Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 18 - Chapter 3.29, Part 2

The island of Cuba, over more than four-fifths of its surface, is composed of low lands.

The soil is covered with secondary and tertiary formations, formed by some rocks of gneiss-granite, syenite and euphotide.

The knowledge obtained hitherto of the geologic configuration of the country, is as unsatisfactory as what is known respecting the relative age and nature of the soil.

It is only ascertained that the highest group of mountains lies at the south-eastern extremity of the island, between Cape Cruz, Punta Maysi, and Holguin.

This mountainous part, called the Sierra or Las Montanas del Cobre (the Copper Mountains), situated north-west of the town of Santiago de Cuba, appears to be about 1200 toises in height.

If this calculation be correct, the summits of the Sierra would command those of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, and the peaks of La Selle and La Hotte in the island of San Domingo.

The Sierra of Tarquino, fifty miles west of the town of Cuba, belongs to the same group as the Copper Mountains.

The island is crossed from east-south-east to west-north-west by a chain of hills, which approach the southern coast between the meridians of La Ciudad de Puerto Principe and the Villa Clara; while, further to the westward towards Alvarez and Matanzas, they stretch in the direction of the northern coast.

Proceeding from the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo to the Villa de la Trinidad, I saw on the north-west, the Lomas de San Juan, which form needles or horns more than 300 toises high, with their declivities sloping regularly to the south.

This calcareous group presents a majestic aspect, as seen from the anchorage near the Cayo de Piedras.

Xagua and Batabano are low coasts; and I believe that, in general, west of the meridian of Matanzas, there is no hill more than 200 toises high, with the exception of the Pan de Guaixabon.

The land in the interior of the island is gently undulated, as in England; and it rises only from 45 to 50 toises above the level of the sea.

The objects most visible at a distance, and most celebrated by navigators, are the Pan de Matanzas, a truncated cone which has the form of a small monument; the Arcos de Canasi, which appear between Puerto Escondido and Jaruco, like small segments of a circle; the Mesa de Mariel, the Tetas de Managua, and the Pan de Guaixabon.

This gradual slope of the limestone formations of the island of Cuba towards the north and west indicates the submarine connection of those rocks with the equally low lands of the Bahama Islands, Florida and Yucatan.

Intellectual cultivation and improvement were so long restricted to the Havannah and the neighbouring districts, that we cannot be surprised at the ignorance prevailing among the inhabitants respecting the geologic formation of the Copper Mountains.

Don Francisco Ramirez, a traveller versed in chemical and mineralogical science, informed me that the western part of the island is granitic, and that he there observed gneiss and primitive slate.

Probably the alluvial deposits of auriferous sand which were explored with much ardour* at the beginning of the conquest, to the great misfortune of the natives came from those granitic formations (* At Cubanacan, that is, in the interior of the island, near Jagua and Trinidad, where the auriferous sands have been washed by the waters as far as the limestone soil.

Martyr d'Anghiera, the most intelligent writer on the Conquest, says: "Cuba is richer in gold than Hispaniola (San Domingo); and at the moment I am writing, 180,000 castillanos of ore have been collected at Cuba."

Herrera estimates the tax called King's-fifth (quinto del Rey), in the island of Cuba, at 6000 pesos, which indicates an annual product of 2000 marks of gold, at 22 carats; and consequently purer than the gold of Sibao in San Domingo.

In 1804 the mines of Mexico altogether produced 7000 marks of gold; and those of Peru 3400. It is difficult, in these calculations, to distinguish between the gold sent to Spain by the first Conquistadores, that obtained by washings, and that which had been accumulated for ages in the hands of the natives, who were pillaged at will.

Supposing that in the two islands of Cuba and San Domingo (in Cubanacan and Cibao) the product of the washings was 3000 marks of gold, we find a quantity three times less than the gold furnished annually (1790 to 1805) by the small province of Choco.

In this supposition of ancient wealth there is nothing improbable; and if we are surprised at the scanty produce of the gold-washings attempted in our days at Cuba and San Domingo, which were heretofore so prolific, it must be recollected that at Brazil also the product of the gold-washings has fallen, from 1760 to 1820, from 6600 gold kilogrammes to less than 595. Lumps of gold weighing several pounds, found in our days in Florida and North and South Carolina, prove the primitive wealth of the whole basin of the Antilles from the island of Cuba to the Appalachian chain.

It is also natural that the product of the gold-washings should diminish with greater rapidity than that of the subterraneous working of the veins.

The metals not being renewed in the clefts of the veins (by sublimation) now accumulate in alluvial soil by the course of the rivers where the table-lands are higher than the level of the surrounding running waters.

But in rocks with metalliferous veins the miner does not at once know all he has to work.

He may chance to lengthen the labours, to go deep, and to cross other accompanying veins.

Alluvial soils are generally of small depth where they are auriferous; they most frequently rest upon sterile rocks.

Their superficial position and uniformity of composition help to the knowledge of their limits, and wherever workmen can be collected, and where the waters for the washings abound, accelerate the total working of the auriferous clay.

These considerations, suggested by the history of the Conquest, and by the science of mining, may throw some light on the problem of the metallic wealth of Hayti.

In that island, as well as at Brazil, it would be more profitable to attempt subterraneous workings (on veins) in primitive and intermediary soils than to renew the gold-washings which were abandoned in the ages of barbarism, rapine and carnage.

); traces of that sand are still found in the rivers Holguin and Escambray, known in general in the vicinity of Villa-Clara, Santo Espiritu, Puerto del Principe de Bayamo and the Bahia de Nipe.

The abundance of copper mentioned by the Conquistadores of the sixteenth century, at a period when the Spaniards were more attentive than they have been in latter times to the natural productions of America, may possibly be attributed to the formations of amphibolic slate, transition clay-slate mixed with diorite, and to euphotides analogous to those I found in the mountains of Guanabacoa.

The central and western parts of the island contain two formations of compact limestone; one of clayey sandstone and another of gypsum.

The former has, in its aspect and composition, some resemblance to the Jura formation.

It is white, or of a clear ochre-yellow, with a dull fracture, sometimes conchoidal, sometimes smooth; divided into thin layers, furnishing some balls of pyromac silex, often hollow (at Rio Canimar two leagues east of Matanzas), and petrifications of pecten, cardites, terebratules and madrepores.

* (* I saw neither gryphites nor ammonites of Jura limestone nor the nummulites and cerites of coarse limestone.

) I found no oolitic beds, but porous beds almost bulbous, between the Potrero del Conde de Mopox, and the port of Batabano, resembling the spongy beds of Jura limestone in Franconia, near Dondorf, Pegnitz, and Tumbach.

Yellowish cavernous strata, with cavities from three to four inches in diameter, alternate with strata altogether compact,* and poorer in petrifications.

(* The western part of the island has no deep ravines; and we recognize this alternation in travelling from the Havannah to Batabano, the deepest beds (inclined from 30 to 40 degrees north-east) appear as we advance.

) The chain of hills that borders the plain of Guines on the north and is linked with the Lomas de Camua, and the Tetas de Managua, belongs to the latter variety, which is reddish white, and almost of lithographic nature, like the Jura limestone of Pappenheim.

The compact and cavernous beds contain nests of brown ochreous iron; possibly the red earth (tierra colorada) so much sought for by the coffee planters (haciendados) owes its origin to the decomposition of some superficial beds of oxidated iron, mixed with silex and clay, or to a reddish sandstone* (* Sandstone and ferruginous sand; iron-sand?

) superposed on limestone.

The whole of this formation, which I shall designate by the name of the limestone of Guines, to distinguish it from another much more recent, forms, near Trinidad, in the Lomas of St. Juan, steep declivities, resembling the mountains of limestone of Caripe, in the vicinity of Cumana.

They also contain great caverns, near Matanzas and Jaruco, where I have not heard that any fossil bones have been found.

The frequency of caverns in which the pluvial waters accumulate, and where small rivers disappear, sometimes causes a sinking of the earth.

I am of opinion that the gypsum of the island of Cuba belongs not to tertiary but to secondary soil; it is worked in several places on the east of Matanzas, at San Antonio de los Banos, where it contains sulphur, and at the Cayos, opposite San Juan de los Remedios.

We must not confound with this limestone of Guines, sometimes porous, sometimes compact, another formation so recent that it seems to augment in our days.

I allude to the calcareous agglomerates, which I saw in the islands of Cayos that border the coast between the Batabano and the bay of Xagua, principally south of the Cienega de Zapata, Cayo Buenito, Cayo Flamenco and Cayo de Piedras.

The soundings prove that they are rocks rising abruptly from a bottom of between twenty and thirty fathoms.

Some are at the water's edge, others one-fourth or one-fifth of a toise above the surface of the sea.

Angular fragments of madrepores, and cellularia from two to three cubic inches, are found cemented by grains of quartzose sand.

The inequalities of the rocks are covered by mould, in which, by help of a microscope, we only distinguish the detritus of shells and corals.

This tertiary formation no doubt belongs to that of the coast of Cumana, Carthagena, and the Great Land of Guadaloupe, noticed in my geognostic table of South America.

* (* M.

Moreau de Jonnes has well distinguished, in his Histoire physique des Antilles Francoises, between the Roche a ravets of Martinique and Hayti, which is porous, filled with terebratulites, and other vestiges of sea-shells, somewhat analogous to the limestone of Guines and the calcareous pelagic sediment called at Guadaloupe Platine, or Maconne bon Dieu.

In the cayos of the island of Cuba, or Jardinillos del Rey y del Reyna, the whole coral rock lying above the surface of the water appeared to me to be fragmentary, that is, composed of broken blocks.

It is, however, probable, that in the depth it reposes on masses of polypi still living.

) MM.

Chamiso and Guiamard have recently thrown great light on the formation of the coral islands in the Pacific.

At the foot of the Castillo de in Punta, near the Havannah, on shelves of cavernous rocks,* covered with verdant sea-weeds and living polypi, we find enormous masses of madrepores and other lithophyte corals set in the texture of those shelves.

(* The surface of these shelves, blackened and excavated by the waters, presents ramifications like the cauliflower, as they are observed on the currents of lava.

Is the change of colour produced by the waters owing to the manganese which we recognize by some dendrites?

The sea, entering into the clefts of the rocks, and in a cavern at the foot of the Castillo del Morro, compresses the air and makes it issue with a tremendous noise.

This noise explains the phenomena of the baxos roncadores (snoring bocabeoos), so well known to navigators who cross from Jamaica to the mouth of Rio San Juan of Nicaragua, or to the island of San Andres.

) We are at first tempted to admit that the whole of this limestone rock, which constitutes the principal portion of the island of Cuba, may be traced to an uninterrupted operation of nature--to the action of productive organic forces--an action which continues in our days in the bosom of the ocean; but this apparent novelty of limestone formations soon vanishes when we quit the shore, and recollect the series of coral rocks which contain the formations of different ages, the muschelkalk, the Jura limestone and coarse limestone.

The same coral rocks as those of the Castillo and La Punta are found in the lofty inland mountains, accompanied with petrifications of bivalve shells, very different from those now seen on the coasts of the Antilles.

Without positively assigning a determinate place in the table of formations to the limestone of Guines, which is that of the Castillo and La Punta, I have no doubt of the relative antiquity of that rock with respect to the calcareous agglomerate of the Cayos, situated south of Batabano, and east of the island of Pinos.

The globe has undergone great revolutions between the periods when these two soils were formed; the one containing the great caverns of Matanzas, the other daily augmenting by the agglutination of fragments of coral and quartzose sand.

On the south of the island of Cuba, the latter soil seems to repose sometimes on the Jura limestone of Guines, as in the Jardinillos, and sometimes (towards Cape Cruz) immediately over primitive rocks.

In the lesser Antilles the corals are covered with volcanic productions.

Several of the Cayos of the island of Cuba contain fresh water; and I found this water very good in the middle of the Cayo de Piedras.

When we reflect on the extreme smallness of these islands we can scarcely believe that the fresh-water wells are filled with rain-water not evaporated.

Do they prove a submarine communication between the limestone of the coast with the limestone serving as the basis of lithophyte polypi, and is the fresh water of Cuba raised up by hydrostatic pressure across the coral rocks of Cayos, as it is in the bay of Xagua, where, in the middle of the sea, it forms springs frequented by the lamantins?

The secondary formations on the east of the Havannah are pierced in a singular manner by syenitic and euphotide rocks united in groups.

The southern bottom of the bay as well as the northern part (the hills of the Morro and the Cabana) are of Jura limestone; but on the eastern bank of the two Ensenadas de Regla and Guanabacoa, the whole is transition soil.

Going from north to south, and first near Marimelena, we find syenite consisting of a great quantity of hornblende, partly decomposed, a little quartz, and a reddish-white feldspar seldom crystallized.

This fine syenite, the strata of which incline to the north-west, alternates twice with serpentine.

The layers of intercalated serpentine are three toises thick.

Farther south, towards Regla and Guanabacoa, the syenite disappears, and the whole soil is covered with serpentine, rising in hills from thirty to forty toises high, and running from east to west.

This rock is much fendillated, externally of a bluish-grey, covered with dendrites of manganese, and internally of leek and asparagus-green, crossed by small veins of asbestos.

It contains no garnet or amphibole, but metalloid diallage disseminated in the mass.

The serpentine is sometimes of an esquillous, sometimes of a conchoidal fracture: this was the first time I had found metalloid diallage within the tropics.

Several blocks of serpentine have magnetic poles; others are of such a homogeneous texture, and have such a glossiness, that at a distance they may be taken for pechstein (resinite).

It were to be wished that these fine masses were employed in the arts as they are in several parts of Germany.

In approaching Guanabacoa we find serpentine crossed by veins between twelve and fourteen inches thick, and filled with fibrous quartz, amethyst, and fine mammelonnes, and stalactiforme chalcedonies; it is possible that chrysoprase may also one day be found.

Some copper pyrites appear among these veins accompanied, it is said, by silvery-grey copper.

I found no traces of this grey copper: it is probably the metalloid diallage that has given the Cerro de Guanabacoa the reputation of riches in gold and silver which it has enjoyed for ages.

In some places petroleum flows* from rents in the serpentine.

(* Does there exist in the Bay of the Havannah any other source of petroleum than that of Guanabacoa, or must it be admitted that the betun liquido, which in 1508 was employed by Sebastian de Ocampo for the caulking of ships, is dried up?

That spring, however, fixed the attention of Ocampo on the port of the Havannah, where he gave it the name of Puerto de Carenas.

It is said that abundant springs of petroleum are also found in the eastern part of the island (Manantialis de betun y chapapote) between Holguin and Mayari, and on the coast of Santiago de Cuba.

) Springs of water are frequent; they contain a little sulphuretted hydrogen, and deposit oxide of iron.

The Baths of Bareto are agreeable, but of nearly the same temperature as the atmosphere.

The geologic constitution of this group of serpentine rocks, from its insulated position, its veins, its connection with syenite and the fact of its rising up across shell-formations, merits particular attention.

Feldspar with a basis of souda (compact feldspar) forms, with diallage, the euphotide and serpentine; with pyroxene, dolerite and basalt; and with garnet, eclogyte.

These five rocks, dispersed over the whole globe, charged with oxidulated and titanious iron, are probably of similar origin.

It is easy to distinguish two formations in the euphotide; one is destitute of amphibole, even when it alternates with amphibolic rocks (Joria in Piedmont, Regla in the island of Cuba) rich in pure serpentine, in metalloid diallage and sometimes in jasper (Tuscany, Saxony); the other, strongly charged with amphibole, often passing to diorite,* has no jasper in layers, and sometimes contains rich veins of copper;

(Silesia, Mussinet in Piedmont, the Pyrenees, Parapara in Venezuela, Copper Mountains of North America).

(* On a serpentine that flows like a penombre, veins of greenstone (diorite) near Lake Clunie in Perthshire.

See MacCulloch in Edinburgh Journal of Science 1824 July pages 3 to 16. On a vein of serpentine, and the alterations it produces on the banks of Carity, near West-Balloch in Forfarshire see Charles Lyell l. c.

volume 3 page 43. ) It is the latter formation of euphotide which, by its mixture with diorite, is itself linked with hyperthenite, in which real beds of serpentine are sometimes developed in Scotland and in Norway.

No volcanic rocks of a more recent period have hitherto been discovered in the island of Cuba; for instance, neither trachytes, dolerites, nor basalts.

I know not whether they are found in the rest of the Great Antilles, of which the geologic constitution differs essentially from that of the series of calcareous and volcanic islands which stretch from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands.

Earthquakes, which are in general less fatal at Cuba than at Porto Rico and Hayti, are most felt in the eastern part, between Cape Maysi, Santiago de Cuba and La Ciudad de Puerto Principe.

Perhaps towards those regions the action of the crevice extends laterally, which is believed to cross the neck of granitic land between Port-au-Prince and Cape Tiburon and on which whole mountains were overthrown in 1770. The cavernous texture of the limestone formations (soboruco) just described, the great inclination of the shelvings, the smallness of the island, the nakedness of the plains and the proximity of the mountains that form a lofty chain on the southern coast, may be considered as among the principal causes of the want of rivers and the drought which is felt, especially in the western part of Cuba.

In this respect, Hayti, Jamaica, and several of the Lesser Antilles, which contain volcanic heights covered with forests, are more favoured by nature.

The lands most celebrated for their fertility are the districts of Xagua, Trinidad, Matanzas and Mariel.

The valley of Guines owes its reputation to artificial irrigation (sanjas de riego).

Notwithstanding the want of great rivers and the unequal fertility of the soil, the island of Cuba, by its undulated surface, its continually renewed verdure, and the distribution of its vegetable forms, presents at every step the most varied and beautiful landscape.

Two trees with large, tough, and glossy leaves, the Mammea and the Calophyllum calaba, five species of palm-trees (the palma real, or Oreodoxa regia, the common cocoa-tree, the Cocos crispa, the Corypha miraguama and the C. maritima), and small shrubs constantly loaded with flowers, decorate the hills and the savannahs.

The Cecropia peltata marks the humid spots.

It would seem as if the whole island had been originally a forest of palm, lemon, and wild orange trees.

The latter, which bear a small fruit, are probably anterior to the arrival of Europeans,* who transported thither the agrumi of the gardens; they rarely exceed the height of from ten to fifteen feet.

(* The best informed inhabitants of the island assert that the cultivated orange-trees brought from Asia preserve the size and all the properties of their fruits when they become wild.

The Brazilians affirm that the small bitter orange which bears the name of loranja do terra and is found wild, far from the habitations of man, is of American origin.

Caldcleugh, Travels in South America.

) The lemon and orange trees are most frequently separate; and the new planters, in clearing the ground by fire, distinguish the quality of the soil according as it is covered with one or other of those groups of social plants; they prefer the soil of the naranjal to that which produces the small lemon.

In a country where the making of sugar is not sufficiently improved to admit of the employment of any other fuel than the bagasse (dried sugar-cane) the progressive destruction of the small woods is a positive calamity.

The aridity of the soil augments in proportion as it is stripped of the trees that sheltered it from the heat of the sun; for the leaves, emitting heat under a sky always serene, occasion, as the air cools, a precipitation of aqueous vapours.