With the accumulation of sugar estates, coffee plantations, cattle ranches and resultant wealth, people of means began to seek summer homes beyond the walls of the old City. All men in those days went heavily armed for any danger that might threaten, while numerous slaves furnished protection from common thieves and highwaymen. With the development of the outlying districts, trails and roads soon began to reach out both to the west and south, followed some years later by what were known as Caminos Reales or Royal Roads, connecting Havana with Matanzas, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus, Remedios, Camaguey and Santiago de Cuba. One road, known still as El Cerro, ran southwest along the crest of a ridge that led towards the western part of the Island and in after years connected Havana with the big coffee plantations in the mountains and foothills of Pinar del Rio. Along this road were built the first suburban residences and country homes of the aristocracy of Havana. Many of these places were cut out of dense woods, and on one of them, until less than ten years ago, the original owner, the Conde de Fernandina, retained a full square of dense primeval forest, not a tree of which had been removed since the days of Columbus. This remnant of virgin wilderness, located on the corner of El Cerro and Consejero Arango Streets, was for some six years passed by the electric car line of El Cerro. All of this section of the City, of course, was long ago built up with handsome residences that sheltered most of the old Cuban families, who had inherited the right to titles, coats of arms, and other paraphernalia pertaining to the monarchy of Spain. Tulipan Park marks the center of this aristocratic district, and still retains much of its old-time atmosphere of colonial prestige. Further south ran another winding trail that gradually ascended a range of hills, forming the divide from which the undulating surface slopes towards the south coast, thirty miles away, where Velasquez located the original site of Havana. This thoroughfare is known as Jesus del Monte, or Jesus of the Mountain, and has become quite popular in recent years on account of reputed healthfulness due to its elevation above the sea. When the last remnants of the Spanish army returned to Spain in 1899, that portion of the City called El Vedado, or The Forbidden, extending from the Beneficencia, or Orphan Asylum, out to the Almandares River, three miles distant, was nothing but a goat pasture, with a low sea front of sharp coral rocks. Its soil was thin and the district apparently had nothing to recommend it aside from its view of the ocean.