Its area consists of 14,213 square miles, its form is triangular, Cape Maysi, the eastern terminus of the island, forming the apex of the triangle, while the base, with a length of about one hundred miles, extends from Cabo Cruz along the Manzanillo coast to the north shore. One side of the triangle, formed by the south coast, has a length of nearly 250 miles, while another, without counting the convolutions of the sea coast, borders for two hundred miles on the Atlantic.
Mountain chains follow both the north and south shores of Oriente, while about one-third of its area, which composes the eastern section, is a great tangle or nest of irregular mountains, flat top domes, plateaus, and foothills, with their intervening basins, parks and valleys.
While the main chain, or mountainous vertebrae, seems to disappear in the Sierra de Cubitas of Camaguey, it reappears again, just west of the Bay of Manati, in the extreme northern part of the province, and extends along the north shore at broken intervals, until it finally melts into that great eastern nest of volcanic upheavals that forms the eastern end of the Island. From this north shore chain, innumerable spurs are thrown off to the southward between Manati and Nipe Bay, reaching sometimes twenty-five or thirty miles back into the interior.
Along the southern shore of Oriente from Cabo Cruz to Cabo Maysi, ascending at times abruptly from the beach, and at others dropping back a little, we have the longest and tallest mountain range of Cuba. One peak, known as Turquino, located midway between the city of Santiago de Cuba and Cape Cruz, reaches an altitude of 8,642 feet.
From the crest of this range, known as the Sierra Maestra, the great network of spurs are thrown off to the north toward the valley of the Cauto, while between these mountain offshoots several of the Cauto’s most important tributaries, including the Cautill, Contraemaestre and Brazos del Cauto, have their sources.
Most of the mountainous districts are still covered with dense tropical forests that contain over three hundred varieties of hard woods, the cost of transportation alone preventing their being cut and marketed.
The interior of the Province, from the Mayari River west, is the largest valley in Cuba, with a virgin soil marvellously rich through which runs the Cauto River, emptying into the Caribbean Sea, a little north of the City of Manzanillo. This stream, with its tributaries, forms the most extensive waterway in the Island.
A tributary on the north known as the Rio Salado, rising south of the city of Holguin, flows in a westerly direction and empties into the Cauto just above the landing of Guamo, some fifteen miles from the Caribbean. Small streams empty into all of the numerous deep water gulfs and bays that indent the north coast of Oriente. Each serves its purpose in draining adjacent lands, but none, with the exception of the Mayari, is navigable. This stream, the most important perhaps of the north coast, rises in the eastern center of the Province, cutting its way west along the base of the Crystal Mountains, until it reaches their western end, whence it makes a sharp turn to the north, and after tumbling over the falls, gradually descends and empties into Nipe Bay.
The Sagua de Tanamo and its tributaries drain quite a large basin east of the Mayari, and empty into the Gulf of Tanamo. The Moa, a short stream, rises not far from the Tanamo but flows north to the ocean. The Toa, flowing east, cuts through valleys for fifty miles, and finally empties into the Atlantic thirty miles west of Cape Maysi.