The presence of naphtha and many surface indications of oil deposits south and east of the City of Cardenas have rendered that section attractive as a field of exploration. Up to the present time, however, no paying wells have been found, although many expert oil men are still confident that the entire district from Cardenas to Itabo, and even further east, will some day prove a valuable field for petroleum products.

Midway between Cardenas and the City of Matanzas, just north of the beautiful highway connecting these two cities, rises a range of low serpentine hills, whose altitude is approximately five hundred feet. These peculiarly symmetrical, round, loaf-like elevations above the level surface of the surrounding country, are covered with a short scrubby growth of thorny brush, and several varieties of maguey, of the century plant family. Nothing else will grow on these serpentine hills; hence in most respects they are decidedly unattractive. Since the beginning of the international war, however, and the great demand for chrome, some local mineralogists noted that little streams and rivulets running down these hills left deposits of a peculiar black, glistening sand. This sand, when analyzed, proved to come from the erosion of chromite, the mineral so much in demand by the smelting industry of the United States for hardening steel. In the spring of 1918 two well-known mining engineers and geologists, with instructions from Washington, visited several of these serpentine hills and found valuable deposits of chromite that will probably furnish a very profitable source of this much sought-for mineral and add greatly to the mining industry of this province.

During the War of Independence, Generals Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez led the invading columns of the Revolutionary Army into this Province for the first time, in the fall of 1896. The great beds of dead leaves lying between rows of cane, dried by the November winds, formed useful material for the insurgent armies. The torch once applied to this vast tinder box, with the prevailing easterly winds, all Matanzas was aflame. Under cover of the great canopy of smoke which rose over the land, the invading armies of the Occident swept rapidly on through the Province, fighting only when compelled to, since the object of the invasion was to carry the war into Havana and Pinar del Rio, where Revolution had never before been known.

The vast cane fields that today line the railroad tracks on both sides, bear no evidence of the ravages of Revolution, while handsome modern mills, many of which have been erected since the beginning of the great European War of 1914, have helped to feed the world with sugar that could be obtained in sufficient quantities in no other place.

CHAPTER VII
PROVINCE OF SANTA CLARA

PROBABLY in no part of Cuba is the topography more varied or the scenery more beautiful than in the Province of Santa Clara, with its area of 8,250 square miles. Mountain, valley, table land and plain seem to be thrown together in this, the central section of the Island, in reckless yet picturesque confusion. The main system of mountains, extending throughout the entire length of Cuba, disappears and reappears along the northern coast of Santa Clara, thus permitting easy communication between her rich central plains, covered with sugar estates, and her harbors on the coast.

In the southwestern center of this province, we have another group of mountains, foot hills and fertile valleys, in which are located some of the old coffee estates of slavery days, established at the close of the 18th century, shortly after the negro uprising in Santo Domingo. These cafetales, in the early half of the following century, made Cuban coffee famous throughout the world. Nestling within this mountain cradle lies the city of Trinidad, founded by Diego Velasquez in January, 1514. The presence of gold, which the Indians panned from the waters of the Arimo River, rendered Trinidad an important center for the early Spanish conquerors during the first years of Cuban history. Sancti Spiritus, lying on the edge of a fertile plateau, some forty-five miles to the northeast, was founded a few months later.

Gold was the god of the Spanish conquerors, and to secure it was their chief aim and ambition. Its discovery in this section of Santa Clara brought hope to them and despair to the Indians, on whom the former depended for labor with which to dig this precious metal from the earth. Velasquez found the natives of Trinidad, like those of Oriente, a gentle, confiding people, who asked only permission to live as they had always done; tilling the soil, fishing, visiting and dancing, at which they were most clever, an ideal and harmless life, suited to their tastes. They grew corn, sweet potatoes, tobacco and yucca, from which they made their cazaba bread, still used by the country people of the present day. The Spaniards, however, soon changed this earthly dream of ease and joy into one of arduous and repugnant toil, rather than to submit to which, many of them committed suicide by poison and by drowning.

Velasquez, enthusiastic over the locality of his newly founded city, Trinidad, despatched at once one of his caravels to La Espanola in Santo Domingo, with orders to bring back cattle, mares and other material necessary to further the interests of the new settlement. And so it came to pass that this section of southern Santa Clara, with its fertile lands, beautiful scenery and promise of gold, played an important part in the early colonization of the Island.

The desire to accumulate wealth through the toil of the unhappy Indians, of whom the Spaniards made slaves, tempted even Las Casas, the great defender of the Cuban aborigines, to accept assignment of them as a gift from the crown, so that he might share something of the prosperity of the early conquerors. It is reported that Las Casas repented this departure from the path of rectitude and afterwards was led to indorse the importation of African slaves in order to save the Cuban Indians from extermination.