The History of Cuba, vol. 5

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

Most of the honey exported from Cuba is strained and sells in bulk for about five cents per pound. To those fond of bees, apiculture in Cuba will always form for the settler a source of added pleasure and profit, especially in those sections where coffee, cacao and citrus fruit form the chief source of income.

Next to the Bahama Islands, surrounded as they are by hundreds of square miles of shoal water, the shores of Cuba probably produce more good sponges than any other part of the western hemisphere. In the quiet waters protected by out-lying barrier reefs that in places stretch for hundreds of miles along the shores of Cuba, many varieties of sponges are found. The longest of the sponge zones is found in the shallow waters protected by the Islands and reefs that stretch along the north coast of Cuba from Punta Hicaco opposite Cardenas, to the harbor of Nuevitas, some 300 miles east. Both sponges and green turtles are found here but never have been extensively hunted except by the Bahama Islanders, who before the inauguration of the Cuban revenue service used to sneak across the old Bahama Channel in the darkness of the night and back of the uninhabited keys reap rich rewards in the sponge fields of the northern coast.

Batabano on the south coast, opposite the city of Havana, is the great center of the sponge fisheries that cover the shallow flats between the mainland and the Isle of Pines and extend from the Bay of Cochinos in the east to the extreme western terminus of the Island at Cape San Antonio.

The domestic consumption of sponges in Cuba is very large and in the year 1916-17 only 261,800 pounds were exported which had a value of $230,000.

CHAPTER XXVIII
PLACES OF HISTORICAL INTEREST

TO the lover of romance or student of history, few spots in the western hemisphere, perhaps, have greater charm and interest than Morro Castle, high perched on the promontory that guards the eastern entrance of Havana Harbor. Seen at early dawn from the open port of an entering steamer, its great, rugged, picturesque bulk seems to assemble from the spectral mists of a legendary past, while all those intensely dramatic scenes of which El Morro has been the center, pass before one like the dreamy reality of a moving picture play.

Resurrected from the tales of centuries, gone and almost forgotten, one sees the lonely old watch tower that back in the early days of the 16th century stood guard on the hill top of Morro, so that the pirates and cruel rovers of the sea during those days of greed, lust and crime, could not take the little community of Havana unawares. Then come the later days, when the ever recurring wars of Europe cast their ugly shadows over even remote points on the western shore of the Atlantic, and corsairs of foreign nations were ever anxious to pounce on the Pearl of the Antilles, and seize within the harbor some of the rich Spanish galleons, laden with Aztec gold and loot.

Through this panorama of the past comes the picture of England’s fleet of 200 ships manned by 32,000 men under Albemarle and Pococke, lying in a semicircle off the entrance of the harbor, with old Morro now well equipped for battle. Its thick walls, rugged embattlements, fighting turrets, embrasures, emergency bridges, powder magazines, store rooms, ammunition dumps, secret passages and dark dungeons, and bristling guns, were Spain’s chief bulwark in the defense of Havana. Solid shot and shell from a thousand guns crisscrossed between sea and land, and in the center of the turmoil, defending the fort and the honor of Spain, stood one courageous young officer, Commander Luis Velasco, surrounded by a little group of volunteers, who had sworn to hold the fort or die in its defense.

PABLO DESVERNINE.

Born in Havana in 1854, and educated at the University of Havana and at Columbia University, New York, Pablo Desvernine y Galdos has long ranked among the foremost members of the Cuban bar. During General Brooke’s Military Governorship at the beginning of the first American intervention he was Secretary of Finance; he was President of the Agricultural Expositions of 1911 and 1912; was Minister to the United States in 1913; and in 1914 was made by President Menocal Secretary of State. Since 1900 he has been Professor of Civil Law in the University of Havana. He is the author of several works on Civil and International Law.