are easily made in a day.  The railways, trolleys, and automobile busses are unsatisfactory means of locomotion for sight-seeing.  The passenger is rushed past the very sights that would be of the greatest interest.  To most of us, a private hired automobile is open to the very serious objection of its expensiveness, an item that may sometimes be reduced by division.  It has been my good fortune in more recent years to be whirled around in cars belonging to friends but my favorite trip in earlier days is, I presume, still open to those who may care to make it.  I have recommended it to many, and have taken a number with me over the route.

It is an easy one-day excursion of about sixty miles, by rail to Guanajay, by carriage to Marianao, and return to Havana by rail.  Morning trains run to Guanajay, through a region generally attractive and certainly interesting to the novice, by way of Rincon and San Antonio de los Banos, a somewhat roundabout route, but giving a very good idea of the country, its plantations, villages, and peasant homes.  At Guanajay, an early lunch, or a late breakfast, may be obtained at the hotel, before or after an inspection of the town itself, a typical place with its little central park, its old church, and typical residences.  Inquiry regarding the transportation to Marianao by carriage should not be too direct.  It should be treated as a mere possibility depending upon a reasonable charge.  I have sometimes spent a very pleasant hour in intermittent bargaining with the competitors for the job, although knowing very well what I would pay and what they would finally accept.  Amiably conducted, as such discussions should be in Cuba, the chaffering becomes a matter of mutual entertainment.  A bargain concluded, a start may be made about noon for a drive over a good road, through a series of typical villages, to Marianao, in time for a late afternoon train to Havana, reaching there in ample time for dinner.  Along the road from Guanajay to Marianao, Maceo swept with ruthless hand in 1896, destroying Spanish property.  Here the Spaniards, no less ruthless, destroyed the property of Cubans.  It is now a region of peaceful industry, and little or nothing remains to indicate its condition when I first saw it.  The little villages along the way were in ruins, the fields were uncultivated, and there were no cattle.  At intervals there stood the walls of what had been beautiful country estates.  Only one of many was left standing.  At intervals, also, stood the Spanish blockhouses.  All along that route, in 1906, were the insurrectos of the unfortunate experience of that year.  In the village of Caimito, a short distance from Guanajay, along that road, I visited Pino Guerra at his then headquarters when he and his forces so menaced Havana that Secretary Taft, in his capacity of Peace Commissioner, ordered their withdrawal to a greater distance.  The trip by rail and road, exhibits most of Cuba’s special characteristics.  There are fields of sugar cane