Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 64 of 170 - First - Home
Spanish Engineers, Who Have Been
Waging War For Thirty Years Past With The Inhabitants Of The Suburbs
(Arrabales), Have Convinced The Government That The Houses Are Too
Near The Fortifications, And That The Enemy Might Establish Himself
There With Impunity.
But the government has not courage to demolish
the suburbs and disperse a population of 28,000 inhabitants collected
in La Salud only.
Since the great fire of 1802 that quarter has been
considerably enlarged; barracks were at first constructed, but by
degrees they have been converted into private houses. The defence of
the Havannah on the west is of the highest importance: so long as the
besieged are masters of the town, properly so called, and of the
southern part of the bay, the Morro and La Cabana, they are
impregnable because they can be provisioned by the Havannah, and the
losses of the garrison repaired. I have heard well-informed French
engineers observe that an enemy should begin his operations by taking
the town, in order to bombard the Cabana, a strong fortress, but where
the garrison, shut up in the casemates, could not long resist the
insalubrity of the climate. The English took the Morro without being
masters of the Havannah; but the Cabana and the Fort Number 4 which
commands the Morro did not then exist. The most important works on the
south and west are the Castillos de Atares y del Principe, and the
battery of Santa Clara.
We employed the months of December, January and February in making
observations in the vicinity of the Havannah and the fine plains of
Guines. 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. He found, in June, 1835, the surface of the island of Cuba,
without the Isla dos Pinos, to be 3520 square sea leagues, and with
that island 3615. From this calculation, which has been twice
repeated, it results that the island of Cuba is one-seventh less than
has hitherto been believed; that it is 32/100 larger than Hayti, or
San Domingo; that its surface equals that of Portugal, and within
one-eighth that of England without Wales; and that if the whole
archipelago of the Antilles presents as great an area as the half of
Spain, the island of Cuba alone almost equals in surface the other
Great and Small Antilles. Its greatest length, from Cape San Antonio
to Point Maysi (in a direction from west-south-west to east-north-east
and from west-north-west to east-south-east) is 227 leagues; and its
greatest breadth (in the direction north and south), from Point
Maternillo to the mouth of the Magdalena, near Peak Tarquino, is 37
leagues. The mean breadth of the island, on four-fifths of its length,
between the Havannah and Puerto Principe, is 15 leagues. In the best
cultivated part, between the Havannah and Batabano, the isthmus is
only eight sea leagues. Among the great islands of the globe, that of
Java most resembles the island of Cuba in its form and area (4170
square leagues). Cuba has a circumference of coast of 520 leagues, of
which 280 belong to the south shore, between Cape San Antonio and
Punta Maysi.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 64 of 170
Words from 64843 to 65867
of 174507