Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
The monitors Puritan and Miantonomoh, which had not been to San Juan, sailed on the 20th for the Havana blockade, where they were joined before noon of the 21st by the Indiana, and the New York, the latter having the Admiral on board. Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, arrived off Cienfuegos toward midnight of the same day.
The Plaza of Cienfuegos forms a large, well-arranged square, where an out-door military concert is given twice a week, a universal practice in all Cuban cities. It is laid out with excellent taste, its broad paths nicely paved, and the whole lighted at night with numerous ornamental gas-lamps.
It was a strange port for the Spaniards to seek, and it was a fatal one. While Sampson was looking in one direction for Admiral Cervera's ships, Commodore Schley, with another squadron, was close upon their track. For awhile he thought they were in Cienfuegos, but when he found they were not there, he kept on up the coast.
The old city of Trinidad is reached, by boat, from Cienfuegos, or rather its port city, Casilda, is so reached. Presumably, it was the port city that Velasquez founded in 1514, a location a few miles inland being chosen later, as being less exposed to attacks by the pirates and freebooters who infested the Caribbean Sea for many years.
Next morning, when we drove to the dock to take passage on board the steamship Cienfuegos, the snow-mounds had all been removed. The mail steamer sailed promptly at the hour assigned, hauled out into the stream by a couple of noisy little tugs, with two-inch hawsers made fast to stem and stern.
It has been said that Schley, being ordered to Key West when Cervera appeared in Cuban waters, "proceeded to Cienfuegos, which was thought to be the destination of the Spanish warships.
Cienfuegos has some twenty-five thousand inhabitants, a large percentage of whom speak English, nine-tenths of its commerce being with this country.
These, mixed with a few vegetables, bits of fish, and sometimes meat and bones, are boiled into a soup which at least keeps soul and body together in the poor creatures until another Saturday comes round. Cienfuegos is in the centre of a great sugar-producing district. Sugar-cane is cultivated much like Indian corn, which it also resembles in appearance.
Our object in the first place was, as we ascertained from forward during the day, to intercept a Spanish blockade runner, the "Purissima Concepcion"; so we laid off the harbor and waited for the coming of the ship, which was supposed to have left Jamaica for Cienfuegos. The day was spent in cleaning up after our brief but lively battle, and when night came, we were again shipshape.
As a rule, invalids rarely go beyond the cities to remain over night. Brief and pleasant sojourns may be made at Havana, Cienfuegos, Matanzas, and Sagua la Grande, from whence excursions can be made by rail or otherwise and return on the same day. Let us qualify these remarks, as applied to the Hotel Louvre at Matanzas.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking