and the
villages built to house its thousands of workmen.

Seventy-five miles or so eastward of Nipe, lies one of the most charming
and interesting spots on the island. This is old Baracoa, the oldest
settlement on the island, now to be reached only by water or by the
roughest of journeys over mountain trails. The town itself does not amount
to much, but the bay is a gem, a little, circular basin, forest-shaded to
its border, its waters clear as crystal. Behind it rise the forest-clad
hills, step on step, culminating in _el Yunque_, "the anvil," with an
elevation of about eighteen hundred feet. Baracoa is supposed to be the
place about which Columbus wrote one of his most glowing and extravagant
eulogies. Whether it is really worth the time and the discomfort of a
special trip to see it, is perhaps somewhat doubtful. It is a place of
scenery and sentiment, and little else. There is an old fort on a hilltop,
not particularly picturesque, and an old church in which is a cross quite
doubtfully reported as having been furnished by Columbus. Sometime, years
hence, there will be easier communication, and the fertile hillsides and
still more fertile valleys will supply various produces for consumption in
the United States. About twenty-five miles east of Baracoa is the end of
the island, Cape Maisi. Swinging around that, the coasting steamers turn
due west along the shore to Santiago, passing the harbor of Guantanamo,
with its United States naval station. That place is reached by rail from
Santiago, a highly picturesque route through the Guantanamo valley. Besides
the naval station, the place is a shipping port, affording nothing of
special interest to the traveller who has seen other and more easily
accessible cities of its type. It always seems to me that Santiago, or more
properly Santiago de Cuba, would be more engaging if we could forget the
more recent history of this city, known to most Cubans as Cuba (pronounced
Cooba). No doubt, it is a much better place in which to live than it was
twenty years ago, and much of its old charm remains. Its setting cannot
be changed. It is itself a hillside town, surrounded by hills, with real
mountains on its horizon. The old cathedral, a dominant structure, has
been quite a little patched up in recent years, and shows the patches. The
houses, big and little, are still painted in nearly all the shades of the
spectrum. But there is a seeming change, doubtless psychological rather
than ph