874 



MEXICO, CENTEAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



system, and bv regular steamers witli all the coast towns. In the interior the 

 chief centre of the sugar industry is Colon, formerly called Nneva Bermeja. 



Beyond these districts life and industry are shifted from the northern to the 

 southern seaboard, although the region had remained almost deserted for 300 

 years. Cienfuegof^, so named in honour of a Cuban governor, is a modern place 

 situated on a magnificent harbour, which had already been visited by Columbus 

 and thoroughl}- surA^eyed hj Ocampo in 1508. Herrera speaks of this haven as 

 " unrivalled in the world," yet the town dates only from 1819, when it was 

 founded by the Louisiana planter, Louis Clouet, with some forty families from 

 Beam, Gascony, the Basque country and refugees from San Domingo. 



The harbour, 26 square miles in extent, though not the largest, is considered 



Fig. 177.— Matanzas. 



Scale 1 : 150,000. 



'''-\\ '^vm'u"/"!-^^ ,'. /oi'""'". /. • V -■ . Viêia de la Cumbr^"A^54^=^" 



O' ?•■ 1 • / nil I '■'- ^^ V*' ■ ■ ■ ( I "^- ^-H1 J 



'^,Ou>'f ." --âVV •• J ,o ..•^;>/v„,;ri,,:,%''iV')'i''"'*''ï-:^'' 



Deptlis. 



the best in Cuba. The trade has increased rapidlj^, and it is now the chief outlet 

 for the produce of the district of Cinco Villas ("Five Towns "), which have 

 become " six " since the foundation of Cieiifuegos. It is now the second sea- 

 port in the island, having far outstripped Trinidad, which has no less than three 

 harbours and an excellent roadstead farther east on the same coast. The Mani- 

 caragua plain between the two towns grows an exquisite tobacco scarcely inferior 

 to the finest brands in the Vuelta de Abajo. 



Trinidad, one of the oldest of the original " Five Cities," dates from the first 

 years of the conquest, when were also founded Sanfo Spirifii {Scmcti Spiritu) in 

 the interior, and San Juan de las Eemedios, called also Cayos because the first 



