The colony had its mild excitements now and again. One evening there was long continued firing of guns and blowing of conch shells in that corner of the camp where the surveyors had their tents. Inquiring the cause, we learned that three surveyors were lost in the woods and that the noise was being made to inform them of the location of the camp. The men, who had come to Cuba as colonists, had separated from the surveying party just before dark and attempted to make a short cut back to the camp. They had been at work in a low, wet section two or three miles northwest of the town, and their progress homeward was necessarily slow. They had not proceeded far when it became perfectly dark and it was borne in upon them that "cutting across lots" in a Cuban forest was quite a different matter from doing it in some of the States. They were obliged to suspend travel and hold up for the night. Although they could faintly hear the reports of the guns in the camp they were unable to make their way in through the thick woods. The men were without food or anything for shelter. Having an axe with them, they chopped down a tree, to keep them from the wet ground, and attempted to sleep upon its branches. The hard bed and the numerous mosquitoes were not conducive to sleep, but the tired fellows finally succumbed. When they awoke in the morning, one of them found that he had slipped down and was lying with his legs in the water. Not long after daylight they came into camp wet, tired, and hungry. It was no uncommon thing for surveyors to get lost, but nothing serious ever resulted. CHAPTER VIII. THE CUBANS. I am often asked, "How did you get along with the Cubans?" very much as inquiry might be made as to how we got along with the Apaches, or with the Modocs; and one man said, decidedly, "I think I might like Cuba, but I could never stand those Cubans." He had never seen a Cuban, I believe.