Columbus remained here, taking on fresh water and wood, until July 25, and then began his return voyage east, sailing over shoals that displayed so many varying shades of green, purple and white, that his mariners are said to have become alarmed.
Some twenty years later Diego Velasquez cruised along the southern coast to a point west of the Guines River, where he founded a city, which he called San Cristobal de la Havana. The fifty odd colonists whom he left behind soon became dissatisfied with the general surroundings of the spot which he had selected for their abiding place and moved over to the north shore of the Island near the mouth of the Almandares River, which they found in every way more agreeable as a place of permanent residence. In 1519 a second move was made to the Bay of Carenas, where they located permanently on the harbor, destined soon after to become the most important port of the West Indies.
The inhabitants of that irregular group of palm thatched huts little dreamed that four centuries later the Port of Havana would have a foreign commerce whose tonnage is excelled by only one other in the Western Hemisphere.
With the exception of the low, grass-covered plains of the southern shore, the topography of the Province of Havana is undulating and picturesque. The northern shore, throughout most of its length, especially from the City of Havana west to Matanzas, rises more or less abruptly from the beach until it reaches a rather uneven plateau, several hundred feet above the level of the sea.
In the northwestern corner, some two miles back from the shore line, the “Pan” or “Loma of Guayabon,” which is really a continuation of the Organ Mountains of Pinar del Rio, forms a palm covered, picturesque ridge, six hundred feet in height, extending from east to west for several miles. Along the southern edge of this range of hills, runs a beautiful automobile drive, connecting the capital with the city of Pinar del Rio, the wonderful valley of the Vinales, Guane and the extreme western end of the Island. A drive leading from the city of Guanajay extends fifty miles northwest to the Bay of Bahia Honda, chosen originally as a coaling station for the Navy, but never occupied.
In the east central part of the province lie two small mountains known as the Tetas de Bejucal, and from them, extending in an easterly direction into the Province of Matanzas, are broken ridges, plateaus, and hills that form one of the connecting links between the Organ group of mountains in the west, and the still higher cordilleras of the Province of Oriente in the extreme east.
With the exception of the coastal plain running along the southern boundary, the remainder of the province is undulating, more or less hilly, and quite picturesque in its contour. A little east of the Tetas de Bejucal, from the top of the divide that forms the water shed of the province, looking south, one sees below him the Valley of the Guines, known as the Garden of Havana. Thousands of acres are here spread out before the view, all irrigated by the Guines River, whose source is in the never failing springs that gush from the base of a mountain ridge in the east center of the Province.
The rich soil of this section, furnished as it is with water throughout the year, produces a marvelous yield of sugar cane, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, egg plants and other vegetables, affording an inexhaustible supply during the winter to the capital, forty miles north. Engineers are making a study of this river so that its water may be more economically distributed and the acreage of irrigated lands greatly increased.
In the southwestern quarter of Havana Province, known as the Tumbadero District, experiments were first made in growing tobacco under cheese cloth. These were so successful that in a few years Tumbadero, or Havana wrappers, became famous for their fineness of texture, and within a short time thousands of acres in that section were converted into fields, or vegas, whose returns in tobacco leaf product were excelled in value only by those of the celebrated Vuelta Abajo district of Pinar del Rio. The towns of Alquizar and Guira de Melina were built and sustained by the reputation of the Tumbadero wrapper, and the tobacco district was soon extended well up into the center of the province, including Salud, Rincon, San Antonio de los Banos, and Santiago de las Vegas. In the northwestern corner of the Island, the rich valley extending south and east of the “Pan de Guayabon,” including the towns of Caimito, Hoyo Colorado, and Guayabal, has recently rivaled the Tumbadero district in the excellence of its tobacco, and excels in citrus fruit.
Over three-fourths of Havana Province have been blessed with a remarkably fertile soil, and although much of it has been under cultivation for three centuries or more, with the judicious use of fertilizers, the returns, either in fruit or vegetables, are very gratifying to the small farmer.