It was on this harbor that Diego Velasquez made the first settlement in Cuba, in the year 1512. He called it the city of Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, but the original Indian name of Baracoa has remained attached to the spot where Spanish civilization began in the Pearl of the Antilles. It was here that General Antonio Maceo with a little band of thirty men landed from Costa Rica in March, 1895, and began the War of Independence, which ultimately led to the formation of the Republic of Cuba. Rounding Cape Maysi at the extreme eastern end of Cuba, and following the south coast, no harbor is found until we reach Guantanamo Bay, nearly a hundred miles west. This magnificent harbor was first visited by Columbus on his second voyage when he sailed along the south coast in 1494. The celebrated navigator referred to it as “Puerto Grande,” but the original Indian name of Guantanamo again replaced that of the white invaders. The Bay of Guantanamo is considered one of the finest harbors in the world. It was selected from all the ports of Cuba by Captain Lucien Young in 1901 as the best site for a naval station in the West Indies for the United States Navy. Arrangements were later made between Cuba and authorities in Washington, by which it was formally ceded for that purpose. Not only is Guantanamo a large bay, extending some fifteen miles up into the interior, but its mouth is sufficiently wide and deep to permit three first-class men of war to enter or leave the harbor abreast at full speed, without danger of collision or contact with the channel’s edge on either side. The Guantanamo River, after draining the great wide valleys that lie to the north and west, enters the Bay on the western shore. The City of Guantanamo, some fifteen miles back, is connected by rail with the coast, and also with the city of Santiago de Cuba, fifty miles further west. It was founded toward the end of the eighteenth century by French refugees from Santo Domingo, and has at present a population of 28,000. Eleven large sugar estates are located in the Guantanamo valley, which is one of the largest cane producers in Oriente. Fifty miles further west we find the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, absolutely land-locked, and probably the most beautiful of all in the West Indies. Its entrance, between two headlands, is narrow and might easily escape observation unless the passing vessel were less than a mile from shore. Rounding the high promontory of the east, with its old-fashioned fort of the middle eighteenth century, one enters a magnificent bay, dotted with palm covered islands, gradually opening and spreading out towards the north. Its winding channels present changing views at every turn, until the main or upper bay is reached, on the northern shore of which is located the city of Santiago de Cuba, that for half a century after its founding in 1515 was the capital of Cuba.