having covered about fifteen wretched miles, we reached a construction camp where an American nobleman, disguised as a section-boss, gave us food and lodging in the little palm-leaf shack that served as his temporary home. It was barely big enough for one, but he made it do for three. [Illustration: STREET AND CHURCH _Camaguey_] Early in the morning, we resumed our journey, plodding along as best we could over a half-graded "right-of-way." A couple of hours brought us to a larger construction camp where we halted for such relief as we could secure. We then were some twelve or fourteen miles from our destination. We discussed the wisdom of making the rest of the way on foot, 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.