Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 21 - Chapter 3.29, Part 5

On the morning of the 11th March we visited Cayo Flamenco.

I found the latitude 21 degrees 59 minutes 39 seconds.

The centre of this island is depressed and only fourteen inches above the surface of the sea.

The water here is brackish while in other cayos it is quite fresh.

The mariners of Cuba attribute this freshness of the water to the action of the sands in filtering sea-water, the same cause which is assigned for the freshness of the lagunes of Venice.

But this supposition is not justified by any chemical analogy.

The cayos are composed of rocks, and not of sands, and their smallness renders it extremely improbable that the pluvial waters should unite in a permanent lake.

Perhaps the fresh water of this chain of rocks comes from the neighbouring coast, from the mountains of Cuba, by the effect of hydrostatic pressure.

This would prove a prolongation of the strata of Jura limestone below the sea and a superposition of coral rock on that limestone.

* (* Eruptions of fresh water in the sea, near Baiae, Syracuse and Aradus (in Phenicia) were known to the ancients.

Strabo lib.

16 page 754. The coral islands that surround Radak, especially the low island of Otdia, furnish also fresh water.

Chamisso in Kotzebue's Entdekkungs-Reise volume 3 page 108. ) It is too general a prejudice to consider every source of fresh or salt water to be merely a local phenomenon: currents of water circulate in the interior of lands between strata of rocks of a particular density or nature, at immense distances, like the floods that furrow the surface of the globe.

The learned engineer, Don Francisco Le Maur, informed me that in the bay of Xagua, half a degree east of the Jardinillos, there issue in the middle of the sea, springs of fresh water, two leagues and a half from the coast.

These springs gush up with such force that they cause an agitation of the water often dangerous for small canoes.

Vessels that are not going to Xagua sometimes take in water from these ocean springs and the water is fresher and colder in proportion to the depth whence it is drawn.

The manatees, guided by instinct, have discovered this region of fresh waters; and the fishermen who like the flesh of these herbivorous animals,* find them in abundance in the open sea.

(* Possibly they subsist upon sea-weed in the ocean, as we saw them feed, on the banks of the Apure and the Orinoco, on several species of Panicum and Oplismenus (camalote?

).

It appears common enough, on the coast of Tabasco and Honduras, at the mouths of rivers, to find the manatees swimming in the sea, as crocodiles do sometimes.

Dampier distinguishes between the fresh-water and the salt-water manatee.

(Voyages and Descr.

volume 2) Among the Cayos de las doce leguas, east of Xagua, some islands bear the name of Meganos del Manati.

) Half a mile east of Cayo Flamenco we passed close to two rocks on which the waves break furiously.

They are the Piedras de Diego Perez (latitude 21 degrees 58 minutes 10 seconds.

) The temperature of the sea at its surface lowers at this point to 22. 6 degrees centigrade, the depth of the water being only about one fathom.

In the evening we went on shore at Cayo de Piedras; two rocks connected together by breakers and lying in the direction of north-north-west to south-south-east.

On these rocks which form the eastern extremity of the Jardinillos many vessels are lost, and they are almost destitute of shrubs because shipwrecked crews cut them to make fire-signals.

The Cayo de Piedras is extremely precipitous on the side near the sea; and towards the middle there is a small basin of fresh water.

We found a block of madrepore in the rock, measuring upwards of three cubic feet.

Doubtless this limestone formation, which at a distance resembles Jura limestone, is a fragmentary rock.

It would be well if this chain of cayos which surrounds the island of Cuba were examined by geologists with the view of determining what may be attributed to the animals which still work at the bottom of the sea, and what belongs to the real tertiary formations, the age of which may be traced back to the date of the coarse limestone abounding in remains of lithophite coral.

In general, that which rises above the waters is only breccia, or aggregate of madreporic fragments cemented by carbonate of lime, broken shells, and sand.

It is important to examine, in each of the cayos, on what this breccia reposes; whether it covers edifices of mollusca still living, or those secondary and tertiary rocks, which judging from the remains of coral they contain, seem to be the product of our days.

The gypsum of the cayos opposite San Juan de los Remedios, on the northern coast of the island of Cuba, merits great attention.

Its age is doubtless more remote than historic times, and no geologist will believe that it is the work of the mollusca of our seas.

From the Cayo de Piedras we could faintly discern in the direction of east-north-east the lofty mountains that rise beyond the bay of Xagua.

During the night we again lay at anchor; and next day (12th March), having passed between the northern cape of the Cayo de Piedras and the island of Cuba, we entered a sea free from breakers.

Its blue colour (a dark indigo tint) and the heightening of the temperature proved how much the depth of the water had augmented.

We tried, under favour of the variable winds on sea and shore, to steer eastward as far as the port of La Trinidad so that we might be less opposed by the north-east winds which then prevail in the open sea, in making the passage to Carthagena, of which the meridian falls between Santiago de Cuba and the bay of Guantanamo.

Having passed the marshy coast of Camareos,* (* Here the celebrated philanthropist Bartolomeo de las Casas obtained in 1514 from his friend Velasquez, the governor, a good repartimiente de Indios (grant of land so called).

But this he renounced in the same year, from scruples of conscience, during a short stay at Jamaica.

) we arrived (latitude 21 degrees 50 minutes) in the meridian of the entrance of the Bahia de Xagua.

The longitude the chronometer gave me at this point was almost identical with that since published (in 1821) in the map of the Deposito hidrografico of Madrid.

The port of Xagua is one of the finest but least frequented of the island.

"There cannot be another such in the world," is the remark of the Coronista major (Antonio de Herrera).

The surveys and plans of defence made by M. Le Maur, at the time of the commission of Count Jaruco, prove that the anchorage of Xagua merits the celebrity it acquired even in the first years of the conquest.

The town consists merely of a small group of houses and a fort (castillito.

) On the east of Xagua, the mountains (Cerros de San Juan) near the coast, assume an aspect more and more majestic; not from their height, which does not seem to exceed three hundred toises, but from their steepness and general form.

The coast, I was told, is so steep that a frigate may approach the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo.

When the temperature of the air diminished at night to 23 degrees and the wind blew from the land it brought that delicious odour of flowers and honey which characterizes the shores of the island of Cuba.

* (* Cuban wax, which is a very important object of trade, is produced by the bees of Europe (the species Apis, Latr.

).

Columbus says expressly that in his time the inhabitants of Cuba did not collect wax.

The great loaf of that substance which he found in the island in his first voyage, and presented to King Ferdinand in the celebrated audience of Barcelona, was afterwards ascertained to have been brought thither by Mexican barques from Yucatan.

It is curious that the wax of melipones was the first production of Mexico that fell into the hands of the Spaniards, in the month of November, 1492. ) We sailed along the coast keeping two or three miles distant from land.

On the 13th March a little before sunset we were opposite the mouth of the Rio San Juan, so much dreaded by navigators on account of the innumerable quantity of mosquitos and zancudos which fill the atmosphere.

It is like the opening of a ravine, in which vessels of heavy burden might enter, but that a shoal (placer) obstructs the passage.

Some horary angles gave me the longitude 82 degrees 40 minutes 50 seconds for this port which is frequented by the smugglers of Jamaica and the corsairs of Providence Island.

The mountains that command the port scarcely rise to 230 toises.

I passed a great part of the night on deck.

The coast was dreary and desolate.

Not a light announced a fisherman's hut.

There is no village between Batabano and Trinidad, a distance of fifty leagues;

scarcely are there more than two or three corrales or farm yards, containing hogs or cows.

Yet, in the time of Columbus, this territory was inhabited along the shore.

When the ground is dug to make wells, or when torrents furrow the surface of the earth in floods, stone hatchets and copper utensils* are often discovered; these are remains of the ancient inhabitants of America.

(* Doubtless the copper of Cuba.

The abundance of this metal in its native state would naturally induce the Indians of Cuba and Hayti to melt it.

Columbus says that there were masses of native copper at Hayti, of the weight of six arrobas; and that the boats of Yucatan, which he met with on the eastern coast of Cuba, carried, among other Mexican merchandize, crucibles to melt copper.

) At sunrise I requested the captain to heave the lead.

There was no bottom to be found at sixty fathoms; and the ocean was warmer at its surface than anywhere else; it was at 26. 8 degrees; the temperature exceeded 4. 2 degrees that which we had found near the breakers of Diego Perez.

At the distance of half a mile from the coast, the sea water was not more than 2. 5 degrees; we had no opportunity of sounding but the depth of the water had no doubt diminished.

On the 14th of March we entered the Rio Guaurabo, one of the two ports of Trinidad de Cuba, to put on shore the practico, or pilot of Batabano, who had steered us across the flats of the Jardinillos, though not without causing us to run aground several times.

We also hoped to find a packet-boat (correo maritimo) in this port, which would take us to Carthagena.

I landed towards the evening, and placed Borda's azimuth compass and the artificial horizon on the shore for the purpose of observing the passage of some stars by the meridian; but we had scarcely begun our preparations when a party of small traders of the class called pulperos, who had dined on board a foreign ship recently arrived, invited us to accompany them to the town.

These good people requested us mount two by two on the same horse; and, as the heat was excessive, we accepted their offer.

The distance from the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo to Trinidad is nearly four miles in a north-west direction.

The road runs across a plain which seems as if it had been levelled by a long sojourn of the waters.

It is covered with vegetation, to which the miraguama, a palm-tree with silvered leaves (which we saw here for the first time), gives a peculiar character.

* (* Corypha miraguama.

Probably the same species which struck Messrs. John and William Fraser (father and son) in the vicinity of Matanzas.

Those two botanists, who introduced a great number of valuable plants to the gardens of Europe, were shipwrecked on their voyage to the Havannah from the United States, and saved themselves with difficulty on the cayos at the entrance of the Old Channel, a few weeks before my departure for Carthagena.

) This fertile soil, although of tierra colorada, requires only to be tilled and it would yield fruitful harvests.

A very picturesque view opens westward on the Lomas of San Juan, a chain of calcareous mountains from 1800 to 2000 toises high and very steep towards the south.

Their bare and barren summits form sometimes round blocks; and here and there rise up in points like horns,* a little inclined.

(* Wherever the rock is visible I perceived compact limestone, whitish-grey, partly porous and partly with a smooth fracture, as in the Jura formation.

) Notwithstanding the great lowering of the temperature during the season of the Nortes or north winds, snow never falls; and only a hoar-frost (escarcha) is seen on these mountains, as on those of Santiago.

This absence of snow is difficult to be explained.

In emerging from the forest we perceived a curtain of hills of which the southern slope is covered with houses;

this is the town of Trinidad, founded in 1514, by the governor Diego Velasquez, on account of the rich mines of gold which were said to have been discovered in the little valley of Rio Arimao.

* (* This river flows towards the east into the Bahia de Xagua.

) The streets of Trinidad have all a rapid descent: there, as in most parts of Spanish America, it is complained that the Couquistadores chose very injudiciously the sites for new towns.

* (* It is questionable whether the town founded by Velasquez was not situated in the plain and nearer the ports of Casilda and Guaurabo.

It has been suggested that the fear of the French, Portuguese and English freebooters led to the selection, even in inland places, of sites on the declivity of mountains, whence, as from a watch-tower, the approach of the enemy could be discerned; but it seems to me that these fears could have had no existence prior to the government of Hernando de Soto.

The Havannah was sacked for the first time by French corsairs in 1539. ) At the northern extremity is the church of Nuestra Senora de la Popa, a celebrated place of pilgrimage.

This point I found to be 700 feet above the level of the sea; it commands a magnificent view of the ocean, the two ports (Puerto Casilda and Boca Guaurabo), a forest of palm-trees and the group of the lofty mountains of San Juan.

We were received at the town of Trinidad with the kindest hospitality by Senor Munoz, the Superintendent of the Real Hacienda.

I made observations during a great part of the night and found the latitude near the cathedral by the Spica Virginis, alpha of the Centaur, and beta of the Southern Cross, under circumstances not equally favourable, to be 21 degrees 48 minutes 20 seconds.

My chronometric longitude was 82 degrees 21 minutes 7 seconds.

I was informed at my second visit to the Havannah, in returning from Mexico, that this longitude was nearly identical with that obtained by the captain of a frigate, Don Jose del Rio, who had long resided on that spot; but that he marked the latitude of the town at 21 degrees 42 minutes 40 seconds.

The Lieutenant-Governor (Teniente Governadore) of Trinidad, whose jurisdiction then extended to Villa Clara, Principe and Santo Espiritu, was nephew to the celebrated astronomer Don Antonio Ulloa.

He gave us a grand entertainment, at which we met some French emigrants from San Domingo who had brought their talents and industry to Spanish America.

The exportation of the sugar of Trinidad, by the registers of the custom-house, did not then exceed 4000 chests.

The advantage of having two ports is often discussed at Trinidad.

The distance of the town from Puerto de Casilda and Puerto Guaurabo is nearly equal; yet the expense of transport is greatest in the former port.

The Boca del Rio Guaurabo, defended by a new battery, furnishes safe anchorage, although less sheltered than that of Puerto Casilda.

Vessels that draw little water or are lightened to pass the bar, can go up the river and approach the town within a mile.

The packet-boats (correos) that touch at Trinidad de Cuba prefer, in general, the Rio Guaurabo, where they find safe anchorage without needing a pilot.

The Puerto Casilda is more inclosed and goes further back inland but cannot be entered without a pilot, on account of the breakers (arrecifes) and the Mulas and Mulattas.

The great mole, constructed with wood, and very useful to commerce, was damaged in discharging pieces of artillery.

It is entirely destroyed, and it was undecided whether it would be best to reconstruct it with masonry, according to the project of Don Luis de Bassecourt, or to open the bar of Guaurabo by dredging it.

The great disadvantage of Puerto de Casilda is the want of fresh water, which vessels have to procure at the distance of a league.

We passed a very agreeable evening in the house of one of the richest inhabitants, Don Antonio Padron, where we found assembled at a tertulia all the good company of Trinidad.

We were again struck with the gaiety and vivacity that distinguish the women of Cuba.

These are happy gifts of nature to which the refinements of European civilization might lend additional charms but which, nevertheless, please in their primitive simplicity.

We quitted Trinidad on the night of the 15th March.

The municipality caused us to be conducted to the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo in a fine carriage lined with old crimson damask; and, to add to our confusion, an ecclesiastic, the poet of the place, habited in a suit of velvet notwithstanding the heat of the climate, celebrated, in a sonnet, our voyage to the Orinoco.

On the road leading to the port we were forcibly struck by a spectacle which our stay of two years in the hottest part of the tropics might have rendered familiar to us; but previously I had nowhere seen such an innumerable quantity of phosphorescent insects.

* (* Cocuyo, Elater noctilucus.

) The grass that overspread the ground, the branches and foliage of the trees, all shone with that reddish and moveable light which varies in its intensity at the will of the animal by which it is produced.

It seemed as though the starry firmament reposed on the savannah.

In the hut of the poorest inhabitants of the country, fifteen cocuyos, placed in a calabash pierced with holes, afford sufficient light to search for anything during the night.

To shake the calabash forcibly is all that is necessary to excite the animal to increase the intensity of the luminous discs situated on each side of its body.

The people of the country remark, with a simple truth of expression, that calabashes filled with cocuyos are lanterns always ready lighted.

They are, in fact, only extinguished by the sickness or death of the insects, which are easily fed with a little sugar-cane.

A

young woman at Trinidad de Cuba told us that during a long and difficult passage from the main land, she always made use of the phosphorescence of the cocuyos, when she gave suck to her child at night; the captain of the ship would allow no other light on board, from the fear of corsairs.

As the breeze freshened in the direction of north-east we sought to avoid the group of the Caymans but the current drove us towards those islands.

Sailing to south 1/4 south-east, we gradually lost sight of the palm-covered shore, the hills rising above the town of Trinidad and the lofty mountains of the island of Cuba.

There is something solemn in the aspect of land from which the voyager is departing and which he sees sinking by degrees below the horizon of the sea.

The interest of this impression was heightened at the period to which I here advert; when Saint Domingo was the centre of great political agitations, and threatened to involve the other islands in one of those sanguinary struggles which reveal to man the ferocity of his nature.

These threatened dangers were happily averted; the storm was appeased on the spot which gave it birth; and a free black population, far from troubling the peace of the neighbouring islands, has made some steps in the progress of civilization and has promoted the establishment of good institutions.

Porto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, with 370,000 whites and 885,000 men of colour, surround Hayti, where a population of 900,000 negros and mulattos have been emancipated by their own efforts.

The negros, more inclined to cultivate alimentary plants than colonial productions, augment with a rapidity only surpassed by the increase of the population of the United States.