Our Sloop Was The Only Vessel In The Gulf; For The Roadstead Of Batabano Is Scarcely Visited Except By Smugglers, Or, As They Are Here Politely Called, The Traders (Los Tratantes).

The projected canal of Guines will render Batabano an important point of communication between the island of Cuba and the coast of Venezuela.

The port is within a bay bounded by Punta Gorda on the east, and by Punta de Salinas on the west: but this bay is itself only the upper or concave end of a great gulf measuring nearly fourteen leagues from south to north, and along an extent of fifty leagues (between the Laguna de Cortez and the Cayo de Piedras) inclosed by an incalculable number of flats and chains of rocks. One great island only, of which the superficies is more than four times the dimensions of that of Martinique, with mountains crowned with majestic pines, rises amidst this labyrinth. This is the island of Pinos, called by Columbus El Evangelista, and by some mariners of the sixteenth century, the Isla de Santa Maria. It is celebrated for its mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni) which is an important article of commerce. We sailed east-south-east, taking the passage of Don Cristoval, to reach the rocky island of Cayo de Piedras, and to clear the archipelago, which the Spanish pilots, in the early times of the conquest, designated by the names of Gardens and Bowers (Jardines y Jardinillos). The Queen's Gardens, properly so called, are nearer Cape Cruz, and are separated from the archipelago by an open sea thirty-five leagues broad.

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