CAMAGÜEY. - In Cuba steam lines were established for the coastal shipping navigation since 1818, even, before it was implanted in the Spanish peninsula, already by the middle of the 19th century the majority of the service of post office and deliveries of the country was done through that route.

Two marine coastal shipping routes were content for post office and deliveries, one for the north that was going out straight of Havana and was doing scales in Matanzas, Sagua la Grande, Remedios, Nuevitas, Gibara, Baracoa and ended in Santiago de Cuba.

The itinerary of the route of the south was going out of the port of Batabanó, to which there came the mail and the mailing in a railroad linkage with Havana, headed up to Cienfuegos and continued Trinidad, Santa Cruz of the South, Manzanillo up to the final destination in Santiago de Cuba.

Port-au-Prince, for being a Mediterranean city, received mail through the terrestrial routes and two marine ones but the speediest was the one that entered the Port of Nuevitas and was connected by the railroad that joined both cities, a curious way in which the Camagüey´s citizens of then were warned about the arrival of the mail and even with the details of the route for which it arrived.

If the train, before coming to the station, made the whistle sound in four opportunities, the Camagüey´s citiens knew that the steam that had come to Nuevitas was coming from Havana and those who were waiting for mailing from this point were already alert.

If it sounded only three, then the steam that had come to Nuevitas was coming from Santiago de Cuba and the information had the same luck for the hates of the citizens.

For its part when it was extending his whistles to seven the fact was that there had come to the Nuevitas´ port steams of Santiago de Cuba and Havana; and in effect, those whisles of the train of Nuevitas were an ingredient of the everyday life of the Port-au-Prince of the middle of the 19th century.

* Historian of Guáimaro.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez