146 
THE STANDARD GUIDE i 
PLAZA AGRAMONTE. 
streets and houses make a succession of attractive pictures which lure the 
visitor to extended explorations. Many of the streets are so tortuous that 
it is impossible to see far ahead, and one is continually piqued to discover 
what new picture bit may be around the bend. No two streets in 
Camagiiey run parallel; nor do any two meet at right angles. The street 
plan is a study in curves; the stranger must direct his course by pure 
orientation. 
An accepted explanation of the crooked streets is that the newcomers 
staked their claims and built their houses at random, wherever they had 
happened to deposit their belongings; and that the streets were the out¬ 
growth of paths leading from house to house. But an ancient citizen of 
Nuevitas declares that his father told him that his father had told him 
that his father said—and so on back to the beginning—that the streets of 
Camagiiey were made crooked on purpose to fool the pirates—an explanation 
so beautiful that it at least ought to be true. One is quite willing to accept 
it after a personal experience of the labyrinthian mazes. 
The city is in the center of a grazing country, and cattle raising 
has always been the principal industry. “The vicinity of Puerto Principe,’’ 
wrote a traveler of the eighteenth century, “is nothing more than a vast 
plain, where half wild cattle are pastured. The proprietors are only 
