130 CUBA AND l'ORTO RICO 



ion, directly opposite the pier which leads to the comfor- 

 table quarters of the Club Nautica. Both the club and the 

 Alameda are chiefly due to the efforts of the foreign resi- 

 dents, who control the trade of the city. There are no 

 hotels, but the Anglo- American Club usually takes care of 

 respectable strangers, and travelers have declared that it 

 supplied the best-cooked meals and was the cleanest and 

 most comfortable stopping-place for foreigners in the West 

 Indies. 



The commercial houses are not imposing, and convey 

 a wrong impression of the business transacted therein. 

 Looking at the shabby, tumbledown offices, one can 

 hardly credit that some of the firms transact operations 

 aggregating several millions a year. 



The old cathedral forms the eastern boundary of the 

 Plaza de Armas, where on Thursday and Sunday nights it 

 was the custom of the citizens and senoritas to promenade 

 while listening to the music of the military bands. The 

 government house and the Club San Carlos are two of 

 many respectable buildings on this plaza. Among the 

 other city buildings mention may be made of the large 

 military barracks and hospital on the hill to the northwest, 

 and the theater, now in a dilapidated state, in which it is 

 claimed that Adelina Patti, at the age of fourteen, and 

 under the direction of Grottschalk, made her debut on the 

 public stage. 



Santiago is the center of the mineral district of Cuba, 

 and railways radiate from the city to the mines of the 

 various American iron and manganese companies, east and 

 west along the coast, and southward through a high pass in 

 the mountains to the village of El Cobre, at the site of the 

 abandoned copper-mines. The city is largely embargoed 

 from the interior by the mountains, but much commerce 

 passes across the latter to the interior valley of the Cauto. 

 In the future development of Cuba, as in the past, it will 

 always be of more or less importance, owing to its strategic 

 position near the Windward Passage, or principal entrance 

 to the Caribbean. Under a stable government the adjacent 



