Persons visiting Matanzas must make up their minds to be content with indifferent hotel accommodations. In fact there are no really good hotels in Cuba; those which exist are poor and expensive. On the inland routes away from the cities there are none, and the humble hostelries, or posadas, as they are called, are so indifferent in point of comforts as not to deserve the name of inns. 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. There was a degree of picturesqueness about this establishment which was not without its attraction, and it was certainly the most cleanly public house in which we found a temporary home while on the island. Its rooms surrounded a bright clean court, or patio, planted with creeping vines, palmettos, bananas, and some fragrant flowering shrubs. The dining-room is virtually out of doors, being open on all sides, and opposite the hotel is a small plaza with tropical trees, backed by an old, musty church, whose bell had the true Spanish trick of giving tongue at most inopportune moments. The rooms of the Louvre are quite circumscribed as to space, and the partitions separating the apartments do not reach to the ceiling, so that privacy, night or day, is out of the question. The floors are all tiled in white marble, and the attendance is courteous. One does not look for a choice bill of fare in Cuba, and therefore will not be disappointed on that score. You will be charged Fifth Avenue prices, however, if you do not get Fifth Avenue accommodations. If you have learned in your travels to observe closely, to study men as well as localities, to enjoy Nature in her ever-varying moods, and to delight in luxurious fruits, flowers, and vegetation, you will find quite enough to occupy and amuse the mind, and make you forget altogether the grosser senses of appetite.
Puerto Principe is the capital of the central department of Cuba, and is located well inland. The trade of the place, from the want of water carriage, is inconsiderable, and bears no proportion to the number of its inhabitants, which aggregates nearly thirty-one thousand. The product of the neighborhood, to find means of export, must first make its way twelve and a half leagues to Nuevitas, from whence, in return, it receives its foreign supplies. The two places are now, however, connected by a railroad. Puerto Principe is about one hundred and fifty leagues from Havana. Its original location, as founded by Velasquez in 1514, was at Nuevitas, but the inhabitants, when the place was feeble in numbers, were forced to remove from the coast to avoid the fierce incursions of the pirates, as did the people of Trinidad, who removed from the harbor of Casilda.