Cuba has many shrines containing evidences of divine blessing, and some of these are of wide renown. When the image of our Lady of Charity was found in Nipe Bay it was delivered to the priests of Cobre, the centre of the copper-mining industry, and they erected a church above it. The statue is fifteen inches high, and is seemingly carved from gold. A splendid shrine has been made as a setting, and for years it has been the object of pilgrimages during the Lady's festival in September. Those who ask for special favors, such as the cure of lameness and blindness, ascend the long flight of steps before the statue on their knees. The figure was found in 1627 by two Indians and a Creole boy who were crossing the bay at dawn in a search for salt. It appeared to them as a white body rising from the water, but as they approached it revealed itself as the image of the Virgin, the holy child on her left arm, a golden cross in her right hand. The board on which it stood was inscribed, "I am the Virgin of Charity." After it had been shown in the fold at Verajagua and venerated by the multitude it was placed in a chapel, a number of priests leading the march with a pomp and joy of banners, while bells and guns signalized its progress. The Virgin was dissatisfied, however, with the lack of splendor in her shrine and with the site on which the chapel had been placed. She told her displeasure to a girl named Apolonia, while she burned pale lights on a hill above the mines, to mark the place on which she wished her church to be erected. Her request was heeded so soon as the needed funds could be collected. It was generally believed that the statue was given by Ojeda to a native chief who, afraid of the enmity of his people as a result of accepting a gift from a treacherous and hated race, or, more reasonably, afraid that the Spaniards would kill him for the sake of the gold that adorned it, set it afloat in the bay. A thief despoiled it of thirty thousand dollars' worth of jewels after the American occupation.