We Experienced, In The Family Of Senor Cuesta (Who Then Formed With Senor Santa Maria One Of The Greatest Commercial Houses In America) And In The House Of Count O'Reilly, The Most Generous Hospitality.

We lived with the former and deposited our collections and instruments in the spacious hotel of Count O'Reilly, where the terraces favoured our astronomical observations.

The longitude of the Havannah was at this period more than one fifth of a degree uncertain.* (* I also fixed, by direct observations, several positions in the interior of the island of Cuba: namely Rio Blanco, a plantation of Count Jaruco y Mopex; the Almirante, a plantation of the Countess Buenavista; San Antonio de Beitia; the village of Managua; San Antonio de Bareto; and the Fondadero, near the town of San Antonio de los Banos.). It had been fixed by M. Espinosa, the learned director of the Deposito hidrografico of Madrid, at 5 degrees 38 minutes 11 seconds, in a table of positions which he communicated to me on leaving Madrid. M. de Churruca fixed the Morro at 5 hours 39 minutes 1 second. I met at the Havannah with one of the most able officers of the Spanish navy, Captain Don Dionisio Galeano, who had taken a survey of the coast of the strait of Magellan. We made observations together on a series of eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter, of which the mean result gave 5 hours 38 minutes 50 seconds. M. Oltmanns deduced in 1805 the whole of those observations which I marked for the Morro, at 5 hours 38 minutes 52.5 seconds - 84 degrees 43 minutes 7.5 seconds west of the meridian of Paris. This longitude was confirmed by fifteen occultations of stars observed from 1809 to 1811 and calculated by M. Ferrer: that excellent observer fixes the definitive result at 5 degrees 38 minutes 50.9 seconds. With respect to the magnetic dip I found it by the compass of Borda (December 1800) 53 degrees 22 minutes of the old sexagesimal division: twenty-two years before, according to the very accurate observations made by Captain Sabine in his memorable voyage to the coasts of Africa, America and Spitzbergen, the dip was only 51 degrees 55 minutes; it had therefore diminished 1 degree 27 minutes.

The island of Cuba being surrounded with shoals and breakers along more than two-thirds of its length, and as ships keep out beyond those dangers, the real shape of the island was for a long time unknown. Its breadth, especially between the Havannah and the port of Batabano, has been exaggerated; and it is only since the Deposito hidrografico of Madrid published the observations of captain Don Jose del Rio, and lieutenant Don Ventura de Barcaiztegui, that the area of the island of Cuba could be calculated with any accuracy. Wishing to furnish in this work the most accurate result that can be obtained in the present state of our astronomical knowledge, I engaged M. Bauza to calculate the area.

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