With the introduction of colonists from the Canary Islands, Italy, and other countries who love the fresh air of the mountains, and who do not object to the isolation which naturally follows a residence in remote sections, there is every reason to believe that the coffee industry will again be resumed. The settlement of these hills and vales with families whose children can assist in the picking of berries, will make the growing of coffee a great success.

Until 1913 the mining interests of Pinar del Rio were practically ignored, in spite of the fact that several excavations or shafts, that had been worked many years before, gave evidence of the existence of copper. It was in this year that Luciano Diaz, formerly Secretary of Public Works, became interested in the district known as Matahambre. Competent mining engineers, brought from the United States, assured Mr. Diaz that his claim was valuable, and merited the investment of capital. This proved to be true, since the mine has produced high-grade copper at the rate of about five million dollars per year since the date of its opening.

Valuable deposits of manganese, too, have been recently discovered in the western end of the province, and will undoubtedly be developed in the near future. Excellent iron ore is found in the same chain, west of the capital, but owing to the difficulties of transportation, the mines have never been operated. Asphalt, asbestos and other substances used in the commercial world, are found at various points along the range, and await only intelligent direction and capital for their development.

Although Narciso Lopez, with his unfortunate followers, endeavored to arouse the people of this Province against the iniquities of Spanish rule in the year 1852, the revolution had never reached the west until the winter of 1896, when General Antonio Maceo, with his army of Cuban veterans, carried the “invasion of the Occident” to its ultimate objective. After one of the most skilfully conducted campaigns known to history, he rested for a few weeks in the little town of Mantua, within a few miles of the extreme western shore of Cuba.

The crossing of the Trocha, that had been built between the harbor of Mariel and the south coast, by this invading army, was very distasteful to General Weyler, who soon filled Pinar del Rio with well armed regiments and gave Maceo battle for more than a year. Short of ammunition, and in a section of the country where it was almost impossible for the expedition to aid him, General Maceo was compelled to keep up a running fight for many months, and in the Organ Mountains and in their various spurs toward the north coast were fought some of the most stubbornly contested engagements of the War of Independence.

CHAPTER VI
PROVINCE OF MATANZAS

HISTORICALLY the province of Matanzas has played a comparatively unimportant part in the various events that have influenced the destiny of the Island. In the early days of conquest, little mention of the district was made. Grijalva, however, with a small body of men, was the first of the Spanish conquerors who, pushing his way along the northern coast of Cuba, reached the harbor now known as Matanzas on October 8, 1518. A very substantial fort of the same excellent style of military architecture as that seen in Havana, was erected on the western shore of the Bay of Matanzas to protect the city from invasion, in the middle of the eighteenth century.

The province of Matanzas joins Havana on the east and has an area of 3,257 square miles. The surface as a whole is comparatively level, although the chain of mountains, which forms the backbone of the entire Island, is represented along the center of Matanzas in a series of low peaks and foothills sloping away to the northwest corner, in which the capital, Matanzas, is located on a bay of the same name.

Across the eastern center of the Province of Matanzas, nature left a depression that extends from the north coast at Cardenas, almost if not quite, to the shore of the Caribbean, at the Bay of Cochinos. The elevation above the sea level is so slight throughout this belt that a series of fresh water lagoons, swamps and low lands, without natural drainage of any kind, has rendered the district almost useless for agriculture and grazing purposes during the rainy season. Between the months of May and November this section is frequently flooded so that animals occasionally perish and crops are frequently destroyed.

To relieve the situation a drainage canal was proposed a few years ago, that should furnish an artificial exit for the surplus water into the Bay of Cardenas. The length of the proposed canal was thirty miles, and work began on the big ditch in 1916. At the present time it is practically completed, at a cost of approximately five millions of dollars. Its width varies from sixteen to forty-four meters, carrying an average depth of one and a half meters, or five feet.