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The chief engineer in charge of the trocha detailed a captain to take me over it and to show me all that there was to see. The officers of the infantry and cavalry stationed at Ciego objected to his doing this, but he said: "He has a pass from General Weyler. I am not responsible."
There was a very smart officers' club at Ciego well supplied with a bar and billiard tables, which I made some excuse for not entering, but which could be seen through its open doors, and I suggested to one of the members that it must be a comfort to have such a place, where the officers might go after their day's march on the mud banks of the trocha, and where they could bathe and be cool and clean.
It was restored for use in the revolution of 1895, but its blockhouses at every kilometre, and its barbed wire tangles, were entirely ineffective against Gomez and Maceo and other leaders, all of whom crossed it at their own sweet will, although not without an occasional vicious little contest. We reached Ciego de Avila soon after noon, and had to wait there over night for a further advance.
Gillette in "Secret Service" only seventeen times before leaving New York, I knew just what to do, which was to smoke all the time and keep cool. The latter requirement was somewhat difficult, as Ciego de Avila is a hotter place than Richmond. Indeed, I can only imagine one place hotter than Ciego, and I have not been there. Ciego was an interesting town.
After some hours of waiting, we secured passage in an antiquated little car attached to a freight train carrying supplies and structural material to Ciego de Avila, for use by the railway then being built in both directions, eastward and westward from that point.
At Ciego de Avila, where a stay of a couple of hours was made, Stuart's companion pointed out the famous trocha or military barrier which had been erected by the Spaniards as a protection against the movements of Cuban insurgents, and which ran straight across the whole island.
So at five the following morning a box car, with wooden planks stretched across it for seats, carried me along the line of the trocha from Jucaro to Ciego, the chief military port on the fortifications, and consumed five hot and stifling hours in covering twenty-five miles.
Beyond Ciego, the train passed again through a zone of tropical forest lands and then dropped into the level plains of Santa Clara, the center of the sugar industry of Cuba. From there it bore northward toward Matanzas, through a belt of bristling pineapple fields.
One Sunday night, when the band was playing in the plaza, at a heaven-forsaken fever camp called Ciego de Avila, a group of soldiers were sitting near me on the grass enjoying the music. They loitered there a few minutes after the bugle had sounded the retreat to the barracks, and the officer of the day found them.
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