plants, where Paul and Virginia
might have felt quite at home, wandering hand in hand.

Soon after passing the remarkably sheltered port of Guantanamo, which
was for nearly a century the most notorious piratical rendezvous in
the West Indies, the famous castle of Santiago is seen. It is known as
Moro Castle, but it antedates the more familiar Moro of Havana by a
full century. This antique, yellow, Moorish-looking stronghold--which
modern gunnery would destroy in about eight minutes--is picturesque to
the last degree, with its crumbling, honeycombed battlements, and
queer little flanking turrets, grated windows, and shadowy towers. It
is built upon the face of a lofty dun-colored rock, upon whose
precipitous side the fortification is terraced. It stands just at the
entrance of the narrow channel leading to the city, so that in passing
in one can easily exchange oral greetings with the sentry on the outer
battlement. What strikingly artistic pictures the light and shade
together formed with those time-stained walls, as we steamed slowly by
them! On the ocean side, directly under the castle, the sea has worn a
gaping cave, so deep that it has not been explored within the memory
of the people living in the neighborhood. The broad and lofty entrance
is in form as perfect an arch as could be drawn by the pencil of a
skillful architect. As is usual with such formations all over the
world, there is a romantic legend concerning the cave related as
connected with the olden time, and there is also a prevailing
superstition, that no one attempting to explore it will live to
return.

In passing up the channel two or three little forts of queer
construction are seen, supplementing the larger one, placed upon
jutting headlands. The Moro of Santiago is now used as a prison for
political offenders; its days of defensive importance ended with the
period of the buccaneers, against whose crude means of warfare it was
an ample protection. As we steamed past it that sunny afternoon,
stimulated by the novelty of everything about us, a crowd of pallid,
sorrowful faces appeared at the grated windows, watching us
listlessly. Two days later five of them, who were condemned patriots,
were led out upon those ramparts and shot, their bodies falling into
the sea, and eight were sent to the penal settlement of Ceuta. Spain
extends no mercy to those who dare to raise their hands or voices in
favor of freedom; her political existence is sustained onl