be cultivated on a modest scale, and coffee was introduced
when immigrants came from Martinique
in 1765. These Frenchmen also introduced bees,
and wax became an article of trade. Plantations
grew slowly for a long time, because trade was discouraged
by privateers and buccaneers and the general
impertinence of Spain’s numerous enemies as
well as by her own short-sighted policy. There
were few towns, and there were wide wastes of rich
land without inhabitants. Governors came out
from Spain and made a great parade in Havana
with their gorgeous state coaches in the streets and
their sumptuous barges in the harbour, and civil and
military officers made small fortunes and went home.
T h e meagre annals were enlivened near the end
of the Seven Y e a r s ’ War by the British capture of
Havana, Matanzas, and the adjacent territory, and
after that shaking up there was greater progress.
T h e large profits of sugar, tobacco, and coffee began
to be realised, and the hidalgos of Spain acquired
large estates and many slaves and drew riches from,,
the land. Peasants were brought out from the
Spanish provinces as colonists, and the white population
increased. Commerce becoming safer, Havana
grew to be a flourishing port in spite of stupid restrictions
upon trade, and had a navy-yard and shipbuilding
works. In 1 o, a really enlightened and
energetic governor was sent c in the person of
Don Luis Las Casas. He instituted many public
works and improvements, promoted education ?«
well as industry and trade, and gave a nefi U
to the life of the island. It was largely due to him
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.
T h e 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, 3300
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