THECUBAREVIEW 19 



It is difficult to select any one route as offering particular advantages in scenery and general 

 interest. My advice would be a start with trips of a day's duration. 



This could be done five or six times without exhausting the possible routes. The one usu- 

 ally chosen for a long run is the Camino Real or "royal road" leading westward from Havana. 



On this stretch of the trip we will begin to appreciate fully the excellent road we are tra- 

 versing. Most of the tree-planting on the Camino Real must have been done at the time the 

 road was built, and judging from the rings on the Royal palms, this was something over 100 

 years ago. There are miles of roadway where the branches form a canopy overhead with 

 hardly a break, and here in summer we see the full beauty of siich avenues of shade. 



On the Camino the automobile is the one touch of modernity amid old-world surroundings, 

 and the contrasts are strikingly presented as the wealthj' planter in his high-powered machine 

 flashes past a group of more conservative "caballeros" on horseback. Here the sight-seeing 

 auto-bus meets the time-worn "gua-gua" or local omnibus, with its equally time-worn horses 

 or mules, as it plies from town to town. The big motor truck, with its load of produce, passes 

 the primitive pack-train of mules roped together from pack to pack, or with the halter rope of 

 one animal tied to the tail of the one preceding. 



The maintenance of the Cuban "Calzadas" is in the hands of the National Department of 

 Public Works. The roads are divided into "sections," as on railways, and each section has its 

 superintendent, section-house, stables and staff of laborers. The raods are given constant 

 attention, and the surfacing renewed to maintain the proper level and insure drainage, and 

 the ditches are kept free from weeds and grass. 



In Guanajay, as in all towns of any size, there is at least one good hotel or "posada." Some- 

 times we will find the accommodations rather crude and plain, but generally clean; and as 

 for "the eats," always plenty of good things when one has once learned to appreciate Spanish 

 cooking, and really there are many dishes that will bear closer acquaintance. 



We can take out time the next morning in preparing for the continuation of our trip, with 

 the old coast town of Cabanas as our destination, and with a side trip which will land us at 

 Mariel for 11 o'clock berakfast at a little Fonda on the playa, where sea foods of one kind or 

 another are always in season. 



Hotels figure largely in creating pleasant memories of tours like this, and for that rea-son the 

 hotel at Cabaiias is worth a day's journey any time. One of the novel experiences there is to 

 eat oysters freshly gathered from the trees. Trees. Yes, the mangrove trees in the bay. At 

 low tide one can see them by the millions attached to the trunks and lower branches of the 

 mangrove thickets. We order oysters immediately on om- an-ival at the hotel, a man is dis- 

 patched to gather them, and at meal time they are served to us in heaping platters on the half- 

 shell. They are smaller than blue points, but of a delicious flavor. 



The return to Havana can be easily done in one day without stops. — Motor Life, N^etv York. 



CUBAN FISHING SMACKS IN FLORIDA "Regarding the smuggUng by Cuban 



fishing smacks, in all the cases that have 



Fishing along the territorial waters of the come up in this district, there has not been 



coast of Florida is not done by Cuban smacks any reported from fishing smacks and much 



as has been charged, says the Cuban Vice- less to Tampa, where they never come, the 



Consul at Tampa, Senor Ralph Ybor. Pomts at which they enter (when they claim 



"He declai-es that the Cuban fishing tliey have to), being Punta Gorda, Boca 

 smacks do their fishing in the open sea and Grande, Tarpon Springs and points in Char- 

 are not infringing on the rights of the United lotte Harbor. I am sure that if there was 

 States. And, though the boats do ome any smuggling of any importance going on 

 into the territorial waters of the United it would have been discovered before by the 

 States, the consul claims "that thev had to customs department here and the officers 

 come in in forcible entrv on account of bad of the special agent of the Treasury Depart- 

 weather or otherwise. The United States ment who are always on the lookout for those 

 customs service and my office," says Mr. matters and who keep a constant watch to 

 Ybor, "are always on the lookout for those prevent smuggUng. If any ca.se had been 

 smacks that come into the waters of the found it would have been brought to justice 

 United States, which thev have no right to m the same manner and zeal that is character- 

 do so, because they onlv clear for the high istic of the men in the federal service of the 

 seas to fish and have noVight to go into any Umted States. I have no doubt that they 

 port. Regarding their coming into territorial i»ay smuggle some smaU quantities of 

 waters, there are laws to stop the practice, cigarettes and aguardiente, but not enough 

 because in doing so thev are violating the to be discovered, m which case all can rest 

 laws and regulations both of the United assured that the hand of the law will fall 

 States and Cuba, in the departments of ^ipon the violators from both the customs of 

 quarantine, customs, immigration and con- the Lmted States and the Cuban government. 



sular. I have always been in touch with the 



special agent of the Treasury Department at 



Tampa, and all that can be done has been Earthquakes were felt in Oriente province 



done to prevent the infringement of the laws." on August 7th. There was no damage. 



