ers or
land-owners or heads of families in a place, leaving it to be estimated
how many members each family contained. An exact census of the island in
Angulo's time would astonish the reader of to-day with the meagreness of
the settlements which had been effected in the course of forty years.

Of the seven cities which Velasquez had founded--they were called
cities, and we must through courtesy retain the name--Santiago was still
the largest, and was the capital. It probably contained at the period of
which we are writing fewer than five hundred Spaniards and other
Europeans. De Avila saw only two hundred assembled to welcome him on his
arrival as Governor. The number of houses and other buildings was less
than a hundred. The first town hall and church which were built there
were structures of logs and thatch, which were burned by a fire which
destroyed most of the place in 1528. Four years later the Franciscan
monastery and other buildings shared a like fate. The Spanish government
then urged the erection of buildings of stone with tiled roofs, and a
few such were erected. At the end of Guzman's second administration
there were perhaps a dozen such, of which Guzman himself owned two. The
harbor boasted a single wharf or pier, of logs and earth, near which for
protection two small cannon were placed behind an earthwork.

Such was the Cuban capital in 1550. Three years later, in 1553, a French
privateer entered the harbor, silenced the two cannon, and landed a
company of four hundred men, who outnumbered the entire population of
the place. These freebooters took possession of Santiago and lived there
at their ease, at the expense of the people, during the whole month of
July. Then, having exacted from the inhabitants a ransom of what would
be about $80,000 in modern currency, they departed, leaving the place
uninjured save for the depletion of its people's purses. Following this
visitation there was a numerous exodus of the inhabitants, to Bayamo and
other places; some leaving the island altogether.

Havana was at this time the second city of the island, and was steadily
rising toward first place. It had been the last of the seven cities to
be founded by Velasquez, and was now occupying its third and final site.
It was first planted in July, 1515, near the mouth of the Guines or
Mayabeque River, on the south shore of Cuba; that shore then being the
favorite part of the island for the sake of trade with Jamaica and the