ord excellent anchorage. The
area of the island proper is 41,655 square miles (a little larger than
the State of Ohio); and including the Isle of Pines and other small
points around its entire length, numbering in all some 1,200, there are
47,278 square miles altogether in Cuba and belonging to it. The island
is intersected by broken ranges of mountains, which gradually increase
in height from west to east, where they reach an elevation of nearly
8,000 feet. The central and western portions of the island are the most
fertile, while the principal mineral deposits are in the mountains of
the eastern end. In Matanzas and other central provinces, the
well-drained, gently sloping plains, diversified by low, forest-clad
hills, are especially adapted to sugar culture, and the country under
normal conditions presents the appearance of vast fields of cane. The
western portion of the island is also mountainous, but the elevations
are not great, and in the valleys and along the fertile slopes of this
district is produced the greater part of the tobacco for which the
island is famous.

FERTILITY OF SOIL AND ITS PRODUCTS.

The soil of the whole island seems well-nigh inexhaustible. Except in
tobacco culture, fertilizers are never used. In the sugar districts are
found old canefields that have produced annual crops for a hundred years
without perceptible impoverishment of the soil. Besides sugar and
tobacco, the island yields Indian corn, rice, manioc (the plant from
which tapioca is prepared), oranges, bananas, pineapples, mangoes,
guava, and all other tropical fruits, with many of those belonging to
the temperate zone. Raw sugar, molasses, and tobacco are the chief
products, and, with fruits, nuts, and unmanufactured woods, form the
bulk of exports, though coffee culture, formerly active, is now being
revived, and its fine quality indicates that it must in time become one
of the most important products of the island.

As a sugar country, Cuba takes first rank in the world. Mr. Gallon, the
English Consul, in his report to his government in 1897 upon this Cuban
crop, declared: "Of the other cane-sugar countries of the world, Java is
the only one which comes within 50 per cent. of the amount of sugar
produced annually in Cuba in normal times, and Java and the Hawaiian
Islands are the only ones which are so generally advanced in the process
of manufacture." Our own Consul, Hyatt, in his report of February, 1897,
expresses the beli