Of birds there are more than 200 indigenous species, it is said, and migratory species are also numerous. Waders are represented by more than fifty species. Vultures are represented by only one species, the turkey buzzard, which is the universal scavenger of the fields, and until recent years even of the cities, and has always been protected by custom and the Laws of the Indies. Falcons are represented by a score of species, at least, several of them nocturnal. Kestrels are common. The gallinaceous order is rich in Columbidae. Trumpeters are notably represented, and climbers still more so. Among the latter are species of curious habits and remarkable colouring. Woodpeckers (Coloptes auratus), macaws, parrakeets and other small parrots, and trogons, these last of beautifully resplendent plumage, deserve particular mention. The Cuban mocking-bird is a wonderful songster. Of humming-birds there are said to be sixty species, probably only one indigenous. Of the other birds mere mention may be made of the wild pigeon, raven, indigo-bird, English lady-bird and linnet.
Reptiles are numerous. Many tortoises are notable. The crocodile and cayman occur in the swampy littoral of the south. Of lizards the iguana (Cyclura caudata) is noteworthy. Chameleons are common. Snakes are not numerous, and it is said that none is poisonous or vicious. There is one enormous boa, the maja (Epicrates angulifer), which feeds on pigs, goats and the like, but does not molest man.
Fishes are present in even greater variety than birds. Felipa Poey, in his Ictiologia Cubana, listed 782 species of fish and crustaceans, of which 105 were doubtful; but more than one-half of the remainder were first described by Poey. The fish of Cuban waters are remarkable for their metallic colourings. The largest species are found off the northern coast. Food fishes are relatively not abundant, presumably because the deep sea escarpments of the N. are unfavourable to their life. Shell fish are unimportant. Two species of blind fish, of extreme scientific interest, are found in the caves of the island. Of the “percoideos” there are many genera. Among the most important are the robalo (Labrax), an exquisite food fish, the tunny, eel, Spanish sardine and mangua. Of the sharks the genus Squalus is represented by individuals that grow to a length of 26 to 30 ft. The hammer-head attains a weight at times of 600 ℔. The saw-fish is common. Of fresh-water fish the lisa, dogro, guayácón and viajocos (Chromis fuscomaculatus) are possibly the most noteworthy.
Molluscs are extraordinarily numerous; and many, both of water and land, are rarities among their kind for size and richness of colour. Of crustaceans, land-crabs are remarkable for size and number. Arachnids are prodigiously numerous. Insect life is abundant and beautiful. The bite of the scorpion and of the numerous spiders produces no serious effects. The nigua, the Cuban jigger, is a pest of serious consequence, and the mal de nigua (jigger sickness) sometimes causes the death of lower animals and men. Sand-flies and biting gnats are lesser nuisances. Lepidoptera are very brilliant in colouring. The cucujo or Cuban firefly (Pyrophorus noctilucus) gives out so strong a light that a few of them serve effectively as a lantern. The Stegomyia mosquito is the agent of yellow fever inoculation. Sponges grow in great variety.
Climate.—The climate of Cuba is tropical and distinctively insular in characteristics of humidity, equability and high mean temperature. There are two distinct seasons: a “dry” season from November to April, and a hotter, “wet” season. About two-thirds of the total precipitation falls in the latter. Droughts, extensive in area and in duration, are by no means uncommon. At Havana the mean temperature is about 76° F., with extreme monthly oscillations ranging on the average from 6° to 12° F. for different months, and with a range between the means of the coldest and warmest months of 10° (70° to 80°); temperatures below 50° or above 90° being rare. The mean rainfall at Havana is about 40.6 in. (sometimes over 80), and the mean absolute humidity of different months ranges from 70 to 80%. These figures represent fairly well the conditions of much of the northern coast. In the N.E. the rainfall is much greater. The equability of heat throughout the day is masked and relieved by the afternoon sea breezes. The trades are steady through the year, and in the dry season the western part of the island enjoys cool “northers.” Despite this the interior is somewhat cooler than the coast, and in the uplands frost is not uncommon. The southern littoral is also (except in sheltered points such as Santiago, which is one of the hottest cities of the island) somewhat cooler than the northern.
More than eight or ten years rarely pass without tornadoes or hurricanes of local severity at least. Notably destructive ones occurred in 1768, 1774, 1842, 1844, 1846, 1865, 1870, 1876, 1885 and 1894. Those of 1842 and 1844 caused extreme distress in the island. In 1846, 300 vessels and 2000 houses were destroyed at Havana; in 1896 the banana groves of the N.E. coast were ruined and the banana industry prostrated; and in 1906 Havana suffered damage. The autumn months, particularly October and November, are those in which such storms most frequently occur.
Health.—Convincing evidence is offered by the qualities of the Spanish race in Cuba that white men of temperate lands can be perfectly acclimatized in this tropical island. As for diseases, some common to Cuba and Europe are more frequent or severe in the island, others rarer or milder. There are the usual malarial, bilious and intermittent fevers, and liver, stomach and intestinal complaints prevalent in tropical countries; but unhygienic living is, in Cuba as elsewhere, mainly responsible for their existence. Yellow fever (which first appeared in Cuba in 1647) was long the only epidemic disease, Havana being an endemic focus. Aside from the recurrent loss of life, the pecuniary loss from such epidemics was enormous, and the interference with commerce and social intercourse with other countries extremely vexatious. The Cuban coast was uninterruptedly full of infection, and the danger of an outbreak in each year was never absent, until the work of the United States army in 1901-1902 conclusively proved that this disease, though ineradicable by the most extreme sanitary measures, based on the accepted theory of its origin as a filth-disease, could be eradicated entirely by removing the possibility of inoculation by the Stegomyia mosquito. Since then yellow fever has ceased to be a scourge in Cuba. Small-pox was the cause of a greater mortality than yellow fever even before the means of combating the latter had been ascertained. The remarkable sanitary work begun during the American occupation and continued by the republic of Cuba, has shown that the ravages of this and other diseases can be greatly diminished. Leprosy is rather common, but seemingly only slightly contagious. Consumption is very prevalent.
Agriculture.—Soils are of four classes: calcareous-ferruginous, alluvial, argillous and silicious. Calcareous lands are predominant, especially in the uplands. Deep residual clay soils derived from underlying limestones, and coloured red or black according to the predominance of oxides of iron or vegetable detritus, characterize the plains. A red-black soil known as “mulatto” or tawny is perhaps the best fitted for general cultivation. Tobacco is most generally cultivated on loose red soils, which are rich in clays and silicates; and sugar-cane preferably on the black and mulatto soils; but in general, contrary to prevalent suppositions, colour is no test of quality and not a very valuable guide in the setting of crops. Almost without exception the lands throughout the island are of extreme fertility. The lowlands about Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Mariel and Matanzas are noted for their richness. The census of 1899 showed that farm lands occupied three-tenths of the total area; the cultivated area being one-tenth of the farms or 3% of the whole. At the end of 1905 it was officially estimated that 16% was in cultivation. In 1902 it was officially estimated that the public land available for permanent agrarian cultivation, including forest lands, was only 186,967 hectares (416,995 acres), almost wholly in the province of Oriente. The average size of a farm in 1899 was 143 acres. More than 85% of all cultivated lands were then occupied by whites; and somewhat more than one-half (56.6%) of all occupiers were renters. Holdings of more than 32 acres constituted only 7% of the total. As regards crops, 47% of the cultivated area was given over to sugar, 11% to sweet potatoes, 9% to tobacco and almost 9% to bananas. But owing to the disturbed conditions created by the war it is probable that these figures by no means represent normal conditions. The actual sugar crop of 1899-1900, for example, was not a quarter of that of 1894. With the establishment of peace in 1898 and the influx of American and other capital and of a heavy immigration, great changes took place in agriculture as in other industrial conditions.
Sugar has been the dominant crop since the end of the 18th century. Before the Civil War of 1895-1898 the capital invested in sugar estates was greater by half than that represented by tobacco and coffee plantations, live-stock Sugar. ranches and other farms. Since that time fruit and live-stock interests have increased. The dependence of the island on one crop has been an artificial economic condition often of grave momentary danger to prosperity; but generally speaking, the progress of the industry has been steady. The competition of the sugar-beet has been felt severely. During and after the war of 1868-1878, when many Cuban estates were confiscated, many families emigrated, and many others were ruined, the ownership of plantations largely passed from the hands of Cubans to Spaniards. Under the conditions of free labour, the development of railways abroad, the improvement of machinery both in cane and beet producing countries, the general competition of the beet, and the fall of prices, it was impossible for the Cuban industry to survive without radical betterment of methods. About 1885 began an immense development of centralization (the tendency having been evident many years before this). Plantations have increased greatly in size (and also diminished in number), greater capital is involved, bagasse furnaces have been introduced, double grinding mills have increased by more than a half the yield of juice from a given weight of cane, and extractive operations instead of being carried on on all plantations have been (since 1880) concentrated in comparatively few “centrals” (168 in Feb. 1908). Three-fourths of all are in the jurisdictions of Cienfuegos, Cárdenas, Havana, Matanzas and Sagua la Grande, which are the great sugar centres of the island (three-fourths of the crop coming from Matanzas and Santa Clara provinces). Caibarién, Guantánamo and Manzanillo are next in importance. A comparatively low cost of labour, the fact that labour is not, as in the days of slavery, that of unintelligent blacks but of intelligent free labourers, the centralized organization and modern methods that prevail on the plantations, the remarkable fertility of the soil (which yields 5 or 6 crops on good soil and with good management, without replanting), and the proximity of the United States, in whose markets Cuba disposes of almost all her crop, have long enabled her to distance her smaller West Indian rivals and to compete with the bounty-fed beet. The methods of cultivation, however, are still distinctly extensive, and the returns are much less than they would be (and in some other cane countries are) under more intensive and scientific methods of cultivation. Indeed, conditions were relatively primitive so late as 1880, if compared with those of other sugar-producing countries. More than four-fifths of the total area sown to cane in the island is in the three provinces of Santa Clara, Matanzas and Oriente (formerly Santiago), the former two representing two-thirds of the area and three-fourths of the crop. The majority of the sugar estates are of an area less than 3000 acres, and the most common area is between 1500 and 2000 acres; but the extremes range from a very small size to 60,000 acres. Only a part of the great estates is ever planted in any one season. The most profitable unit is calculated to be a daily consumption of 1500 tons of cane, or 150,000 in a grinding season of 100 days, which implies a feeding area not above 6000 acres. In the season of 1904-1905, which may be taken as typical, 179 estates, with a planted area of 431,056 acres, produced 11,576,137 tons of cane, and yielded—in addition to alcohol, brandy and molasses—1,089,814 tons of sugar. Of this amount 416,862 tons were produced by 24 estates yielding more than 11,000 tons each, including one (planting 28,050 acres) that yielded 33,609, and 4 others more than 22,000 tons each. The production of the island from 1850 to 1868 averaged 469,934 tons yearly, rising from 223,145 to 749,000; from 1869 to 1886 (continuing high during the period of the Ten Years’ War), 632,003 tons; from 1887 to 1907—omitting the five years 1896-1900 when the industry was prostrated by war,—909,827 tons (and including the war period, 758,066); and in the six harvests of 1901-1906, 1,016,899 tons. Prior to 1902 the million mark, was reached only twice—in 1894 and 1895. Following the resuscitation of the industry after the last war, the island’s crop rose steadily from one-sixth to a full quarter of the total cane sugar output of the world, its share in the world’s product of sugar of all kinds ranging from a tenth to an eighth. Of this enormous output, from 98.3% upward went to the United States;[1] of whose total importation of all sugars and of cane sugar the proportion of Cuban cane—steadily rising—was respectively 49.8 and 53.7% in the seasons of 1900-1901 and 1904-1905.
If sugar is the island’s greatest crop, tobacco is her most renowned in the markets of the world. Three-fourths of the tobacco of Cuba comes from Pinar del Rio province; the rest mainly from the provinces of Havana and Tobacco. Santa Clara,—the description de partido being applied to the leaf not produced in Havana and Pinar del Rio provinces, and sometimes to all produced outside the vuelta abajo. This district, including the finest land, is on the southern slope of the Organ Mountains between the Honda river and Mantua; bananas are cultivated with the tobacco. “Vegas” (tobacco fields) of especially good repute are also found near Trinidad, Remedios, Yara, Mayarí and Vicana. The tobacco industry has been uniformly prosperous, except when crippled by the destruction of war in 1868-1878 and 1895-1898. Even in the time of slavery tobacco was generally a white-man’s crop; for it requires intelligent labour and intensive care. In recent years the growth of the leaf under cloth tents has greatly increased, as it has been abundantly proved that the product thus secured is much more valuable—lighter in colour and weight, finer in texture, with an increased proportion of wrapper leaves, and more uniform qualities, and with lesser amounts of cellulose, nicotine, gums and resins. In these respects the finest Cuban tobacco crops, produced in the sun, hardly rival the finest Sumatra product; but produced under cheese-cloth they do. “Cuban tobacco” does not mean to-day, as a commercial fact, what the words imply; for the original Nicotiana Tabacum, variety havanensis, can probably be found pure to-day only in out-of-the-way corners of Pinar del Rio. After the Ten Year’s War seed of Mexican and United States tobaccos was in great demand to re-seed the ruined vegas, and was introduced in great quantities; and although by a later law the destruction of these exotic species was ordered, that destruction was in fact quite impossible. “Lusty growers and coarser than the genuine old-time Cuban ... Mexican tobaccos (Nicotiana Tabacum, variety macrophyllum) are to-day predominant in a large part of Cuban vegas.... Ordinary commercial Cuban seed of to-day is largely, and often altogether, Mexican tobacco.” Though improved in the Cuban environment, the foreign tobaccos introduced after the Ten Years’ War did not lose their exotic character, but prevailed over the indigenous forms: “Tobaccos with exactly the character of the introduced types are now the prevalent forms” (quotation from Bulletin of the Estación Central Agronómica, Feb. 1908). In the markets of the world Cuban tobacco has always suffered less competition than Cuban sugar, and still less has been done than in the case of sugar cane in the study of methods of cultivation, which in several respects are far behind those of other tobacco-growing countries. The crop of 1907 was 201,512 bales (109,562,400 ℔ Sp.).