t, as preferable
to that particular kind of saddle-work, leaving our baggage to come along
with the horses when it might. But fortune smiled, or it may have been just
a grimace. Word came that a team, two horses and a wagon, would go to the
city that afternoon, and there would be room for us. We told our pilot,
the man with the horses, just what we thought of him and all his miserable
ancestors, gave him a couple of _pesos_, and rejoiced over our prospects of
better fortune. But it proved to be only an escape from the fire into
the frying-pan. I have driven over many miles of South African _veldt_,
straight "across lots," in all comfort, but while the general topography of
Camaguey puts it somewhat into the _veldt_ class, its immediate surface
did not in the least remind me of the South African plateau. The trip was
little short of wonderful for its bumpiness. We got to Camaguey sore and
bruised but, as far as we could discover, physically intact, and, having
arrived, may now return to its history and description. May no "gentle
reader" who scans these pages repeat our experience in getting there. It
is supposed that here, or immediately here-about, was the place of "fifty
houses and a thousand people" encountered by the messengers of Columbus,
when he sent them inland to deliver official letters of introduction to the
gorgeous ruler of the country in which he thought he was. Different writers
tell different stories about the settlement of the place, but there is no
doubt that it was among the earliest to be settled. Columbus gave to a
harbor in that vicinity, in all probability the Bay of Nuevitas, the name
Puerto del Principe, or Port of the Prince. He called the islands of the
neighborhood the Gardens of the King. On that bay, about 1514, Diego
Velasquez founded a city, probably the present Nuevitas, which he is said
to have called Santa Maria. Somewhere from two to ten years later, an
inland settlement was made. This developed into the city that was afterward
given the name of Santa Maria del Puerto del Principe, now very properly
changed to the old Indian name of Camaguey.

If the idea of an inland location was, as it is said to have been,
protection against pirates and buccaneers, it was not altogether a
success. The distinguished pirate, Mr. Henry Morgan, raided the place very
effectively in 1668, securing much loot. In his book, published in 1871,
Mr. Hazard says: "Puerto Principe (the present Camaguey) is, probab