The course usually taken by steamers from Key West to Santiago lies along the northern coast of Cuba, through the Nicholas and Old Bahama channels, to Cape Maysi, and thence around the eastern end of the island by the Windward Passage. Inasmuch, however, as we were going without a convoy, and Commodore Remey had advised us to keep out of sight of land, in order to avoid possible interception by a Spanish gunboat from some unblockaded port on the coast, we decided to go around the western end of the island, doubling Cape San Antonio, and then proceeding eastward past the Isle of Pines to Cape Cruz and Santiago. Tuesday afternoon we saw the high mountains in the province of Pinar del Rio looming up faintly through the haze at a distance of twenty-five or thirty miles, and late that same evening we passed the flash-light at the extremity of Cape San Antonio and turned eastward toward Cape Cruz and Santiago. After rounding the western end of the island we had a succession of thunder-storms and rain-squalls, with a strong easterly breeze and a heavy head sea; but Thursday night the weather moderated, and at half-past six o'clock Friday morning we sighted Cape Cruz rising out of the dark water ahead in a long, transverse stretch of flat table-land, backed by mountains and terminating on the sea in a high, steep bluff.

The coast of Cuba between Cape Cruz and Santiago is formed by a striking and beautiful range of mountains, known to the Spaniards as the "Sierra Maestra," or "Master Range," which extends eastward and westward for more than a hundred miles and contains some of the highest peaks to be found on the island. As seen from the water its furrowed slopes and flanks are deceptively foreshortened, so that they appear to fall with extraordinary steepness and abruptness to the sea; its rocky, wave-wor