San Diego De Los Banos 
By PAULINA BRANDRETH 
I N the mountains of Pinar del Rio, fourteen 
miles from Paso Real and a good three 
hours by train from Havana, tucked under 
a blue spur of the Organo range and flanked 
by forests of royal palms, stands the provincial 
town of San Diego de los Banos. 
To the newcomer, bent on modest explora¬ 
tion, the sight of its red roofs and sun-washed 
buildings offers a pleasant prospect, and although 
its history is a short one, dating from 1843, 
when Don Luis Pedroso laid the corner stone 
and built the town around a diminutive square 
known under the superfluous title of the Plaza 
de Isabel II., it wears, nevertheless, an appear¬ 
ance of considerable antiquity. The walls of 
the little Catholic church look gray and age- 
pitted ; the low Cuban houses are shuffled to¬ 
gether in ancient disorder, and grass and wild 
flowers push their way between the rough cob¬ 
ble stones that pave the streets. It is a place 
of sunshine and slumber. Indeed, whoever 
makes a pilgrimage to San Diego, be he the 
most energetic person between the equator and 
the north pole, will eventually succumb to the 
luxuriant influence of the mountain air, dream 
away his hours and fall deliciously under the 
spell of a tropic nepenthe. 
East, west and south to the edge of the hori¬ 
zon the country sweeps away in a succession of 
rambling hillocks and shallow valleys. Now and 
again a palm-decked promontory climbs a little 
higher into the sky and is seen from a greater 
distance, or a valley more spacious than the 
others, partly under cultivation and partly filled 
with a wild jungle growth, opens before one in 
a plain of bright, swimming green. But taken 
as a whole this portion of the district is uni¬ 
form, and the salient character of the land 
figures in the north, where the mountains— 
broken, saddle-backed and shambling—lie chained 
together, a solid barrier against the sea. For 
although the waters of the gulf are ten leagues 
distant, one is frequently conscious of the ocean’s 
near presence. Sometimes it is at night when 
the stars open with the peculiarly luminous glit¬ 
ter always to be noticed at sea; or in the early 
morning when riding up a mountain trail one 
unexpectedly swallows a breath of salty air 
blown overland. Then, too, the trade winds, 
freighted with balm and fragrance, make this 
sense of the ocean’s proximity still more inti¬ 
mate. Often during your climbs through the 
mountains, in coming suddenly upon a view of 
craggy buttresses ranged along the skyline, you 
will say to yourself, “Just over that ridge lies 
the sea, the indigo gulf, with its sea birds and 
coral cliffs and shoals of lavender and emerald.” 
Sometimes, indeed, you can almost hear the surf 
rumbling and growling alongshore. Nor is this 
all merely a pleasant illusion, for within a stone’s 
throw of San Diego rises a cone-shaped moun¬ 
tain, from the top of which both coasts may be 
viewed in reality; from where, on a clear day, 
with a telescope or an elastic imagination, you 
may observe steamships plowing their way to¬ 
ward Mexican ports; or a three-masted schooner 
breasting the golden waves of the Caribbean. 
The road from Paso Real enters San Diego 
on the east, crosses a plank bridge and after in¬ 
tricate wanderings through the town, lands one 
at the threshold of a spacious hostelry. The 
approach of guests is signaled by a musical 
clanging of bells, fastened under the carriage 
and used along the highway for clearing the 
road. Not long ago the volante or native 
wagon, a low-swung, two-wheeled, rambling af¬ 
fair drawn by three mules and guided by an 
outrider, was the only mode of conveyance to 
be found in the vicinity. But nowadays they 
are seldom seen, and modern vehicles have 
usurped the place of their picturesque predeces¬ 
sors. 
The morning of our arrival at San Diego the 
proprietor, Senor C., accompanied by his mother 
and angular son, bade us welcome from the 
door step and conducted us, not without some 
show of ceremony, into the posada. After the 
heat of the drive it was good to taste the cool 
air of the high, roomy interior, to look into 
the half-shaded garden with its orange trees and 
drooping bush of purple bourganvillia; to touch 
hands, as it were, with the mountains after the 
bustle of Havana. 
As its name implies, San Diego takes its ori¬ 
gin from the copious sulphur springs that bubble 
in pale green torrents from the river bed with¬ 
in a short distance of the hotel. The season 
for the baths, however, having not yet opened, 
we found ourselves, with the exception of a 
solitary young Spaniard, crippled with rheuma¬ 
tism, sole occupants of the place. But this very 
seclusion proved a balm and comfort, for we 
came and went as we pleased, and enjoyed a 
certain ownership from which we might other¬ 
wise have been debarred. 
The village was strangely quiet. Although 
the hotel faced directly on the main thorough¬ 
fare, there was seldom any sound or commo¬ 
tion to suggest the nearness of a rural com¬ 
munity. Early morning, perhaps, occupied the 
noisiest portion of the day, and ere the stars 
were quenched a horseman would clatter up the 
street, his pony’s hoofs ticking a song on the 
cobble stones. Then, as though by signal, a 
variety of matutinal sounds would break sud¬ 
denly upon the silence. Dogs barked, jacks 
brayed, a hubbub of chanticleers announced the 
dawn, and a little while later a babbling of 
Spanish issued from the negro huts. But by 
the time the sun had topped the palm groves, 
and the buzzards were wheeling tranquilly over 
the mountains, all would again grow quiet. And 
save for the distant bellowing of cattle or the 
brazen tongue of the church bell clattering loudly 
at midday, the place seemed hushed and noise¬ 
less. With the advance of evening, however, 
the town usually bestirred itself. Women and 
children flocked in the streets; ox carts, shout¬ 
ing herd drivers; muchachos mounted on stocky 
mules, swarthy Cubans and bearded mountain¬ 
eers, with war-like machetes clanging against 
their deep Mexican stirrups, rode in from the 
countryside. 
Opposite the hotel a dozen ponies stood hitched 
to the casa posts on the clay floors of the houses, 
their tails braided and tied fast to the saddles, 
a custom commonly to be observed among many 
Cubans who find the act of switching flies an¬ 
noying to their sensibilities. And so the poor 
animals would wait patiently without, shaking 
off the winged pests that besieged them as best 
they could while their riders made merry with¬ 
in. Now and then we saw a native who treated 
his beast of burden with sorpe show of kind¬ 
ness, and I remember one afternoon seeing a 
young man actually remove the saddle from his 
pony’s back, fetch a bucket of water and give 
him a cooling spronge-off, while he accom¬ 
panied his labors by singing in a high-pitched 
woman’s soprano. Most of the Cubans, how¬ 
ever, seem cruel toward animals. Above all, 
and especially among the lower class of island¬ 
ers, well represented in such a place as San 
Diego, they are hag-ridden with superstitions 
that frequently assume a dark and bloody char¬ 
acter. The brujo or witch doctor, is at the 
same time held in terror and obeyed by multi¬ 
tudes wallowing in the most pitiful ignorance. 
And their religion itself is overburdened with 
weird rites and occult omens filched from the 
jungle lands of Africa. One day while riding 
by a plantation in the mountains we came on 
a dead cock hung in a tree close to the road¬ 
side. It had been killed in a fight and there¬ 
fore, being considered unfit for food, was used 
as a religious symbol, the hidden meaning of 
which none of the party was able to determine. 
Another time I was told a tale of certain pro¬ 
ceedings carried on by a witch doctor in an 
effort to cure a sick person, which ended by put¬ 
ting most of the participants in jail, and caused 
the brujo himself to be tried for murder. Thus 
