which over 2000 are to be added for the Isle of Pines,
itself containing over 1200 square miles, and the
thousand and more of fringing islets and reefs, a few
of which have inhabited spots.
T he greater part of the area of Cuba consists of
calcareous formation, similar to that of the reefs still
growing on its borders, but this rests in the uplands
upon an underlying skeleton of tertiary rocks, covered
in part by diorites and porphyries, and interspersed
on the south-eastern coast with basalt and
trachyte. Here and there protrudes a primitive
granite, but nowhere is there sign of volcanic product.
The highest projection of the rocky skeleton
is in that eastern head of the island whose southern
coast-line runs nearly due east and west from Cape
Maisi to Cape Cruz. Here is a well defined mountain
range, called the Sierra Maestra, springing
abruptly from the water’s edge and starting with
the sharp headland at Cape Cruz, and rising in a
series of terraces to the crest of Ojo del Toro, 330x3
feet high. Farther east it culminates in the Pico
Tarquino, which is probably a corruption of Pico
Turquino, “ Blue P eak ,” of a height variously estimated
from 6900 to 8400 feet, but never accurately
measured. From this height there is a precipitous
decline seaward, and a gradual slope landward in a
broad plateau which declines into the valley of the
Rio Cauto on the north. Continuing eastward the
mountain system contracts into the Sierra del
Cobre, which finally breaks into the circle of hills
about Santiago Bay, and then sinks away into the
marshy valley of the Rio Guantanamo. Poised on