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In July, 1515, the city of San Cristobal de la Habana was planted, deriving its name from the great Discoverer, but this name was transferred in 1519 to the present capital, and the original town was called Batabano. In 1518 the capital was fixed at Baracoa, which had by this time become a city of considerable importance, and the diocese of the colony.
The ports of Matanzas, Cardenas, Cienfuegos, Sagua, Caibarien, Santiago, Manzanillo, Nuevitas, Guantanamo, Gibara, and Baracoa, in said islands, are hereby declared to be subports of entry, and an officer of the Army will be assigned to each of the subports, who will be the collector of customs of a subport and shall have general jurisdiction of the collection of customs at such port.
In a single decade, Velasquez founded the seven cities of Baracoa, Santiago de Cuba, Trinidad, Bayamo, Puerto del Principe, St. Spiritus, and, on the south coast near Batabano, Havana, since removed to its present site.
The entrance to the Old Channel, from Punta de Mulas, west-north-west of Baracoa, as far as the new settlement which has taken the name of Puerto de las Nuevitas del Principe, is alike free from shoals and breakers.
But the "spinal railroad" was built, and from it a number of radiating lines have been built, to Sancti Spiritus, Manzanillo, Nipe Bay, and to Guantanamo. About the only places on the island, really worth seeing, with the exception of Trinidad and Baracoa, can now be reached by a fairly comfortable railway journey.
This is old Baracoa, the oldest settlement on the island, now to be reached only by water or by the roughest of journeys over mountain trails. The town itself does not amount to much, but the bay is a gem, a little, circular basin, forest-shaded to its border, its waters clear as crystal.
The most difficult of access are Baracoa, the oldest city of the island, and Trinidad, founded only a few years later. Glancing at some of these places, in their order from west to east, the first is Pinar del Rio, a comparatively modern city, dating really from the second half of the 18th Century.
Baracoa, or Santiago, or Trinidad, or any other Cuban city, could not send goods to Santander, or Malaga, or Barcelona, or any other Spanish market, or receive goods directly from them.
Having landed at Taco for a short time, Columbus arrived in the evening of the 27th at Baracoa, to which he gave the name of Puerto Santo.
The diocese of the Havannah comprehends forty, and that of Cuba twenty-two, parishes. The bishopric of Santiago de Cuba contains the five cities of Baracoa, Cuba, Holguin, Guiza, Puerto Principe and the Villa of Bayamo.
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