miles or so further eastward is Sagua la Grande, another point of former convenience as a shipping point for sugar.  The city itself is located on a river, or estuary, some ten or twelve miles from its mouth.  Forty miles or so further on are Remedies and Caibarien, a few miles apart, the latter on the coast and the former a few miles inland.  Caibarien, like Cardenas and Sagua, is chiefly notable as a sugar port, while Remedios is the centre of one of the great tobacco districts, producing a leaf of good quality but generally inferior to the Partidos of Havana Province, and quite inferior to the famous Vuelta Abajo.  Southward of this region, and about midway the width of the island, somewhat more than two hundred miles eastward of Havana, is the city of Santa Clara, better known in the island as Villa Clara.  The city dates its existence from 1689.  It lies surrounded by rolling hills and expansive valleys, but in the absence of extensive plantations in its immediate environs, one is led to wonder just why so pleasant a place should be there, and why it should have reached its present proportions.  For the tourist who wants to “see it all,” it is an excellent and most comfortable central headquarters.

[Illustration:  A VILLAGE STREET Calvario, Havana Province]

From Villa Clara it is only a short run to Cienfuegos, the “city of a hundred fires,” a modern place, only about a hundred years old.  There is every probability that Columbus entered the harbor in 1494, and perhaps no less probability that Ocampo entered in 1508, on his voyage around the island.  The harbor extends inland for several miles, with an irregular shore line, behind which rises a border line of hills.  The city itself is some four or five miles from the entrance to the harbor.  It came into existence, and still exists, chiefly by reason of the sugar business.  It is an important outlet for that industry, and many estates are in its near vicinity.  The old city of Trinidad is reached, by boat, from Cienfuegos, or rather its port city, Casilda, is so reached.  Presumably, it was the port city that Velasquez founded in 1514, a location a few miles inland being chosen later, as being less exposed to attacks by the pirates and freebooters who infested the Caribbean Sea for many years.  It is said that Cortes landed here and recruited his forces on his way to Mexico, in 1518.  The city itself stands on the lower slopes of the hills that form its highly effective background.  Its streets are narrow and tortuous.  Like most of the cities of the island, and most of the cities of the world, it has its humble homes of the poor, and its mansions of the rich.  Immediately behind it stands a hill with an elevation of about nine hundred feet above sea-level.  Its name indicates the reason for its application, La Vigia, the “lookout,” or the “watch-tower.”  From its summit, we may assume that the people of earlier times scanned the horizon for any sign of approaching pirates by