We were the victims of our own imagination rather than the victims of circumstances. We had imagined that Cuba was a sort of national park with an immense system of boulevards. There is one magnificent highway in Cuba, fifty-two miles long, which reaches from Havana to San Cristobal. In publicity it reaches around the world. It has been the course of automobile road races. Automobile writers, attending said automobile races, wrote columns about the beautiful Cubaland, in which the wandering motorist from the north may drive as fast as he likes, while balmy breezes blow across the palm-sentineled macadam. The government has started a road from Havana eastward across the island. Some of this has been surveyed, a little of it graded and it actually exists for a half-dozen miles out of Havana. Down in Santiago province, General Wood has built a road or two. The middle of the island is roadless. There is no continuous travel by vehicle. Havana presents a wrong idea of Cuba. It is a tourists’ town. It has boulevards and carriages. Cuba has wandering trails and ox carts. No four-wheeled vehicle is used outside the towns. Probably no vehicle of any kind, unless in time of war, ever has made a continuous journey across the island. The ox carts are for local travel. Cross country travel is on foot or on ponies. Yesterday, on the little coast steamer which carried us across the gulf, we had discussed with eager expectance the fascinations of touring in Cuba, as presented in the steamship company’s alluring pamphlets. We had come south with a Packard car to run it fast and furiously for thousands and thousands of miles under hot weather conditions. A Cuban on the steamer listened while we recounted our plans for this great trying out of the speed and endurance of our motor car. He asked us: “Have you ever been in Cuba?” and, upon our negative reply: “Do you really think you can drive an automobile through the interior of Cuba?” We assured him that we could drive one anywhere, but he merely laughed and sauntered away to tell the other passengers what seemed to him to be a funny story. Other Cubans talked to us. They were all iconoclasts and some of them were plain “knockers.” At first we were insulted and then our peace of mind was destroyed. Slowly, but surely, we approached the truth. Everywhere we turned for a reassuring opinion concerning the suppositious highways, we got the same answer: “There are no roads; you can’t do it.” They all explained the impossibility of traversing its valley lands and mountain regions, of making even a most laborious way across the arroyos, through the bridgeless rivers, over the barren stone, and in the wide swamps. There are roads on the map. The maps were originally made by Spaniards with a greater regard for neat drafting than the truth. It is hard to find those roads on the earth. Their course occasionally is marked by washouts.