ILLUSTRATIONS
| FULL PAGE PLATES: | |
| [Columbus (Janez Portrait)] | Frontispiece |
| FACING PAGE | |
| [The Havana Cathedral] | [36] |
| [La Fuerza] | [146] |
| [Morro Castle, Havana] | [180] |
| [San Francisco Church] | [226] |
| [Morro Castle, Santiago] | [298] |
| TEXT EMBELLISHMENTS: | |
| PAGE | |
| Monument on Supposed First Tending Place of Columbus, Watling's Island | [3] |
| Queen Isabella | [13] |
| Diego Velasquez | [59] |
| Baracoa, First Capital of Cuba | [60] |
| Panfilo de Narvaez | [63] |
| Bartholomew de las Casas | [64] |
| Ponce de Leon | [72] |
| Hernando Cortez | [90] |
| Hernando de Soto | [140] |
| San Lazaro Watch Tower, Havana | [155] |
| Pedro Menendez de Aviles | [199] |
THE HISTORY OF CUBA
CHAPTER I
Cuba; America: America; Cuba. The two names are inseparable. The record of each is in a peculiar sense identified with that of the other. Far more than any other land the Queen of the Antilles is associated with that Columbian enterprise from which the modern and practical history of the Western Hemisphere is dated. In Cuba the annals of America begin.
This island was not, it is true, the first land discovered by Columbus after leaving Spain. It was at least the fifth visited and named by him, and it was perhaps the tenth or twelfth which he saw and at which he touched in passing. But in at least three major respects it had the unquestionable primacy among all the discoveries of his first, second and third voyages, while in his own estimation it was not surpassed in importance by the main land of the continent which he finally reached in his fourth and last expedition. It was the first land visited or seen by him of the identity of which there has never been the slightest question. It was the first considerable land discovered by him, the first which was worth while sailing across the ocean to discover, and it was by far the most important of all found by him in his first three adventures. It was, also, the first and indeed the only land which caused him to believe that the theory of his undertaking had been vindicated and that the supreme object of his quest had been attained. Let us, in order to appreciate the transcendent significance of his discovery of Cuba, briefly consider these three circumstances.
We must remember with respect to the first that the identity of Columbus's first landing place has been much disputed, and indeed has never been determined to universal satisfaction: We know that it was an island of small or moderate size. Columbus himself called it in one place "small" and in another "fairly large." It was level, low-lying, well watered, with a large central lagoon, which may or may not have been a permanent feature, seeing that his visit was in the rainy season, when any depression in the land was likely to be flooded. It was certainly one of the Bahama archipelago. But that extensive group comprises 36 islands, 687 cays, and 2,414 rocks. Which of all these was it upon which the Admiral landed, which was called by the natives Guanahani, and which, with his characteristic religious fervor, Columbus immediately renamed San Salvador, the Island of the Holy Saviour?
The distinction has been claimed, by authorities worthy of respectful consideration, for no fewer than five. Down to the middle of the Nineteenth Century the weight of opinion and tradition favored Cat Island, and upon most maps and charts it was designated as "Guanahani, or San Salvador." It is by far the largest and the northernmost of the five islands in question. Next, to the southeast, lies Watling's Island, to which the distinction of having been the scene of Columbus's landfall has now for half a century been most generally given, and upon maps it is generally named San Salvador. It is the only one of the five which stands out in the Atlantic, beyond the generally uniform line of the Bahamas, as a sort of advance post to greet the voyager from the east. Samana, south by east from Watling's, also called Attwood's Cay, was selected as the true Guanahani by some officers of the United States Coast Survey. Mariguana, further in the same direction, was proclaimed "La Verdadera Guanahani" by F. A. de Varnhagen in a scholarly treatise published in 1864 at Santiago de Chili. Finally, Grand Turk Island, at the southeastern extremity of the Bahama chain, and just north of the coast of Hayti, was designated by Navarrete, in 1825, and by various other authorities, chiefly American, at later dates.