aken the trouble to think of it at all. He knew only that
it was a fair land to look upon and promised to be a pleasant land in
which to dwell; and his successors in the quest hoped to find its river
beds and its mountain rocks rich with the gold which they coveted. That
was all. It remained for the ampler knowledge and the more patient and
painstaking research of later years to analyze the structure of the
island, to discern the causes and the processes through which it had
been developed into its present beautiful and opulent condition, and to
learn that on the surface and just below the surface of its almost
infinitely variegated face there lay the potency and the promise of
wealth beyond the utmost limits of the dreams of those conquistadors of
ancient Spain who were oestrus-driven by the _auri sacra fames_.

Let us consider, then, the geological history of Cuba, so far as it has
been ascertained; and the topography of the land as it has been revealed
through a far more comprehensive survey than that of the Great Admiral's
enraptured vision.

It is, of course, impossible to know the geological history of a country
until its paleontology has been thoroughly studied and investigated.
Where formations of different geological ages are lithologically so
similar as to be often indistinguishable, the only method of
differentiating them is by their fossils. Some paleontological work has
been done in Cuba, but the specimens collected were not accompanied by
the necessary data.

In the present imperfect state of our knowledge of the stratigraphy and
areal geology of the island, it would be hazardous to attempt to
indicate the times at which the various levels were developed, or to
designate the periods during which they remained above the level of the
sea. To do this would require a detailed knowledge of nearly all the
various phases of its geology.

The oldest rocks in Cuba, with the possible exception of the schistose
limestones of Trinidad, are composed of granites and serpentines. The
relative age of these rocks, to the central mass of limestones in the
province of Pinar del Rio, has not been determined, but we do know that
the oldest igneous rocks were themselves folded, faulted and subjected
to other processes of metamorphism, and that subsequent to the changes
to which they were subjected, the entire region was uplifted and deeply
eroded before the cretaceous sedimentation began. No data are available
for determini