The route continued an interesting one. There are more kinds of trail in a half day’s journey in Cuba than there is in going from Hell’s Gate to the Golden Gate. A comparatively level stretch of red dirt, strewn with boulders, suddenly leaves off in a tract of grass where the route is marked only by stone fences. Where the red soil is hard, the travel is not extremely difficult, the principal obstruction being loose stones, which must be dodged. The same dirt, soaked up by a heavy rain, becomes a bottomless mire. In some places there is nothing to follow but a path through high-growing sugar cane. In other places, unless the ground is seamed with deep ruts by the continuous travel of heavy ox carts in wet weather, the only thing which signifies a traveled path will be the country stores. Some of these are in board houses. Most of them are merely thatched huts. They all keep a little supply of vile liquors and canned meats. At some of them it is possible to buy oranges and bananas. During those scorching days, with infrequent opportunities to get good drinking water, we quenched our thirst with the juice of many oranges. They are little ones, but cheap and good. We bought them by the dozen and threw them loosely into the folded top, back of the tonneau. Bananas we ate immediately upon purchase. The tree-ripened bananas of Cuba are very thin skinned and delicious, but one hour in the sun spoils them. Our second morning’s work, to relate, would appear to be the tale of a long journey. As a matter of fact, we laboriously worked our way over the rocks for a few miles to Jaruca, where we stopped for lunch. Jaruca was our first interior village. We had passed no towns since leaving Havana. We got our initial experience of a typical inland meal and started in learning to like the peculiar style of cooking which is partly Spanish, partly devilish, and ninety-five per cent. grease. The main thing to eat is a pottage of beans and meat, fried bananas and chicken or guinea, cooked with rice. In the large towns or in places near the rivers or along the coast, there is always fish. The bread is good everywhere. It comes in small individual loaves and is so greatly “shortened” that it needs no butter, which is a good thing. There is no butter, except the canned stuff shipped in from the United States. This is impossible. It looks like melted vaseline. We did not taste it.