Originally the church of the Jesuits, this imposing edifice was built in 1656, though not completed until 1724, and took the place of the first cathedral in 1762. Within a tomb within its walls the remains of Columbus rested from 1796, when they were taken thither from Santo Domingo, to 1899, when they were conveyed to Spain.
CHAPTER IV
Between these first merely tentative and inconclusive visits of Columbus to Cuba, in which so much was imagined and so little learned or done, and the actual occupation and settlement of the island, which were reserved for a few years later, it will be profitable to pause for a brief space, to review what science has revealed to us of not merely the pre-Columbian but indeed what we may term the archaic history of this chief member of the Antillean group. It is a history written in the rocks and soils, in the mountains and plains and rivers; in brief, the natural history of the island.
This was something at which Columbus could merely have guessed, if indeed he had taken the trouble to think of it at all. He knew only that it was a fair land to look upon and promised to be a pleasant land in which to dwell; and his successors in the quest hoped to find its river beds and its mountain rocks rich with the gold which they coveted. That was all. It remained for the ampler knowledge and the more patient and painstaking research of later years to analyze the structure of the island, to discern the causes and the processes through which it had been developed into its present beautiful and opulent condition, and to learn that on the surface and just below the surface of its almost infinitely variegated face there lay the potency and the promise of wealth beyond the utmost limits of the dreams of those conquistadors of ancient Spain who were oestrus-driven by the auri sacra fames.
Let us consider, then, the geological history of Cuba, so far as it has been ascertained; and the topography of the land as it has been revealed through a far more comprehensive survey than that of the Great Admiral's enraptured vision.
It is, of course, impossible to know the geological history of a country until its paleontology has been thoroughly studied and investigated. Where formations of different geological ages are lithologically so similar as to be often indistinguishable, the only method of differentiating them is by their fossils. Some paleontological work has been done in Cuba, but the specimens collected were not accompanied by the necessary data.
In the present imperfect state of our knowledge of the stratigraphy and areal geology of the island, it would be hazardous to attempt to indicate the times at which the various levels were developed, or to designate the periods during which they remained above the level of the sea. To do this would require a detailed knowledge of nearly all the various phases of its geology.
The oldest rocks in Cuba, with the possible exception of the schistose limestones of Trinidad, are composed of granites and serpentines. The relative age of these rocks, to the central mass of limestones in the province of Pinar del Rio, has not been determined, but we do know that the oldest igneous rocks were themselves folded, faulted and subjected to other processes of metamorphism, and that subsequent to the changes to which they were subjected, the entire region was uplifted and deeply eroded before the cretaceous sedimentation began. No data are available for determining the geologic period at which the pre-cretaceous erosion began, but the region has doubtless been standing above the waters of the ocean for a very long interval, since the amount of rock carried away has been manifestly great.