76 
THE STANDARD GUIDE. 
THE MEMORIAL OF THE LAUREL DITCH. 
took possession of the town; but the people did not rise to support hitn, and he re¬ 
tired. In the following- year he organized another force consisting of 450 men, many 
of whom had been enlisted from the Southern United States. Col. W. L. Crittenden, 
of Kentucky, a graduate of West Point, was second in command. The expedition 
landed at Las Pazas, near Bahia Honda, thirty miles west of Havana. A large force 
cf Spanish soldiers was sent from the Havana garrisons to repulse them. In the 
engagement which followed, many of the invaders were killed, Lopez was put to 
flight, and Crittenden and fifty of his men were taken prisoners, brought to Havana 
and shot at Atares Castle. Lopez was subsequently captured and garroted in Havana. 
The magnitude of Cabana piques one’s curiosity to know something 
of its past; but there are no stirring chronicles; the story may be told 
in a few words. When Spain regained possession of Havana in 1763, 
she at once set about strengthening the harbor defenses, and began the 
construction of this fortification on Cabanas Hill, so called from the 
cabanas or cabins which were here in the early days; the name appears 
on the British plan of 1762, page 58. The work of building consumed 
eleven years, from 1763 to 1774, and the cost was $14,000,000. The story 
is related of Cabana, as it is of Spanish San Marco, in Florida, that 
when the King was told of the sum expended in its building, he gazed 
intently toward the west, declaring that the walls must be high enough 
to be visible across the sea. It might be not altogether fanciful to 
charge up to Cabana, in addition, the entire cost of the yellow fever 
scourge of Cuba, and through Cuba of North America and Europe 
during the century and a half that followed; for the disease was intro¬ 
duced into Cuba by convict laborers who were imported from Vera 
Cruz to work on the Cabana defenses. As events proved, the entire 
