SEE PAGE 65.] [Illustration] CHAPTER V _... for now began_ _Night with her sullen wings to double-shade the desert._ —Milton. [Illustration] By its very monotony, human nature is disappointing. Interior Cubans are guileless, frank, generous, meek, dirty, willing, and altogether submissive and obedient. In other words, they are children. But a community like Macagua has its four-flushers, its liars, and its cheats, the same as London, New York, and Oshkosh. There had been at the dance a man who said he lived some distance eastward, knew every foot of the country and, on returning to his farm in the morning, would be glad to show us the difficultly followed trail. We took him along. It was very early in the morning and the sun was straight ahead, shining into our eyes over the low mist which had not yet been dispelled. We ran right from town into a great fen, where only a few stunted palm trees rose above the vast ocean of rank guinea grass, covering invisible mires. We could not see the wet places until we ran into them. Trying to get around a deep mud hole, we bumped into a palm tree and had to cut it down. Chopping a palm tree is like chopping steel tubing. A hundred glancing blows of machete, mattock and axe leave a few scratches on the trunk of the tree. It was while we were hacking away at this palm that our volunteer guide informed us that we were lost. There is no definite road through the tall grass which hides the treacherous swamps. The sun is the best guide. We began to wish for the rocks that we had struggled over, back in Matanzas Province. Our displeasure we vented on the unfortunate fraud who had invented his guide story to obtain a ride in the wonderful automobile from the United States. We were even disappointed that he did not mind being left anywhere to walk back. Provincial Cubans do not travel far from home, ever, but they will wander in any direction with you and worry not at all about going back. The lack of palatable food is about the same in one place as another, and the hut of one Cuban is about as homelike as that of another, so they are seemingly indifferent to time or place. Sighting the railway, we decided to quit trying to follow the hidden trail through the swamp and take to the right-of-way. Imagine running along the worst railway roadbed of which you can think, just inside the fence, regardless of grades, banks, or ravines. Imagine such a stretch of road covered thick and deep with grass. For several leagues this is what we had, until we struck a high plateau where there was no habitation and no road—only palm trees, by the thousands, and, scattered among them, small ponds made by heavy rainfall.