THE FAMOUS PALMS OF CAMAGUEY.
points reaching both coasts. In the area between Cienfuegos, Trinidad and Sancti Spiritus is an extensive cluster of rounded hills, dominated by Potrerillo, nearly three thousand feet high, and interspersed with the most beautiful and fertile valleys.
The Cordillera de los Organos, or Organ Mountains, run almost along the middle line of the Province of Pinar del Rio, paralleling the northern coast. The range commences about twenty miles to the west of the boundary of Habana Province and extends to the estuary of the Colorado, thus traversing three-fourths of Pinar del Rio.
The greater part of the Province of Camaguey is free from hills. The principal elevations are found in the north-eastern portion, where the Sierra de Cubitas is situated.
Aside from the mountains and hills described, the general surface of Cuba is a low, gently undulating plain. The elevations of some of the principal interior cities are as follows: Pinar del Rio, one hundred and three feet above sea level; Cuevitas, ninety-eight feet; Camaguey, three hundred and twenty-four feet; Santa Clara, three hundred and forty feet.
Except in the southeast corner of Oriente, the streams of Cuba all follow a normal course to the coast. Owing to the shape of the Island, therefore, none of them has any considerable length or volume, nor are any navigable with the exception of the Cauto, which permits of the passage of light draft boats to a distance of fifty miles from its mouth.
Cuba is noted for its spacious land-locked harbors. Their extraordinary lake-like formation has been the subject of many more or less fanciful explanations. The following statement of Dr. C. W. Hayes, of the U. S. Geological Survey, seems to fully account for the phenomenon:
“The depressions occupied by the water forming these harbors appear to be due to erosion by streams flowing into the sea during a recent geologic period when the land stood somewhat higher than now. In other words, drowned drainage basins. Their peculiar shape, a narrow seaward channel and a broad landward expansion, is due to the relation of hard and soft rocks which generally prevail along the coast. Wherever the conditions are favorable for the growth of corals, a fringing reef is built upon whatever rocks happen to be at sea level, and as the land rises or sinks this rock reef forms a veneer of varying thickness upon the seaward land surface. The rocks on which this veneer rests are generally limestones and marls, much softer and more easily eroded than coral rock. Hence several small streams, instead of each flowing directly to the sea by its own channel, are diverted to a single narrow channel through the hard coral rock, while they excavate a basin of greater or less extent in the softer rocks back from the coast.
“The fact that the land has recently stood at a sufficiently higher level to enable the streams to excavate such basins is proven by the sandfilled channel in the Habana harbor entrance and by borings made near the mouth of the Rio San Juan at Santiago, showing that the present rock floor lies below the level of the sea. Doubtless similar filled channels would be discovered in the other harbors of this class if they were properly sounded.