Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 20 - Chapter 3.29, Part 4

We set sail on the 9th of March, somewhat incommoded by the extreme smallness of our vessel, which afforded us no sleeping-place but upon deck.

The cabin (camera de pozo) received no air or light but from above; it was merely a hold for provisions, and it was with difficulty that we could place our instruments in it.

The thermometer kept up constantly at 32 and 33 degrees (centesimal.

) Luckily these inconveniences lasted only twenty days.

Our several voyages in the canoes of the Orinoco, and a passage in an American vessel laden with several thousand arrobas of salt meat dried in the sun had rendered us not very fastidious.

The gulf of Batabano, bounded by a low and marshy coast, looks like a vast desert.

The fishing birds, which are generally at their post whilst the small land birds, and the indolent vultures (Vultur aura.

) are at roost, are seen only in small numbers.

The sea is of a greenish-brown hue, as in some of the lakes of Switzerland; while the air, owing to its extreme purity, had, at the moment the sun appeared above the horizon, a cold tint of pale blue, similar to that which landscape painters observe at the same hour in the south of Italy, and which makes distant objects stand out in strong relief.

Our sloop was the only vessel in the gulf; for the roadstead of Batabano is scarcely visited except by smugglers, or, as they are here politely called, the traders (los tratantes).

The projected canal of Guines will render Batabano an important point of communication between the island of Cuba and the coast of Venezuela.

The port is within a bay bounded by Punta Gorda on the east, and by Punta de Salinas on the west: but this bay is itself only the upper or concave end of a great gulf measuring nearly fourteen leagues from south to north, and along an extent of fifty leagues (between the Laguna de Cortez and the Cayo de Piedras) inclosed by an incalculable number of flats and chains of rocks.

One great island only, of which the superficies is more than four times the dimensions of that of Martinique, with mountains crowned with majestic pines, rises amidst this labyrinth.

This is the island of Pinos, called by Columbus El Evangelista, and by some mariners of the sixteenth century, the Isla de Santa Maria.

It is celebrated for its mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni) which is an important article of commerce.

We sailed east-south-east, taking the passage of Don Cristoval, to reach the rocky island of Cayo de Piedras, and to clear the archipelago, which the Spanish pilots, in the early times of the conquest, designated by the names of Gardens and Bowers (Jardines y Jardinillos).

The Queen's Gardens, properly so called, are nearer Cape Cruz, and are separated from the archipelago by an open sea thirty-five leagues broad.

Columbus gave them the name they bear, in 1494, when, on his second voyage, he struggled during fifty-eight days with the winds and currents between the island of Pinos and the eastern cape of Cuba.

He describes the islands of this archipelago as verdant, full of trees and pleasant* (verdes, llenos de arboledas, y graciosos).

(* There exists great geographical confusion, even at the Havannah, in reference to the ancient denominations of the Jardines del Rey and Jardines de la Reyna.

In the description of the island of Cuba, given in the Mercurio Americano, and in the Historia Natural de la Isla de Cuba, published at the Havannah by Don Antonio Lopez Gomez, the two groups are placed on the southern coast of the island.

Lopez says that the Jardines del Rey extend from the Laguna de Cortez to Bahia de Xagua; but it is historically certain that the governor Diego Velasquez gave his name to the western part of the chain of rocks of the Old Channel, between Cayo Frances and Le Monillo, on the northern coast of the island of Cuba.

The Jardines de la Reyna, situated between Cabo Cruz and the port of the Trinity, are in no manner connected with the Jardines and Jardinillos of the Isla de Pinos.

Between the two groups of the chain of rocks are the flats (placeres) of La Paz and Xagua.

) A part of these so-styled gardens is indeed beautiful; the voyager sees the scene change every moment, and the verdure of some of the islands appears the more lovely from its contrast with chains of rocks, displaying only white and barren sands.

The surface of these sands, heated by the rays of the sun, seems to be undulating like the surface of a liquid.

The contact of layers of air of unequal temperature produces the most varied phenomena of suspension and mirage from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon.

Even in those desert places the sun animates the landscape, and gives mobility to the sandy plain, to the trunks of trees, and to the rocks that project into the sea like promontories.

When the sun appears these inert masses seem suspended in air; and on the neighbouring beach the sands present the appearance of a sheet of water gently agitated by the winds.

A train of clouds suffices to seat the trunks of trees and the suspended rocks again on the soil; to render the undulating surface of the plains motionless; and to dissipate the charm which the Arabian, Persian, and Hindoo poets have celebrated as "the sweet illusions of the solitary desert."

We doubled Cape Matahambre very slowly.

The chronometer of Louis Berthoud having kept time accurately at the Havannah, I availed myself of this occasion to determine, on this and the following days, the positions of Cayo de Don Cristoval, Cayo Flamenco, Cayo de Diego Perez and Cayo de Piedras.

I also employed myself in examining the influence which the changes at the bottom of the sea produce on its temperature at the surface.

Sheltered by so many islands, the surface is calm as a lake of fresh water, and the layers of different depths being distinct and separate, the smallest change indicated by the lead acts on the thermometer.

I was surprised to see that on the east of the little Cayo de Don Cristoval the high banks are only distinguished by the milky colour of the water, like the bank of Vibora, south of Jamaica, and many other banks, the existence of which I ascertained by means of the thermometer.

The bottom of the rock of Batabano is a sand composed of coral detritus; it nourishes sea-weeds which scarcely ever appear on the surface: the water, as I have already observed, is greenish;

and the absence of the milky tint is, no doubt, owing to the perfect calm which pervades those regions.

Whenever the agitation is propagated to a certain depth, a very fine sand, or a mass of calcareous particles suspended in the water, renders it troubled and milky.

There are shallows, however, which are distinguished neither by the colour nor by the low temperature of the waters; and I believe that phenomenon depends on the nature of a hard and rocky bottom, destitute of sand and corals; on the form and declivity of the shelvings; the swiftness of the currents; and the absence of the propagation of motion towards the lower layers of the water.

The cold frequently indicated by the thermometer, at the surface of the high banks, must be traced to the molecules of water which, owing to the rays of heat and the nocturnal cooling, fall from the surface to the bottom, and are stopped in their fall by the high banks; and also to the mingling of the layers of very deep water that rise on the shelvings of the banks as on an inclined plane, to mix with the layers of the surface.

Notwithstanding the small size of our bark and the boasted skill of our pilot, we often ran aground.

The bottom being soft, there was no danger; but, nevertheless, at sunset, near the pass of Don Cristoval, we preferred to lie at anchor.

The first part of the night was beautifully serene: we saw an incalculable number of falling-stars, all following one direction, opposite to that from whence the wind blew in the low regions of the atmosphere.

The most absolute solitude prevails in this spot, which, in the time of Columbus, was inhabited and frequented by great numbers of fishermen.

The inhabitants of Cuba then employed a small fish to take the great sea turtles; they fastened a long cord to the tail of the reves (the name given by the Spaniards to that species of Echeneis*).

(* To the sucet or guaican of the natives of Cuba the Spaniards have given the characteristic name of reves, that is, placed on its back, or reversed.

In fact, at first sight, the position of the back and the abdomen is confounded.

Anghiera says: Nostrates reversum appellant, quia versus venatur.

I

examined a remora of the South Sea during the passage from Lima to Acapulco.

As he lived a long time out of the water, I tried experiments on the weight he could carry before the blades of the disk loosened from the plank to which the animal was fixed; but I lost that part of my journal.

It is doubtless the fear of danger that causes the remora not to loose his hold when he feels that he is pulled by a cord or by the hand of man.

The sucet spoken of by Columbus and Martin d'Anghiera was probably the Echeneis naucrates and not the Echeneis remora.

) The fisher-fish, formerly employed by the Cubans by means of the flattened disc on his head, furnished with suckers, fixed himself on the shell of the sea-turtle, which is so common in the narrow and winding channels of the Jardinillos.

"The reves," says Christopher Columbus, "will sooner suffer himself to be cut in pieces than let go the body to which he adheres."

The Indians drew to the shore by the same cord the fisher-fish and the turtle.

When Gomara and the learned secretary of the emperor Charles V, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, promulgated in Europe this fact which they had learnt from the companions of Columbus, it was received as a traveller's tale.

There is indeed an air of the marvellous in the recital of d'Anghiera, which begins in these words: Non aliter ac nos canibus gallicis per aequora campi lepores insectamur, incolae [Cubae insulae] venatorio pisce pisces alios capiebant.

(Exactly as we follow hares with greyhounds in the fields, so do the natives [of Cuba] take fishes with other fish trained for that purpose).

We now know, from the united testimony of Rogers, Dampier and Commerson, that the artifice resorted to in the Jardinillos to catch turtles is employed by the inhabitants of the eastern coast of Africa, near Cape Natal, at Mozambique and at Madagascar.

In Egypt, at San Domingo and in the lakes of the valley of Mexico, the method practised for catching ducks was as follows: men, whose heads were covered with great calabashes pierced with holes, hid themselves in the water, and seized the birds by the feet.

The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have employed the cormorant, a bird of the pelican family, for fishing on the coast: rings are fixed round the bird's neck to prevent him from swallowing his prey and fishing for himself.

In the lowest degree of civilization, the sagacity of man is displayed in the stratagems of hunting and fishing: nations who probably never had any communication with each other furnish the most striking analogies in the means they employ in exercising their empire over animals.

Three days elapsed before we could emerge from the labyrinth of Jardines and Jardinillos.

At night we lay at anchor; and in the day we visited those islands or chains of rocks which were most easily accessible.

As we advanced eastward the sea became less calm and the position of the shoals was marked by water of a milky colour.

On the boundary of a sort of gulf between Cayo Flamenco and Cayo de Piedras we found that the temperature of the sea, at its surface, augmented suddenly from 23. 5 to 25. 8 degrees centigrade.

The geologic constitution of the rocky islets that rise around the island of Pinos fixed my attention the more earnestly as I had always rather doubted of the existence of those huge masses of coral which are said to rise from the abyss of the Pacific to the surface of the water.

It appeared to me more probable that these enormous masses had some primitive or volcanic rock for a basis, to which they adhered at small depths.

The formation, partly compact and lithographic, partly bulbous, of the limestone of Guines, had followed us as far as Batabano.

It is somewhat analogous to Jura limestone; and, judging from their external aspect, the Cayman Islands are composed of the same rock.

If the mountains of the island of Pinos, which present at the same time (as it is said by the first historians of the conquest) the pineta and palmeta, be visible at the distance of twenty sea leagues, they must attain a height of more than five hundred toises: I have been assured that they also are formed of a limestone altogether similar to that of Guines.

From these facts I expected to find the same rock (Jura limestone) in the Jardinillos: but I saw, in the chain of rocks that rises generally five to six inches above the surface of the water, only a fragmentary rock, in which angular pieces of madrepores are cemented by quartzose sand.

Sometimes the fragments form a mass of from one to two cubic feet and the grains of quartz so disappear that in several layers one might imagine that the polypi have remained on the spot.

The total mass of this chain of rocks appears to me a limestone agglomerate, somewhat analogous to the earthy limestone of the peninsula of Araya, near Cumana, but of much more recent formation.

The inequalities of this coral rock are covered by a detritus of shells and madrepores.

Whatever rises above the surface of the water is composed of broken pieces, cemented by carbonate of lime, in which grains of quartzose sand are set.

Whether rocks formed by polypi still living are found at great depth below this fragmentary rock of coral or whether these polypi are raised on the Jura formation are questions which I am unable to answer.

Pilots believe that the sea diminishes in these latitudes, because they see the chain of rocks augment and rise, either by the earth which the waves heave up, or by successive agglutinations.

It is not impossible that the enlarging of the channel of Bahama, by which the waters of the Gulf-stream issue, may cause, in the lapse of ages, a slight lowering of the waters south of Cuba, and especially in the gulf of Mexico, the centre of the great current which runs along the shores of the United States, and casts the fruits of tropical plants on the coast of Norway.

* (* "The Gulf-stream, between the Bahamas and Florida, is very little wider than Behring's Strait; and yet the water rushing through this passage is of sufficient force and quantity to put the whole Northern Atlantic in motion, and to make its influence be felt in the distant strait of Gibraltar and on the more distant coast of Africa."

Quarterly Review February 1818. ) The configuration of the coast, the direction, the force and the duration of certain winds and currents, the changes which the barometric heights undergo through the variable predominance of those winds, are causes, the concurrence of which may alter, in a long space of time, and in circumscribed limits of extent and height, the equilibrium of the seas.

* (* I do not pretend to explain, by the same causes, the great phenomena of the coast of Sweden, where the sea has, on some points, the appearance of a very unequal lowering of from three to five feet in one hundred years.

The great geologist, Leopold von Buch, has imparted new interest to these observations by examining whether it be not rather some parts of the continent of Scandinavia which insensibly heaves up.

An analogous supposition was entertained by the inhabitants of Dutch Guiana.

) When the coast is so low that the level of the soil, at a league within the island, does not change to extent of a few inches, these swellings and diminution of the waters strike the imagination of the inhabitants.

The Cayo bonito (Pretty Rock), which we first visited, fully merits its name from the richness of its vegetation.

Everything denotes that it has been long above the surface of the ocean; and the central part of the Cayo is not more depressed than the banks.

On a layer of sand and land shells, five to six inches thick, covered by a fragmentary madreporic rock, rises a forest of mangroves (Rhizophora).

From their form and foliage they might at a distance be mistaken for laurel trees.

The Avicennia, the Batis, some small Euphorbia and grasses, by the intertwining of their roots, fix the moving sands.

But the characteristic distinction of the Flora of these coral islands is the magnificent Tournefortia gnaphalioides of Jacquin, with silvered leaves, which we found here for the first time.

This is a social plant and is a shrub from four feet and a half to five feet high.

Its flowers emit an agreeable perfume; and it is the ornament of Cayo Flamenco, Cayo Piedras and perhaps of the greater part of the low lands of the Jardinillos.

While we were employed in herborizing,* our sailors were searching among the rocks for lobsters.

(* We gathered Cenchrus myosuroides, Euphorbia buxifolia, Batis maritima, Iresine obtusifolia, Tournefortia gnaphalioides, Diomedea glabrata, Cakile cubensis, Dolichos miniatus, Parthenium hysterophorus, etc. The last-named plant, which we had previously found in the valley of Caracas and on the temperate table-lands of Mexico, between 470 and 900 toises high, covers the fields of the island of Cuba.

It is used by the inhabitants for aromatic baths, and to drive away the fleas which are so numerous in tropical climates.

At Cumana the leaves of several species of cassia are employed, on account of their smell, against those annoying insects.

) Disappointed at not finding them, they avenged themselves by climbing on the mangroves and making a dreadful slaughter of the young alcatras, grouped in pairs in their nests.

This name is given, in Spanish America, to the brown swan-tailed pelican of Buffon.

With the want of foresight peculiar to the great pelagic birds, the alcatra builds his nest where several branches of trees unite together.

We counted four or five nests on the same trunk of a mangrove.

The young birds defended themselves valiantly with their enormous beaks, which are six or seven inches long; the old ones hovered over our heads, making hoarse and plaintive cries.

Blood streamed from the tops of the trees, for the sailors were armed with great sticks and cutlasses (machetes).

In vain we reproved them for this cruelty.

Condemned to long obedience in the solitude of the seas, this class of men feel pleasure in exercising a cruel tyranny over animals when occasion offers.

The ground was covered with wounded birds struggling in death.

At our arrival a profound calm prevailed in this secluded spot; now, everything seemed to say: Man has passed this way.

The sky was veiled with reddish vapours, which however dispersed in the direction of south-west; we hoped, but in vain, to discern the heights of the island of Pinos.

Those spots have a charm in which most parts of the New World are wanting.

They are associated with recollections of the greatest names of the Spanish monarchy--those of Christopher Columbus and of Hernan Cortez.

It was on the southern coast of the island of Cuba, between the bay of Xagua and the island of Pinos, that the great Spanish Admiral, in his second voyage, saw, with astonishment, "that mysterious king who spoke to his subjects only by signs, and that group of men who wore long white tunics, like the monks of La Merced, whilst the rest of the people were naked."

"Columbus in his fourth voyage found in the Jardinillos, great boats filled with Mexican Indians, and laden with the rich productions and merchandise of Yucatan."

Misled by his ardent imagination, he thought he had heard from those navigators, "that they came from a country where the men were mounted on horses,* and wore crowns of gold on their heads."

(* Compare the Lettera rarissima di Christoforo Colombo, di 7 di Julio, 1503; with the letter of Herrera, dated December 1. Nothing can be more touching and pathetic than the expression of melancholy which prevails in the letter of Columbus, written at Jamaica, and addressed to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

I

recommend to the notice of those who wish to understand the character of that extraordinary man, the recital of the nocturnal vision, in which he imagined that he heard a celestial voice, in the midst of a tempest, encouraging him by these words: Iddio maravigliosamente fece sonar tuo nome nella terra.

Le Indie que sono pa te del mondo cosi ricca, te le ha date per tue; tu le hai repartite dove ti e piaciuto, e ti dette potenzia per farlo.

Delli ligamenti del mare Oceano che erano serrati con catene cosi forte, ti dono le chiave, etc. [God marvellously makes thy name resound throughout the world.

The Indies, which are so rich a portion of the world, he gives to thee for thyself; thou mayest distribute them in the way thou pleasest, and God gives thee power to do so.

Of the shores of the Atlantic, which were closed by such strong chains, he gives thee the key.

] This fragment has been handed down to us only in an ancient Italian tradition; for the Spanish original mentioned in the Biblioteca Nautica of Don Antonio Leon has not hitherto been found.

I may add a few more lines, characterized by great simplicity, written by the discoverer of the New World: "Your Highness," says Columbus, "may believe me, the globe of the earth is far from being so great as the vulgar admit.

I was seven years at your royal court, and during seven years was told that my enterprise was a folly.

Now that I have opened the way, tailors and shoemakers ask the privilege of going to discover new lands.

Persecuted, forgotten as I am, I never think of Hispaniola and Paria without my eyes being filled with tears.

I was twenty years in the service of your Highness; I have not a hair that is not white; and my body is enfeebled.

Heaven and earth now mourn for me; all who have pity, truth, and justice, mourn for me (pianga adesso il cielo e pianga per me la terra; pianga per me chi ha carita, verita, giustizia)."

Lettera rarissima pages 13, 19, 34, 37. ) "Catayo (China), the empire of the Great Khan, and the mouth of the Ganges," appeared to him so near, that he hoped soon to employ two Arabian interpreters, whom he had embarked at Cadiz, in going to America.

Other remembrances of the island of Pinos, and the surrounding Gardens, are connected with the conquest of Mexico.

When Hernan Cortes was preparing his great expedition, he was wrecked with his Nave Capitana on one of the flats of the Jardinillos.

For the space of five days he was believed to be lost, and the valiant Pedro de Alvarado sent (in November 1518) from the port of Carenas* (the Havannah) three vessels in search of him.

(* At that period there were two settlements, one at Puerto de Carenas in the ancient Indian province of the Havannah, and the other--the most considerable--in the Villa de San Cristoval de Cuba.

These settlements were only united in 1519 when the Puerto de Carenas took the name of San Cristoval de la Habana.

"Cortes," says Herrera, "paso a la Villa de San Cristoval que a la sazon estaba en la costa del sur, y despues se paso a la Habana."

[Cortes proceeded to the town of San Cristoval, which at that time was on the sea-coast, and afterwards he repaired to the Havannah.

]) In February, 1519, Cortes assembled his whole fleet near cape San Antonio, probably on the spot which still bears the name of Ensenada de Cortes, west of Batabano and opposite to the island of Pinos.

From thence, believing he should better escape the snares laid for him by the governor, Velasquez, he passed almost clandestinely to the coast of Mexico.

Strange vicissitude of events!

the empire of Montezuma was shaken by a handful of men who, from the western extremity of the island of Cuba, landed on the coast of Yucatan; and in our days, three centuries later, Yucatan, now a part of the new confederation of the free states of Mexico, has nearly menaced with conquest the western coast of Cuba.