Near the landing place at the foot of O’Reilly Street, used by visiting officials and officers of the Navy, stands La Fuerza. On this site was built the first permanent or stone defense of the city in 1538. The original walls and fortifications have seen many changes since that date but one cannot look at them without recalling the pathetic figure of Dona Isabel de Bobadilla, who in 1539, on the drawbridge of La Fuerza, where she and her husband, Hernando de Soto, had lived, said “Adios,” as with an army of 900 men and 350 horses, he set out for the conquest of Florida “and all the territory that might lie beyond.” Day after day, for more than two years, it is said, this faithful wife walked the parapets of La Fuerza straining her eyes to see his flagship arise above the horizon of the Gulf, and when at last a storm beaten bark brought back a few survivors of the expedition, whose leader had hoped to rival if not surpass the deeds of Cortez in Mexico, or Pizarro in Peru, she learned that her lord and lover would return no more, that even his body would never be recovered from the yellow waters of the Mississippi. It was then that her soul, too, sank into the sea of despair and soon joined its companion on the shore beyond. The dark dungeons of La Fuerza have held hundreds of Cuban patriots until death or deportation to Africa brought relief. The old stone steps descending to the ground floor are worn into veritable pockets by the tramp of feet during a continual occupancy of almost 400 years. Every outer wall, parapet, alcove and dungeon, if able to speak, “could a tale unfold.” Now all is silent save the sound of an occasional bugle, the music of the artillery band, or the laughter of children playing on the green lawn that separates it from the Senate Chamber. The first church built on the Puerto de Carenas, as the Harbor of Havana was called by the founders of the city, was of adobe, roofed with yagua from the guana palm. This was destroyed in 1538 by the pirates. Owing to the extreme poverty of the inhabitants, and to the fact that in spite of the wealth controlled by the churches of the mother country its representatives in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the City of Havana, were left to shift for themselves, and very few contributions for church building came across the seas to Cuba--it being assumed evidently that the people of a community deserved no better church than their financial means justified--it was not until well into the 17th century that churches were constructed that would at all compare with the beautiful ecclesiastical structures of Europe. Most of those of Havana, that were built during the 17th and 18th centuries, resemble, both in material and architecture, the rather heavy, ponderous and so called Gothic style that prevailed throughout the Latin American world.