Sagua la Grande is located on the Sagua River, twenty miles up from the port of La Isabella. It is a comparatively modern city, with wide streets, and is the distributing point for the large sugar estates of that section. Its population is 12,000.
The Port of Caibarien has grown into considerable importance owing to the large amount of sugar brought in by the different railroads, for storage in the big stone warehouses that line the wharf. Shoal water necessitates lightering out some fifteen miles to a splendid anchorage under the lee of Cayo Frances, on the outer edge of the great salt water lagoon which envelops the entire north coast of Santa Clara. The population is 7,000.
Five miles west, on the line between Caibarien and Santa Clara, is the little old city of Remedios, that once occupied a place on the coast, but was compelled by the unfriendly visits of pirates, as were many other cities in Cuba in the olden days, to move back from the sea shore, so that the inhabitants could be warned of an approaching enemy. Around Remedios, large fields of tobacco furnish the chief source of income to this city of six or seven thousand people.
The great “Cienaga de Zapata,” or Swamp of the Shoe, so called on account of its strange resemblance to a heeled moccasin, although geographically a part of the Province of Matanzas, has nevertheless always been included in the boundaries of Santa Clara. Its length from east to west is about sixty-five miles, with an average width from north to south of twenty. Many plans, at different times since the first Government of Intervention, have been formed for the drainage and reclaiming of this great swamp of the Caribbean, whose area is approximately twelve hundred square miles.
Nearly all of the surface is covered with hard wood timber, growing in a vast expanse of water, varying in depth from one to three feet. Owing to its lack of incline in any direction, reclamation of this isolated territory is not easy, although the land, after the timber was removed and the water once disposed of, would probably be very valuable.
Enormous deposits of peat and black vegetable muck, cover the western shores of this peninsula and will, when utilized for either fuel, fertilizer or gas production, be an important source of revenue, as will its forests of hard wood, when transportation to the coast is rendered possible.
Just east of the heel of the “Zapata” and some forty miles west of the harbor of Cienfuegos, a deep, open, wide-mouthed roadstead projects from the Caribbean some eighteen miles into the land, almost connecting with the little lake known as “El Tesero” or Treasure, located at the most southerly point of the Province of Matanzas. This roadstead, known as the Bay of Cochinos, furnishes shelter from all winds excepting those from the south, against which there is no protection, although abutments thrown out from the shore might give artificial shelter, and thus render it a fairly safe harbor.
Quite a large forest of valuable woods lies a few miles back from the coast, between Cochinos Bay and the harbor of Cienfuegos. The broken surface of the dog teeth rocks, however, upon which this forest stands, renders the removal of logs difficult and dangerous, since iron shoes will not protect the feet of draft animals used in the transport of wood to the coast. A narrow strip of very good vegetable land, running only a mile or so back from the beach, extends along this section of the coast for about twenty-five miles, awaiting the intelligent efforts of some future gardener to produce potatoes and other vegetables on a large scale for spring shipments to Cienfuegos.
The great source of wealth of the Province of Santa Clara, of course, is sugar, and to that industry nearly all of her industrial energies are at present devoted. Seventy great sugar estates, with modern mills, are located within the Province, yielding an annual production of approximately eight million sacks of sugar, each weighing 225 pounds. The fertility of Santa Clara soil has never been exhausted, and the great network of railroads covering the Province furnishes easy transportation to the harbors of Cienfuegos, Sagua and Caibarien. Considerable amounts of sugar are also shipped from Casilda, the port of Trinidad on the south coast, and some from Tunas de Zaza, at the mouth of the Zaza River, thirty miles further east. The sugar produced in the Province in 1918 was valued at eighty million dollars.
The tobacco of Santa Clara Province, although not of the standard quality obtained in the western provinces of Pinar del Rio and Havana, still forms a very important industry. That coming from the Manicaragua Valley, northeast of Cienfuegos, has obtained a good reputation for its excellent flavor.