"Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no man's land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry. Much more often he lives in a ramshackle _bohio_, the one apartment of which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the name of furniture in the house and the clothing of the family is of the scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the gaucho of the Argentine pampas." That montero of a hundred and more years ago and the guajiro of today have so much in common that it seems safe to consider the latter a descendant of the former. The lack of proper facilities for the exchange of commodities between city and country caused the fact that Havana up to the beginning of the nineteenth century raised almost all her necessities on her own soil. The economical cassava was still generally used. The ground in the environs of the capital, though not the best soil on the island, within a short time attained considerable value. The administration of the navy yard opposed the cultivation of ground rich in trees that it could use for shipbuilding. By this monopoly alone many people were barred from owning and cultivating land. The preference of the earlier Spanish settlers for stockbreeding also limited the agricultural area. Besides, real estate conventions and regulations were as rigid as other customs of the country, and were never changed, be the need for a change ever so pressing. From the first days of the colony the circular form of plot had been adopted, the extent of a _hatos_ being fixed at two miles and that of the _corrales_ at one mile in circumference. This curious system of measurement gave rise not only to difficulties in computing the area of contiguous properties, but to misunderstandings and disputes which caused much litigation. It was difficult to buy a plot of ground that was not in some way subject to legal controversy. The great number of lawyers on the island had probably a certain reason for existence owing to the innumerable boundary and other land disputes. It is evident, too, that complicated boundaries and questionable titles were a rich source of dubious activity for unscrupulous members of the profession. Land cases were wont to drag on from one generation to the other, and while the lawyers representing the interests of the clients waxed rich, the clients themselves had often to sacrifice the land itself in order to settle their claims.