Guanabacoa, a high and beautifully located city of twenty-five thousand people, just outside of Havana, several degrees cooler than the capital city, in the midst of pleasant breezes and cool groves, has narrow, filthy streets, no pavements, no public improvements, small houses with no modern conveniences, huddled together, and is a dozen times worse than if nature had not done so much for it.
Güines and Marianao are so much cleaner and sweeter than any other towns as to make one wonder why they are the exception instead of the rule.
Possibly it is hardly fair to call attention to or animadvert upon the sanitary regulations and conditions of Santa Clara, an inland city and capital of Santa Clara Province, seeing that in ten and a half months of 1897 there were over one hundred thousand deaths in the province, of which nearly one third occurred in Santa Clara district. These were chiefly reconcentrados, and show that there are some things Spanish even worse than Spanish sanitation. The town has a population of twenty thousand, is situated in a healthful locality, and while little has been done toward public health, there is no yellow fever.
As with the cities and towns above mentioned, with the two exceptions named, so of all Cuban aggregations of population. Everywhere there is ignorance, carelessness, filth, disease, and death, and only education, care, and time can remedy the evil. It may not, cannot be that Cuba will ever enjoy the robuster health of the north, but she can be clean, and to that end must every ability of knowledge, labour, and means be directed, not only by those who are in authority, but by those whose direct welfare is at stake.
Outside of the cities, conditions prevail which will be more difficult, if not in many cases impossible, to remedy. Much of the Island along the coasts is swampy; there malaria and fevers breed, and these sections, if not capable of drainage, must be deserted by man, and left to the alligators, toads, and lizards. Many of the swamps may be drained and the land converted into fields yielding rich harvests; these should be given the proper attention. In many places the tropical forests are of such dense and tangled growth that no sunlight ever penetrates them, and here, after nightfall, deadly miasmas arise, full of poison and disease. Vast areas of such forests are filled with valuable timber, and when these woods are cleared and converted into money, and the sunlight can get in and exercise its saving grace upon the land, a wonderful improvement will follow.
Back from the coasts, particularly in the eastern part of the Island, the land is high and well drained, with mountains in some portions rising from five thousand to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. While the heat and humidity incidental to the latitude prevail all over the Island, they are much less in the uplands than along the coast, and the climate for half the year is very agreeable and the air has a brilliant clearness that has become famous. Over all these lands there should be in the future a population which should develop into a contradiction of the tradition that the people of the tropics live because they are too lazy to die.
CHAPTER IX
CITIES AND TOWNS OF CUBA
THE political divisions of Cuba, known as provinces, are six in number, and are named as follows, beginning at the west: Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba; the capital city of each bearing the same name as its province.
Of the provinces it may be said that Pinar del Rio, with an area of 8486 square miles, has a population of 225,891 (167,160 white and 58,731 black), and is the centre of the tobacco industry, the famous Vuelta Abajo district lying within its limits; sugar, coffee, rice, corn, cotton, and fruits are also raised. Havana, with an area of 8610 square miles, has a population of 451,928 (344,417 white and 107,511 black). It is the centre of manufacture, the capital province, and the most populous province of the Island. Matanzas, with an area of 14,967 square miles, has a population of 259,578 (143,169 white and 115,409 black), and is the centre of the sugar industry; corn, rice, honey, wax, and fruits are produced and the province contains a deposit of peat and copper. Santa Clara, with an area of 23,083 square miles, has a population of 354,122 (244,345 white and 109,777 black), and it is rich in sugar, fruits, and minerals, including gold deposits in the Arino River. Puerto Principe, with an area of 32,341 square miles, has a population of 67,789 (54,232 white and 13,557 black), and is a mountainous region, with the largest caves and the highest mountains; building and cabinet woods and guava jelly are its chief products. Santiago de Cuba, with an area of 35,119 square miles, the largest of the provinces, has a population of 272,379 (57,980 white and 114,399 black), and not only possesses all the agricultural products found in the other provinces, but also has deposits of gold, iron, copper, zinc, asphalt, manganese, mercury, marble and alabaster, rock crystal, and gems, and its commerce is most extensive.
