Natives of sunburnt islands often are surprising. There is a type of Cuban negro, or creole, who is modeled after Adonis, muscled like Atlas, and with the disposition of whatever dead and done God it was who had the attributes of a faithful Newfoundland dog. The two men whom we had hired the previous evening came back to help us in the morning. They were on hand ere we awakened in the dark, wet dawn to put on our mud-plastered shoes and be dressed. Before we ever started the car, we went out into the big swamps that lay between the two next hills and built a corduroy road of brush and palm trunks. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the whole land was water-logged. While the two Cubans whacked and slashed at brush and palms, we lugged and carried and built our road. It takes skill as well as muscle to chop wood with a machete. The Cubans had both. We marveled that they could be negroes and that the strange mixture of Spanish and African blood could produce, in a southern country, such superb giants. To get out of the mountains we had to ford two more rivers. One was a typical stream. The other was a fast-flowing torrent set down in a gorge that had once been bridged, but which now had no path leading to a crossing of any kind. Ox carts had not yet made a trail through it. Only horses had forded. It was a disappointing sight, after a week of endeavor such as ours had been. Casually, it looked like our finish. We hunted up and down its banks for a defile or a shelf that we could follow to the bottom. Two of us stripped and swam into the river, looking for a path where the uneven bed formed ledges high enough and wide enough to make a feasible route for the car to be driven across. In some places immense boulders absolutely blocked our way. From the top of the gorge a quartette of rural señoritas, apparently shocked, and yet as obviously pleased, by this unusual exhibition, peeped slyly at us through the grass. Finally, with one of us guiding each front wheel, the car was driven slowly through the river on one of the twisted lines of rock. It was nearly noon when we reached Camajuani. No king ever rode into his capital with finer airs. Our Cuban helpers were perched on the running boards, their russet hides gleaming in the sun and their faces beaming with pride at being a part of such an unwonted expedition. We stopped for breakfast, having had nothing except a hurried cup of very black and very dirty coffee that morning. We had come three miles. Our chests expanded. Imagine our glee when, in the café where we awaited our chicken and rice we espied our friend, the surveyor. I have this good to report of him. He swallowed his previous misjudgment of our capabilities with generous congratulations and offered to buy us a bottle of Rioja blanco.