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THE CUBA REVIEW 



The First Reservoir, Which Supplied Water to Havana in 1640, Santa Clara Convent 



be furnished with shelter for the night. Thus the homeless wanderers, black and white, 

 for a mite could sleep within shelter, and the mite would go into the poor box. 



The nuns were charitable. Their order was a strict one. cloistered and secluded. 

 Some of the rooms overlooking the thoroughfare have wooden steps leading to a balcony 

 within doors. The nun who had been very faithful in the discharge of her duties was 

 allowed to mount the stairs and look out from behind stout bars, too far up to be 

 visible to the passerby. 



Awake at dawn, matins called the nuns to their devotions, and the day was divided 

 into services for the church, which took place as regularly as watches on ship-board. 

 At the stroke of Angelus, the nuns betook themselves to their cells, barely furnished. 

 Upon taking their vows, a coffin was made and placed in readiness until the scythe 

 of time claimed its own. 



In Holy Week, musical chants might be heard coming from the upper part of the 

 church, where the nuns were kneeling behind heavy barred gratings. 



A subterranean stairway and passage leading from the main church of Santa Clara 

 near San Francisco, or the building which was then San Francisco, has been unearthed 

 and gives rise to many conjectures. Those were the days when buccaneers preyed 

 on the Spanish Main and Cuba was a prey to these marauders of the sea. This 

 passage may have furnished a place of refuge for the nuns or may have led to the 

 waterfront, whence they could embark and escape from the harbor, while the buccaneers 

 raided the town from beyond the walls. 



In March, 1922, in the stillness of early dawn, thirty-nine nuns were conveyed 

 in automobiles to their new convent, a handsome structure in Luyano. 



Funds for Hospitals 



The Cuban Congress has appropriated the sum of $5,000 a year for the Camaguey 

 Hospital, with a view to establishing in it a special ward for old men, women and 

 children, and an equal amount for the hospitals of Pinar del Rio, Matanzas, Santa Clara, 

 and Santiago de Cuba, for the same purpose. The hospital in Cienfuegos will receive 

 an annual subsidy of $2,000 and the one in Guines, $1,000. 



