Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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POLITICAL ESSAY ON THE ISLAND OF CUBA.
THE HAVANNAH.
HILLS OF GUANAVACOA, CONSIDERED IN THEIR GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS.
VALLEY OF LOS GUINES, BATABANO, AND PORT OF TRINIDAD.
THE KING AND QUEEN'S GARDENS.
Cuba owes its political importance to a variety of circumstances,
among which may be enumerated the extent of its surface, the fertility
of its soil, its naval establishments, and the nature of its
population, of which three-fifths are free men. All these advantages
are heightened by the admirable position of the Havannah. The northern
part of the Caribbean Sea, known by the name of the Gulf of Mexico,
forms a circular basin more than two hundred and fifty leagues in
diameter: it is a Mediterranean with two outlets. The island of Cuba,
or rather its coast between Cape St. Antonio and the town of Matanzas,
situated at the opening of the old channel, closes the Gulf of Mexico
on the south-east, leaving the ocean current known by the name of the
Gulf Stream, no other outlet on the south than a strait between Cape
St. Antonio and Cape Catoche; and no other on the north than the
channel of Bahama, between Bahia-Honda and the shoals of Florida. Near
the northern outlet, where the highways of so many nations may be said
to cross each other, lies the fine port of the Havannah, fortified at
once by nature and by art. The fleets which sail from this port and
which are partly constructed of the cedrela and the mahogany of the
island of Cuba, might, at the entrance of the Mexican Mediterranean,
menace the opposite coast, as the fleets that sail from Cadiz command
the Atlantic near the Pillars of Hercules.
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