Along the delightfully shaded automobile drives that radiate from the Capital in nearly all directions, the price of land within thirty miles of the city has risen so rapidly that it is being given over almost entirely to suburban homes and country estates, maintained by the wealthy residents of the capital. In a climate where frost is unknown, where the foliage remains fresh and green throughout the winter, it is comparatively easy to convert an ordinary farm into a veritable garden of Eden.
One of the most beautiful places on the Island within the last few years has been created by General Mario G. Menocal, President of the Republic. It covers several hundred acres and is known as “El Chico,” or the “Little One.” A commanding residence of Cuban colonial architecture, standing a little back from the road, has been surrounded with beautiful drives, lined with every variety of fruit tree, flower and ornamental plant known to Cuba. The green lawn sweeps up to the stately building occupied by President Menocal as a residence or country seat in summer. On this place may be found many varieties of poultry, recently imported from the United States for experimental purposes, in which the President is deeply interested. Competent gardeners and caretakers are maintained, with the result that “El Chico,” where General Menocal and his family spend much of their time, has become one of the show places of the Province.
Col. Jose Villalon, Secretary of Public Works, and Col. Charles Hernandez, Director of Posts and Telegraph, have pretty country estates located west of Havana, not far from El Chico.
The soil of the Province, throughout most of its extent, has been formed through the erosion of tertiary limestone, colored in many places a reddish brown of oxide of iron that has impregnated most of the soils of Cuba. Just south of Havana, serpentine has obtruded through the limestone along a belt some two or three miles in extent, and forms the round topped hills in evidence from the bay.
The greater part of Havana Province, when found by the Spaniards, was covered with forests of hard woods, that were gradually cut away during the centuries in which the land has been tilled. The trees, according to early records, included cedar, mahogany, acana, majagua and others, still found in the mountainous districts and those sections of Cuba not yet brought under cultivation. These valuable hard woods formed the posts, joists, rafters, doors and windows of nearly all the old-time residences of early days. Many buildings that have remained standing through centuries, have ceilings that are supported by heavy carved timbers of mahogany and give promise still of long years of service if permitted to remain.
The basic wealth of the province, as in nearly all other sections of Cuba, is dependent on agriculture, although since the inauguration of the Republic in 1902, manufacturing and various other industries are beginning to play a prominent part in her economical wealth.
In agricultural products, the Guines Valley previously referred to undoubtedly produces greater returns than any other similar lands in Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of crates of tomatoes, egg plants and other vegetables, that have been raised through the whiter month by irrigation, are shipped to the United States from December to April. Thousands of barrels of Irish potatoes from the Guines Valley, also, are sold in Philadelphia, New York and Boston during the month of March, at prices averaging four dollars per hundred weight.
In the Valley of Caimito, Guayabal and Hoyo Colorado, large crops of vegetables are shipped to the northern markets during the winter months, when good prices are assured. A certainty of profit, however, can only be depended on where irrigation from wells is secured.
Large acreages of pineapples are grown in the same district, although the center of the pineapple industry in Havana today is located about thirty miles east of the City, on the road to Matanzas. Over a million crates every year are shipped out of Havana to the northern markets between the middle of May and the middle of July.
It is probable that no section of either the West Indies or the United States offers greater opportunities for the canning industry than is found in Cuba at the present time, especially in the Province of Havana, where facilities for transportation are plentiful. A general canning and preserving plant, intelligently conducted, could be operated in this province throughout the entire year. In this way all of the surplus pineapples not shipped abroad could be utilized.