By comparison with the sloppy, muddy ravines, the long, wiggling trail of angular rocks between Camajuani and Salamanca were, to us, a boulevard. We struck south for Placetas, being just as far away from it as when we had left Santa Clara. The stony trail gradually led to lower land, where there was nothing underneath except sloughs, gullies and rivers and nothing above except rain and a black, angry sky. We had obtained great skill on mud holes. We could now tell the hard bottom ones from the mires without sounding. Driving to the edge of a sort of plateau, there spread before us a plashy lowland, which seemed to be nothing but a succession of marshes. On the other side rose the hazy outlines of a mountain range, but we knew what work it would take to reach those hills. We knew that the tall grass hid mud holes and ruts where ox carts had been laboriously dragged across. As the gloom of the rainy afternoon deepened, telling that the meager sunlight was about to disappear, we worried along past a picturesque old Spanish village, set all alone in the desolation, with its ruined cathedral another milestone in the path of the recent war. We sought a sugar mill, tucked in a corner of the distant hills. The history of two days before repeated itself. Again we sank into the mud as darkness hid our plight. These typical pantanos, or mud holes, are simply enlargements of long, narrow rivers of mud. You may walk up and down and find no place where it is easier to pass than at any other place. Where we failed in crossing, either by driving carefully over the more solid lumps of earth or by rushing the narrowest place, there remained just one thing to do: jack up each wheel in succession and build a solid foundation of stone underneath. With all four wheels in the mud, this is a tiresome task, at sun down, in an unknown country, and away from even the trace of a town. Once up out of the mud and going, we lost no time in driving across a field to a farmhouse we had spied. It offered no accommodation, but a short distance on the other side of a muddy river was a sugar mill. We left the car standing in the rain by the farmhouse and pushed ahead on foot, to the mill, for we were too tired and hungry to tackle the job of driving the car across the river in the darkness. At every large sugar mill there is a laborers’ eating house, in combination with the store. Both first and second-class meals are served. We ate first class and enjoyed it. We could have eaten second class and, at least, swallowed it, for our appetites had lost all trace of daintiness.