and to Guantanamo. About the only places on the island, really worth
seeing, with the exception of Trinidad and Baracoa, can now be reached by a
fairly comfortable railway journey.

[Illustration: THE VOLANTE _Now quite rare_]

In most of the larger cities of the island, a half dozen or so of them, the
traveller is made fairly comfortable and is almost invariably well fed. But
any question of physical comfort in hotels, more particularly in country
hotels, raises a question of standards. As Touchstone remarked, when in the
forest of Arden, "Travellers must be content." Those who are not ready to
make themselves so, no matter what the surroundings, should stay at home,
which, Touchstone also remarked, "is a better place." If the standard is
the ostentatious structure of the larger cities of this country, with its
elaborate menu and its systematized service, there will doubtless be cause
for complaint. So will there be if the standard is the quiet, cleanly inn
of many towns in this country and in parts of Europe. The larger towns and
villages of the island have a _posada_ in which food and lodging may be
obtained; the smaller places may or may not have "a place to stay." Cuba
is not a land in which commercial travellers swarm everywhere, demanding
comfort and willing to pay a reasonable price for it. However, few
travellers and fewer tourists have any inclination to depart from known
and beaten paths, or any reason for doing so. Nor does a fairly thorough
inspect