Late in the afternoon, after walking for a mile or more along a good road bordered by the ornamental but worthless jack-pineapple plant, we came to a wide gateway opening into an avenue lined with cocoanut palms and leading up to a couple of well-made Cuban shacks. The houses stood at the front of quite a large garden of fruit trees. We called at one of the shacks, which proved to be well populated. An elderly man, large for a Cuban and well-built, came forward to greet us and was inclined to be sociable. His shirt appeared to be in the wash, but this fact did not seem to embarrass him any; he still had his trousers. Of a younger man we bought a few pounds of boniatos (sweet potatoes) and after some urging persuaded him to go out and get some green cocoanuts for us from the trees. He sent his little boy of about twelve years of age up the tree to hack off a bunch of the nuts with his machete. We drank the copious supply of milk with great satisfaction; there is no more refreshing drink in all Cuba. As the boy had done all the work, we designedly withheld our silver until he had come down the tree and we could place it in his hands. We wondered if he would be allowed to keep it. Climbing the smooth trunk of a cocoanut tree is no easy task. We camped that night among the trees by the side of the road a quarter of a mile further on. We had made twenty miles for the day, and were now on high ground near the base of the Cubitas mountains. The rise had been so very gradual that we had not noticed that we were ascending. The trunks of all the trees around us were stained for a short distance from the ground with the red of the soil, caused, as we believed, by the wild hogs rubbing up against them. Our supper of fried boniatos and bacon was skilfully cooked by Jeff Franklin, who used the hollow trunk of a royal palm, which had fallen and been split, for an oven. For drink we had cocoanut milk. By the vigorous use of Dave Murphy's machete we cleared away the underbrush so that we could swing our hammocks among the small trees. Franklin had no hammock, but slept under a blanket on a rubber coat spread on the ground. The night was comfortably warm and brilliantly clear. It was delightful to lie in our hammocks and gaze up through the trees at the beautiful star-lit sky. There were mosquitoes, of course, but they did not trouble us much, and we all slept well.