CIENFUEGOS. 
Cienfuegos is in the Province of Santa Clara, on the south coast, 195 
miles from Havana. The route is all rail via the United Railways, or via 
Santa Clara and the Cuban Central railways; also by boats of the 
Odriozola Line from Havana. 
Carriage rates are 20 cents for one or two persons, 10 cents each addi¬ 
tional person, for trips in the city; $1 American or $1.50 Spanish per hour 
for one or two, and 50 cents extra for an additional passenger. Interpre¬ 
ters are $2 per day. 
The town is situated six miles from the sea on Cienfuegos Bay. The 
harbor, originally called Jagua, was pronounced by Las Casas the finest 
in the world, with room for a thousand ships; and at a very early day it 
was provided with a fort to protect the entrance, called Nuestra Senora 
de los Angeles de Jagua. In our time Captain Mahan has declared it to 
be the greatest harbor for strategic purposes in the Caribbean. It is in the 
direct line of the Panama Canal. The town was founded in 1819 by 
Louis Clouet, a French planter from Louisiana. The pretty story is told 
that the name came from an exclamation of one of Columbus’s sailors, 
who seeing bonfires on the beach cried, “Cien fuegos !”—“A hundred fires.” 
The fact, however, is that Clouet named his settlement after General Jose 
Cienfuegos, then Governor of Cuba. The town was destroyed by a hurri¬ 
cane, and was rebuilt in 1825. The city is modern in character, with 
streets forty feet wide; and is one of the busiest, most enterprising and 
energetic towns in Cuba. In commercial importance it is third in imports 
and fourth in exports. It is in the center of the richest sugar-producing 
district of the island. 
The city possesses one of the prettiest plazas in all Cuba, a double 
square decorated with laurels and royal palms. On Sunday and Thursday 
evenings the best people of the town gather to enjoy the music, which is 
rendered by a skilled band; the square is brilliant with electricity; seats 
and promenades are filled, and the scene is perfectly charming. The night 
air is soft and balmy. The women and girls are without head covering, or 
w r ear mantillas. Here, as elsewhere in Cuba, they follow the pretty 
Spanish custom of ornamenting the hair with a single flower. The gather¬ 
ing is decorous to a degree, well-bred and courteous, animated and happy. 
It is an occasion for meeting and greeting friends and acquaintances, the 
exchange of small talk and the whisperings of soft confidences. These 
evening concerts on the plazas are a feature of Cuban cities, and show us 
m extremely interesting and suggestive phase of the life of the people. 
The two sculptured lions which guard the plaza were presented to the 
city by Queen Isabella II. She also gave to the Cathedral facing the 
plaza the Madonna with costly robes of cloth of gold and violet purple, 
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