That night we found out the true meaning of hacienda. It is a beautiful Spanish house, set in the middle of thousands of acres of sugar cane and surrounded by people who live, but appear to have no homes. As a wayfarer, you knock timidly at the door above the grand staircase which is on the outside of the house, because there is only one floor to the inside. Through the latticed window a female voice shrieks: “Que hay!” and your interpreter reels off a thousand words of address, introduction, request, and petition. Then a man’s voice breaks out of the window, but the most beautiful Castillian rhetoric, sung by the most intelligent interpreter, cannot get him to open the door. That is an hacienda. We put up at the eating house. Over the table on which we had eaten, we spread many layers of empty sugar bags, borrowed from the store, whereat, also, we bought some Cuban-made shoes and cigarros arroz. In the upper right-hand corner of the room there was an acetylene generator. In the lower left-hand corner was a baker’s oven. Both were busy on the night shift. Between these two evils we stretched flat on our backs on the table, smoked and dropped the burnt cigarettes, one after another, on the floor of sun-dried tile. We made jokes at our own expense and drew our cotton blankets closer about our necks as the chill of the night increased. Toward morning we gave up the endeavor to sleep and retired to the kitchen. The charcoal fire was almost out and we piled on more fuel. We took off our shoes and some of our clothes and laid them around the edge of the fire to dry. The baker gave us fresh bread and we had the first helping of coffee, and eggs fried by dropping them into an immense pan of deep grease, which appeared to have been used on the same stove, in the same pan, for the same purpose, day in and day out for several years. Then we sat down to await daylight. Camp Santa Fe to Camp Convenio—thirteen miles. [Illustration: “_Digging to obtain a footing for the wheels in the roughest ravines._” SEE PAGE 93.] [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII _When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travellers must be content._ —As You Like It. [Illustration] People learn rapidly under the pressure of necessity. When we had begun driving over the roadless interior of Cuba we had favored the car. In crossing extremely bad places we invariably chose the route which made the car’s task the lightest. Later we learned that all the car needed was traction and we began to favor ourselves.