Several picturesque kiosks and artistic structures with seats have been built for the benefit of the public, and usually during the winter season open air concerts are given within the grounds once or twice a week by the Municipal Band. The Quinto is easily reached either by street car or automobile and there is probably no place within the city limits where one can pass a more restful and profitable hour, than within the shade of the Botanical Gardens of Havana. CHAPTER XXIX HAVANA Havana is one of the most charming capitals in the New World. Its very name, Indian in its origin, conjures up a vivid panorama of four centuries, crowded with tragedy, pathos, adventure, bold deeds, cruel crimes and noble sacrifices; on whose rapidly moving film the hand of fate has pictured every phase of human emotion from the wild dreams of world conquerors, to the hopeless despair of hunted Cubenos, who preferred death to slavery. It was on the 25th day of July, 1515, that Diego Velasquez, while cruising along the south coast of the Island, stopped on the sandy beach near a native fishing village called Metabano. The Indians belonged to a tribe known as the Habanas; one of the thirty different divisions of the Cubenos. Grass-covered plains extending back from the beach seemed to impress Velasquez favorably, so he founded a city there and called it San Cristobal de la Habana. Toward the close of the year 1519, however, the colonists evidently disapproved of Velasquez’s selection and moved their town across to the north coast of the Island at the mouth of the Almandares, where northeasterly winds made the summers more agreeable. This little stream, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, had a depth of twelve or fifteen feet at the mouth, sufficient for the caravels of those days. But some of the City Fathers, in their wanderings to the eastward, found the beautiful bay, then known as Carena. A prophetic glimpse into the future may have furnished the motive for another change; at any rate a year later they picked up their household fixtures, carrying with them the town records, and established the City where it now stands, on the eastern shores of one of the finest land locked harbors in the world. In 1556 Havana became the capital of Cuba, the rendezvous of all Spanish fleets in the Occident, as well as the key to the Gulf of Mexico. Havana in the early days of the 16th century consisted of several groups or clusters of palm thatched huts, not far from the bay, with little that could suggest a city in embryo. As in all cities built by the Spaniards in the New World, the first permanent buildings were churches and monasteries erected for the benefit of the Catholic clergy and built, as a rule, of adobe or mamposteria, with walls two or three feet in thickness. The material used was a mixture of rock, earth and sand, inclosed in facings of plaster. Many of them were decorated with crude figures and images of saints popular in the community.