64 
THE STANDARD GUIDE. 
sairs, would become, in the future, an object of desire to crowned heads. 
He therefore directed the construction of an imperial fortress, worthy 
of his royal design and capable of making the harbor impregnable.” 
And so in 1587, the plans having been drawn by the Engineer Don 
Juan Bautista Antoneli, and a force of convicts and slaves having been 
provided to do the work, the coral rock was quarried out for the moats, 
and there was built here the fortress named Castillo de los Tres Reyes 
del Morro—Castle of the Three Kings of the Morro—which title was 
in usage shortened to Castillo del Morro, or simply El Morro. The 
Spanish word morro means “headland” or “promontory,” and is ap¬ 
plied to any fortress having such a position. There is a Morro at San¬ 
tiago and another at San Juan in Puerto Rico. The Havana Morro 
as completed in 1597 was a fac-simile of a Moorish fortress at Lisbon, 
but it has been much altered in design since then. It is an irregular 
fortification, from 100 to 120 feet above the level of the sea, surrounded 
by moats 70 feet deep, 30 feet of which are hewn out of solid rock. It 
stands on a bold headland jutting out into the Gulf; its most prominent 
feature is the light tower, whose flash is visible eighteen miles at 
sea. In storms the spray dashes over the ramparts. The waves are 
forever breaking against the base, and in the 300 years since the Morro 
was built the water has worn away the rock and eaten out great 
crevices, into which, under certain conditions of wind and tide, it pours, 
compressing the air and forcing it out with weird and uncanny noises. 
The Morro is in part built on solid rock, and in part hewn out of the 
rock. It has the character of a prodigious natural formation, shaped 
and modified by the hand of man. The ascent to the entrance is by an 
inclined road, which is shaded by royal poincianas and laurels, and 
hedged with impenetrable cactus, above which tower the moss-grown 
walls. The moat is crossed by a drawbridge to the sallyport, and the 
hall, between d&rk rooms, admits to the central court. All about 11s 
are prison-like rooms, casemates, storerooms, kitchens, magazines, 
bomb-proofs and dungeons, with grated embrasures, vaulted roofs and 
dark recesses. Ihe walls are of formidable heights, the ditches of 
astonishing depths. It is not at all a cheerful place, and when we come 
Mo a narrow, steep, high-stepped stairway descending into the interior 
depths, we feel no desire to explore its mysterious darkness, but turn 
instead to the more inviting way which leads up to the ramparts. Here 
we have a view well worth coming from Havana to behold, over harbor 
and town and gulf. On the seaward side we are directly over the sea, 
and looking down into its clear depths perhaps discern one of the 
monstrous sharks for which.these waters have an evil notoriety. When 
the Morro was occupied by a garrison, the sharks resorted here for the 
garbage thrown into the sea; a stone chute is built in the seaward wall, 
through which waste was thrown; and it is among the traditions of 
