Charles M. Sheldon - "In His Steps"

Lord Bolingbroke - "Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope"

George MacDonald - "Malcolm"

Louisa May Alcott - "Little Women"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V3

A >> Alexander von Humboldt >> Equinoctial Regions of America V3




There are two fine public walks; one called the Alameda, between the
hospital of Santa Paula and the theatre, and the other between the
Castillo de la Punta and the Puerta de la Muralla, called the Paseo
extra muros; the latter is deliciously cool and is frequented by
carriages after sunset. It was begun by the Marquis de la Torre,
governor of the island, who gave the first impulse to the improvement
of the police and the municipal government. Don Luis de las Casas and
the Count de Santa Clara enlarged the plantations. Near the Campo de
Marte is the Botanical Garden which is well worthy to fix the
attention of the government; and another place fitted to excite at
once pity and indignation--the barracoon, in front of which the
wretched slaves are exposed for sale. A marble statue of Charles III
has been erected since my return to Europe, in the extra muros walk.
This spot was at first destined for a monument to Christopher Columbus
whose ashes, after the cession of the Spanish part of St. Domingo,
were brought to the island of Cuba.*

(* Columbus lies buried in the cathedral of the Havannah, close to the
wall near the high altar. On the tomb is the following inscription:

O restos y Imagen del grande Colon;
Mil siglos duran guardados en la Urna,
Y en remembranca de nuestra Nacion.

Oh relics and image of the great Colon (Columbus)
A thousand ages are encompassed in thy Urn,
And in the memory of our Nation.

His remains were first deposited at Valladolid and thence were removed
to Seville. In 1536 the bodies of Columbus and of his son Diego (El
Adelantado) were carried to St. Domingo and there interred in the
cathedral; but they were afterwards removed to the place where they
now repose.)

The same year the ashes of Fernando Cortez were transferred in Mexico
from one church to another: thus, at the close of the eighteenth
century, the remains of the two greatest men who promoted the conquest
of America were interred in new sepulchres.

The most majestic palm-tree of its tribe, the palma real, imparts a
peculiar character to the landscape in the vicinity of the Havannah;
it is the Oreodoxa regia of our description of American palm-trees.
Its tall trunk, slightly swelled towards the middle, grows to the
height of 60 or 80 feet; the upper part is glossy, of a delicate
green, newly formed by the closing and dilatation of the petioles,
contrasts with the rest, which is whitish and fendilated. It appears
like two columns, the one surmounting the other. The palma real of the
island of Cuba has feathery leaves rising perpendicularly towards the
sky, and curved only at the point. The form of this plant reminded us
of the vadgiai palm-tree which covers the rocks in the cataracts of
the Orinoco, balancing its long points over a mist of foam. Here, as
in every place where the population is concentrated, vegetation
diminishes. Those palm-trees round the Havannah and in the
amphitheatre of Regla on which I delighted to gaze are disappearing by
degrees. The marshy places which I saw covered with bamboos are
cultivated and drained. Civilization advances; and the soil, gradually
stripped of plants, scarcely offers any trace of its wild abundance.
From the Punta to San Lazaro, from Cabana to Regla and from Regla to
Atares the road is covered with houses, and those that surround the
bay are of light and elegant construction. The plan of these houses is
traced out by the owners, and they are ordered from the United States,
like pieces of furniture. When the yellow fever rages at the Havannah
the proprietors withdraw to those country houses and to the hills
between Regla and Guanavacoa to breathe a purer air. In the coolness
of night, when the boats cross the bay, and owing to the
phosphorescence of the water, leave behind them long tracks of light,
these romantic scenes afford charming and peaceful retreats for those
who wish to withdraw from the tumult of a populous city. To judge of
the progress of cultivation travellers should visit the small plots of
maize and other alimentary plants, the rows of pine-apples (ananas) in
the fields of Cruz de Piedra and the bishop's garden (Quinta del
Obispo) which of late is become a delicious spot.

The town of the Havannah, properly so called, surrounded by walls, is
only 900 toises long and 500 broad; yet more than 44,000 inhabitants,
of whom 26,000 are negroes and mulattoes, are crowded together in this
narrow space. A population nearly as considerable occupies the two
great suburbs of Jesu-Maria and La Salud.* (* Salud signifies Health.)
The latter place does not verify the name it bears; the temperature of
the air is indeed lower than in the city but the streets might have
been larger and better planned. 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.

The island of Cuba, over more than four-fifths of its surface, is
composed of low lands. The soil is covered with secondary and tertiary
formations, formed by some rocks of gneiss-granite, syenite and
euphotide. The knowledge obtained hitherto of the geologic
configuration of the country, is as unsatisfactory as what is known
respecting the relative age and nature of the soil. It is only
ascertained that the highest group of mountains lies at the
south-eastern extremity of the island, between Cape Cruz, Punta Maysi,
and Holguin. This mountainous part, called the Sierra or Las Montanas
del Cobre (the Copper Mountains), situated north-west of the town of
Santiago de Cuba, appears to be about 1200 toises in height. If this
calculation be correct, the summits of the Sierra would command those
of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, and the peaks of La Selle and La
Hotte in the island of San Domingo. The Sierra of Tarquino, fifty
miles west of the town of Cuba, belongs to the same group as the
Copper Mountains. The island is crossed from east-south-east to
west-north-west by a chain of hills, which approach the southern coast
between the meridians of La Ciudad de Puerto Principe and the Villa
Clara; while, further to the westward towards Alvarez and Matanzas,
they stretch in the direction of the northern coast. Proceeding from
the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo to the Villa de la Trinidad, I saw on
the north-west, the Lomas de San Juan, which form needles or horns
more than 300 toises high, with their declivities sloping regularly to
the south. This calcareous group presents a majestic aspect, as seen
from the anchorage near the Cayo de Piedras. Xagua and Batabano are
low coasts; and I believe that, in general, west of the meridian of
Matanzas, there is no hill more than 200 toises high, with the
exception of the Pan de Guaixabon. The land in the interior of the
island is gently undulated, as in England; and it rises only from 45
to 50 toises above the level of the sea. The objects most visible at a
distance, and most celebrated by navigators, are the Pan de Matanzas,
a truncated cone which has the form of a small monument; the Arcos de
Canasi, which appear between Puerto Escondido and Jaruco, like small
segments of a circle; the Mesa de Mariel, the Tetas de Managua, and
the Pan de Guaixabon. This gradual slope of the limestone formations
of the island of Cuba towards the north and west indicates the
submarine connection of those rocks with the equally low lands of the
Bahama Islands, Florida and Yucatan.

Intellectual cultivation and improvement were so long restricted to
the Havannah and the neighbouring districts, that we cannot be
surprised at the ignorance prevailing among the inhabitants respecting
the geologic formation of the Copper Mountains. Don Francisco Ramirez,
a traveller versed in chemical and mineralogical science, informed me
that the western part of the island is granitic, and that he there
observed gneiss and primitive slate. Probably the alluvial deposits of
auriferous sand which were explored with much ardour* at the beginning
of the conquest, to the great misfortune of the natives came from
those granitic formations (* At Cubanacan, that is, in the interior of
the island, near Jagua and Trinidad, where the auriferous sands have
been washed by the waters as far as the limestone soil. Martyr
d'Anghiera, the most intelligent writer on the Conquest, says: "Cuba
is richer in gold than Hispaniola (San Domingo); and at the moment I
am writing, 180,000 castillanos of ore have been collected at Cuba."
Herrera estimates the tax called King's-fifth (quinto del Rey), in the
island of Cuba, at 6000 pesos, which indicates an annual product of
2000 marks of gold, at 22 carats; and consequently purer than the gold
of Sibao in San Domingo. In 1804 the mines of Mexico altogether
produced 7000 marks of gold; and those of Peru 3400. It is difficult,
in these calculations, to distinguish between the gold sent to Spain
by the first Conquistadores, that obtained by washings, and that which
had been accumulated for ages in the hands of the natives, who were
pillaged at will. Supposing that in the two islands of Cuba and San
Domingo (in Cubanacan and Cibao) the product of the washings was 3000
marks of gold, we find a quantity three times less than the gold
furnished annually (1790 to 1805) by the small province of Choco. In
this supposition of ancient wealth there is nothing improbable; and if
we are surprised at the scanty produce of the gold-washings attempted
in our days at Cuba and San Domingo, which were heretofore so
prolific, it must be recollected that at Brazil also the product of
the gold-washings has fallen, from 1760 to 1820, from 6600 gold
kilogrammes to less than 595. Lumps of gold weighing several pounds,
found in our days in Florida and North and South Carolina, prove the
primitive wealth of the whole basin of the Antilles from the island of
Cuba to the Appalachian chain. It is also natural that the product of
the gold-washings should diminish with greater rapidity than that of
the subterraneous working of the veins. The metals not being renewed
in the clefts of the veins (by sublimation) now accumulate in alluvial
soil by the course of the rivers where the table-lands are higher than
the level of the surrounding running waters. But in rocks with
metalliferous veins the miner does not at once know all he has to
work. He may chance to lengthen the labours, to go deep, and to cross
other accompanying veins. Alluvial soils are generally of small depth
where they are auriferous; they most frequently rest upon sterile
rocks. Their superficial position and uniformity of composition help
to the knowledge of their limits, and wherever workmen can be
collected, and where the waters for the washings abound, accelerate
the total working of the auriferous clay. These considerations,
suggested by the history of the Conquest, and by the science of
mining, may throw some light on the problem of the metallic wealth of
Hayti. In that island, as well as at Brazil, it would be more
profitable to attempt subterraneous workings (on veins) in primitive
and intermediary soils than to renew the gold-washings which were
abandoned in the ages of barbarism, rapine and carnage.); traces of
that sand are still found in the rivers Holguin and Escambray, known
in general in the vicinity of Villa-Clara, Santo Espiritu, Puerto del
Principe de Bayamo and the Bahia de Nipe. The abundance of copper
mentioned by the Conquistadores of the sixteenth century, at a period
when the Spaniards were more attentive than they have been in latter
times to the natural productions of America, may possibly be
attributed to the formations of amphibolic slate, transition
clay-slate mixed with diorite, and to euphotides analogous to those I
found in the mountains of Guanabacoa.

The central and western parts of the island contain two formations of
compact limestone; one of clayey sandstone and another of gypsum. The
former has, in its aspect and composition, some resemblance to the
Jura formation. It is white, or of a clear ochre-yellow, with a dull
fracture, sometimes conchoidal, sometimes smooth; divided into thin
layers, furnishing some balls of pyromac silex, often hollow (at Rio
Canimar two leagues east of Matanzas), and petrifications of pecten,
cardites, terebratules and madrepores.* (* I saw neither gryphites nor
ammonites of Jura limestone nor the nummulites and cerites of coarse
limestone.) I found no oolitic beds, but porous beds almost bulbous,
between the Potrero del Conde de Mopox, and the port of Batabano,
resembling the spongy beds of Jura limestone in Franconia, near
Dondorf, Pegnitz, and Tumbach. Yellowish cavernous strata, with
cavities from three to four inches in diameter, alternate with strata
altogether compact,* and poorer in petrifications. (* The western part
of the island has no deep ravines; and we recognize this alternation
in travelling from the Havannah to Batabano, the deepest beds
(inclined from 30 to 40 degrees north-east) appear as we advance.) The
chain of hills that borders the plain of Guines on the north and is
linked with the Lomas de Camua, and the Tetas de Managua, belongs to
the latter variety, which is reddish white, and almost of lithographic
nature, like the Jura limestone of Pappenheim. The compact and
cavernous beds contain nests of brown ochreous iron; possibly the red
earth (tierra colorada) so much sought for by the coffee planters
(haciendados) owes its origin to the decomposition of some superficial
beds of oxidated iron, mixed with silex and clay, or to a reddish
sandstone* (* Sandstone and ferruginous sand; iron-sand?) superposed
on limestone. The whole of this formation, which I shall designate by
the name of the limestone of Guines, to distinguish it from another
much more recent, forms, near Trinidad, in the Lomas of St. Juan,
steep declivities, resembling the mountains of limestone of Caripe, in
the vicinity of Cumana. They also contain great caverns, near Matanzas
and Jaruco, where I have not heard that any fossil bones have been
found. The frequency of caverns in which the pluvial waters
accumulate, and where small rivers disappear, sometimes causes a
sinking of the earth. I am of opinion that the gypsum of the island of
Cuba belongs not to tertiary but to secondary soil; it is worked in
several places on the east of Matanzas, at San Antonio de los Banos,
where it contains sulphur, and at the Cayos, opposite San Juan de los
Remedios. We must not confound with this limestone of Guines,
sometimes porous, sometimes compact, another formation so recent that
it seems to augment in our days. I allude to the calcareous
agglomerates, which I saw in the islands of Cayos that border the
coast between the Batabano and the bay of Xagua, principally south of
the Cienega de Zapata, Cayo Buenito, Cayo Flamenco and Cayo de
Piedras. The soundings prove that they are rocks rising abruptly from
a bottom of between twenty and thirty fathoms. Some are at the water's
edge, others one-fourth or one-fifth of a toise above the surface of
the sea. Angular fragments of madrepores, and cellularia from two to
three cubic inches, are found cemented by grains of quartzose sand.
The inequalities of the rocks are covered by mould, in which, by help
of a microscope, we only distinguish the detritus of shells and
corals. This tertiary formation no doubt belongs to that of the coast
of Cumana, Carthagena, and the Great Land of Guadaloupe, noticed in my
geognostic table of South America.* (* M. Moreau de Jonnes has well
distinguished, in his Histoire physique des Antilles Francoises,
between the Roche a ravets of Martinique and Hayti, which is porous,
filled with terebratulites, and other vestiges of sea-shells, somewhat
analogous to the limestone of Guines and the calcareous pelagic
sediment called at Guadaloupe Platine, or Maconne bon Dieu. In the
cayos of the island of Cuba, or Jardinillos del Rey y del Reyna, the
whole coral rock lying above the surface of the water appeared to me
to be fragmentary, that is, composed of broken blocks. It is, however,
probable, that in the depth it reposes on masses of polypi still
living.) MM. Chamiso and Guiamard have recently thrown great light on
the formation of the coral islands in the Pacific. At the foot of the
Castillo de in Punta, near the Havannah, on shelves of cavernous
rocks,* covered with verdant sea-weeds and living polypi, we find
enormous masses of madrepores and other lithophyte corals set in the
texture of those shelves. (* The surface of these shelves, blackened
and excavated by the waters, presents ramifications like the
cauliflower, as they are observed on the currents of lava. Is the
change of colour produced by the waters owing to the manganese which
we recognize by some dendrites? The sea, entering into the clefts of
the rocks, and in a cavern at the foot of the Castillo del Morro,
compresses the air and makes it issue with a tremendous noise. This
noise explains the phenomena of the baxos roncadores (snoring
bocabeoos), so well known to navigators who cross from Jamaica to the
mouth of Rio San Juan of Nicaragua, or to the island of San Andres.)
We are at first tempted to admit that the whole of this limestone
rock, which constitutes the principal portion of the island of Cuba,
may be traced to an uninterrupted operation of nature--to the action
of productive organic forces--an action which continues in our days in
the bosom of the ocean; but this apparent novelty of limestone
formations soon vanishes when we quit the shore, and recollect the
series of coral rocks which contain the formations of different ages,
the muschelkalk, the Jura limestone and coarse limestone. The same
coral rocks as those of the Castillo and La Punta are found in the
lofty inland mountains, accompanied with petrifications of bivalve
shells, very different from those now seen on the coasts of the
Antilles. Without positively assigning a determinate place in the
table of formations to the limestone of Guines, which is that of the
Castillo and La Punta, I have no doubt of the relative antiquity of
that rock with respect to the calcareous agglomerate of the Cayos,
situated south of Batabano, and east of the island of Pinos. The globe
has undergone great revolutions between the periods when these two
soils were formed; the one containing the great caverns of Matanzas,
the other daily augmenting by the agglutination of fragments of coral
and quartzose sand. On the south of the island of Cuba, the latter
soil seems to repose sometimes on the Jura limestone of Guines, as in
the Jardinillos, and sometimes (towards Cape Cruz) immediately over
primitive rocks. In the lesser Antilles the corals are covered with
volcanic productions. Several of the Cayos of the island of Cuba
contain fresh water; and I found this water very good in the middle of
the Cayo de Piedras. When we reflect on the extreme smallness of these
islands we can scarcely believe that the fresh-water wells are filled
with rain-water not evaporated. Do they prove a submarine
communication between the limestone of the coast with the limestone
serving as the basis of lithophyte polypi, and is the fresh water of
Cuba raised up by hydrostatic pressure across the coral rocks of
Cayos, as it is in the bay of Xagua, where, in the middle of the sea,
it forms springs frequented by the lamantins?