The History of Cuba, vol. 5

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

Rex Beach, the novelist, writer and traveler, looked down from his auto into the valley for the first time in 1916. Stopping the machine suddenly, he jumped to the ground and stood spellbound, looking down into that beautiful basin, over a thousand feet below. After a moment’s pause he exclaimed: “I have visited every spot of interest from northern Alaska to Panama, and traveled through many countries, but never before in my life have I met anything so picturesquely, dramatically beautiful as this valley, this dream garden that lies at our feet. There is nothing like it in the Western Hemisphere, probably not in all the world.”

The length of the basin is not over twenty miles while its width varies from three to ten. The floor is level, covered with rich waving grass, watered by a little stream, that comes meandering through the valley, dives beneath a mountain range, afterwards to reappear from a grotto-like opening on the northern side, beyond the valley, whence its waters eventually find their home in the Gulf of Mexico.

The peculiar, almost unreal, indentations of the northern ridge are silhouetted so vividly against the sky above that from the southern shore of the valley one is inclined at times to believe them fantastically formed clouds. The remarkable feature, however, of Vinales lies in the peculiar round-topped mountains that rise abruptly from the level surface below, and project themselves perpendicularly into the air, to a height varying from 1,200 to 2,000 feet.

Unique imposing formations, resulting from millions of years of tropical rains and rock erosion, are covered with dense forests of strange palms and thousands of rare plants, whose varied foliage seems to be peculiar to this isolated spot in the western central part of Pinar del Rio. These singular dome-like lomas of Vinales, looming up so unexpectedly from the valley below, are usually accessible from one side, although but very few people seem to have taken the trouble to climb to their summits. All of these mountains and foothills, composed of limestone formations, are honeycombed with caves, some of them of rare beauty.

Shortly after the founding of the Republic, a group of men composed mostly of naturalists and scientists, representing the Smithsonian and like institutions in the United States, together with several Cuban enthusiasts in the study of nature, spent several months studying the fauna and flora of the Vinales Valley. In fact they rambled and worked through most of the line of foothills that traverse Pinar del Rio between its central ridges and the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the party were specialists in tertiary fossils, others in the myriad varieties of submarine life. These latter spent considerable time studying the various species of radiata, mollusca, crustacea and allied forms of life on the inner side of the long coral barrier reef which parallels the shore of the province of Pinar del Rio, from Bahia Honda to Cape San Antonio. Many new varieties of the snail family, also, were discovered and studied.

In this connection it may be stated that a very rare variety of the palm family, the Microoyco Calocoma, commonly called the Cork Palm, found only in Pinar del Rio, seems, owing perhaps to some unfavorable change in climate or surrounding conditions, to be disappearing from earth. Not more than seventy specimens are known to exist and these are all growing in an isolated spot in the mountains back of Consolacion del Sur. Several of them have been transplanted to the grounds of the Government Experimental Station for study and care. One also has been removed to the grounds of the President’s home at El Chico. The palms are not tall, none reaching a height of more than twenty feet, with a diameter of perhaps eight inches.

This rare palm is one of those miraculous survivals of the carboniferous age that by some strange protecting influence have survived all the great seismic upheaval and geological changes wrought on the earth’s surface during the millions of years since the epoch, when this and similar varieties of carboniferous plants were the kings of the vegetable world. Their dead forms are frequently found imprinted in the coal fields of Pennsylvania and Brazil, but only in Cuba has this family of ancient palms persisted, mute survival of an antiquity that probably antedates any other living thing on earth. So slow is the growth of this remarkable plant, that only one crown of leaves appears each year. By simply counting the circles of scars left by the fallen leaves, it is clearly demonstrated that many of these remnants of a remote geological past were living in the mountains of Pinar del Rio long before Columbus dreamed of another continent. Some of them are today over a thousand years old, and may have antedated the fall of Rome, if not the birth of Christ on earth.

A strange variety of indigenous wild legumes, belonging probably to the cow-pea tribe, is found growing luxuriantly in the low sandy soil of the southwestern coast. The vine forms a splendid cover crop of which cattle are very fond, while the peas, although small, are delicious eating. Plants of the lily family are found in great quantities in some of the fresh water lagoons of this Province, the ashes of which furnish 60% of high-grade potash.

Back in the mountains of Pinar del Rio, an exploring party from the Experimental Station came across, most unexpectedly, a little group of five immense black walnut trees. No one knows whence came the seed from which they sprung, since the district has never been settled, and the black walnut is not known in any other part of the Island. It is quite probable that many, if not all, of the forest trees of a commercial value in the Gulf States, and perhaps further north, would thrive in Cuba if planted there.