Copper. It is believed that the natives mined copper long before Columbus discovered the Island, for copper ornaments have been found, not only in Cuba, but in Florida, long antedating 1492. Whatever may have been true of prehistoric periods, it is known that the mines at Cobre in the province of Santiago de Cuba were opened as early as 1524 and became the greatest copper-producing mines of the world. As high as fifty tons of ore a day have been mined from them. Some of these mines were sunk to the distance of nine hundred to twelve hundred feet. Before the development of the great copper deposits in the United States, this country received the output of the Cuban mines, which were worked by English capital. From 1828 to 1840 between two million and three million dollars’ worth of copper was annually shipped to this country, besides shipments to other countries. Owing to the fact that below three hundred feet these mines were beneath the level of the sea, the pumping problem was difficult of solution and expensive, and at last, in 1867, this hindrance, combined with the development of copper deposits in the United States, which cut prices materially, stopped work. The shafts filled with water and have remained so. The only work that has been done was an attempt by a Cuban company to work the copper found in solution in the water. It is believed that there are still rich and valuable deposits of copper in this section and that the time will come when the red glory of Cobre will again be restored to its ancient prestige.

Lead. This metal, reported to exist in several localities, has had no development save in Santiago de Cuba, where two or three mines have been opened. One of them shows a twenty-inch vein, forty-six per cent. copper, with some silver and zinc and a trace of gold. The mines so far have been opened by American “boomers” for the purpose of bringing the properties into notice.

Coal. A serious deficiency in Cuban products is mineral fuel; and although coal is said to exist and, again, said not to exist on the Island, Mr. Frederick W. Ramsden, late British Consul at Santiago, made the following report in 1895:

DATA of any kind on the farming interests of Cuba are difficult to collect, and those obtained are, as a rule, meagre, indefinite, and unsatisfactory. Statements vary as to the acreage under cultivation, estimates vary from 2,000,000 to 9,000,000 of acres. One writer says there are 100,000 farms, plantations, and cattle ranches in the Island, valued at $20,000,000; and Cabrera, in 1862, gives these figures: 18 cocoa plantations, 35 cotton plantations, 782 coffee plantations, 1523 sugar plantations, 1731 bee farms, 2712 stock farms, 6175 cattle ranches, 11,541 tobacco plantations, 11,738 truck farms, and 22,748 produce farms, a total of 59,001. Spanish official figures show a total of 37,702 farms, cattle ranches, sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations. What these properties may be worth or valued at now cannot be stated; but before the war their value might be fairly estimated at from $275,000,000 to $300,000,000.

While all parts of the Island are not adapted to such agricultural development as is found in higher latitudes, nearly all the products of northern soil may be grown in Cuba. Our common corn is very generally raised, on the uplands especially, and two crops of it will grow yearly. It is smaller than the corn of the north, but is said to be more nutritious. It is fed to stock in the ear and as fodder. Wheat growing has never been attempted to any extent, and while the lowlands are impossible for it, in the mountain regions, according to theory, it might be accomplished successfully. However, all the chances are against Cuba’s entering the wheat market against Minnesota and the Dakotas. Oats and barley are not in the list of Cuban products. A great deal of rice is raised in the lowlands along the coast; but the Cubans are great rice eaters and none is exported. A careful handling of the Cuban rice crop would bring it into the markets of the United States.

Beans are an article of import into Cuba, and the people consume great quantities of them, yet every variety of bean grows there rankly, and that they are not grown not only to meet the home demands but for export as well, is simply because of a lack of industry in their cultivation. Asparagus may be grown and greatly improved, as that now produced is small and inferior. Beets, as far as produced, show that by proper cultivation they might become a leading product. Cabbage, too, is so neglected that it is imported to meet the demand that Cuba easily could supply. Watercress of good quality grows along most of the streams. Spinach is found in the home market-gardens, but none is raised beyond that. The sago palm, furnishing sago flour, is neglected though it grows in profusion. Radishes grow all the year. Two crops a year of fine peanuts might be produced, but not enough for export are raised. So far the Cuban onion, though it flourishes with very little cultivation, is not in competition with the Bermuda onion, so popular in American markets. Lettuce is perennial and of the best quality. The cucumber is another vegetable growing profusely but never exported. Yuca is a root much used in place of potatoes. It is rendered palatable by pressure or by cooking. The sweet variety is used raw as a table vegetable. Bitter cassabe flour, made from yuca, when parched in pellets, is known as tapioca, and is a popular edible in various forms of soups, puddings, etc., in northern countries. Celery, which is found in the local gardens, is inferior by reason of neglect. Millet is raised for local fowl food.

The indigo plant grows easily, but it has never been cultivated profitably. The future may bring to its producers more knowledge and better methods than the past has known.

Grasses grow rankly almost anywhere in the Island. In the province of Pinar del Rio one variety grows to the height of six feet; another is a bunch grass similar to our species. Of these two grasses stock is very fond, but a third variety has such sharp edges that stock cannot eat it. Little of this grass is used as hay, and the hay crop has not been of especial significance in Cuban agricultural products, but it might well be, if it were given proper cultivation and care.

The fibre plants of Cuba are numerous, and many of them are of the best quality; moreover, they grow upon soil not very useful for any other purpose. The best known of them are the henequin, lanseveria, and lengua de vaca. The first produces from twenty-five to thirty leaves a year for twelve years, each leaf from five to nine feet long, weighing from four to seven pounds.

In 1891 it was estimated that there were 531,416 horses in Cuba and 43,309 mules, yet a report dated as late as October, 1898, is to the effect that there are practically no horses in the Island. The same authority states that there is a great demand for cheap horses, and that now, since the prohibitive duty of fifty dollars a head is gone with other Spanish customs, the American “plug horse” would bring a quick sale all over the Island. The Cuban horse, of Andalusian ancestry, is a fair average animal for a low, hot country, but great improvement could be made in the stock by careful selection and breeding. At present he is a substantial, small horse of the cob style, is very easy under the saddle, and does well in harness. Stallions and mares are needed, and the surplus horse-flesh of the United States, increased by the introduction of electricity as a street-car motor, might easily find profitable use in this new country. The Cuban horse will hardly achieve the proud position of the Arabian or Kentuckian, but he may be as useful in his humbler fashion.

Sheep of good quality are among the impossibles to Cuba, for the climate has the peculiar effect of straightening their wool into harsh hair, like that of the goat.

Although Cuba has not only every facility for hog raising, including the palm, the seed of which is one of the finest hog-fatteners on earth, and although the people of the Island use more lard, bacon, hams, and pickled pork than any other meat product, nevertheless, instead of raising their own, they have received from the United States over $35,000,000 worth of pork in the ten years from 1887 to 1896. Some hogs are raised, but it is because of the energy of the hog, not of the Cuban. Wild hogs (jabali) prevail in many parts of the Island, and the boar hunts are sometimes exciting sport. The wild hog is merely the domestic hog run away and grown up in the woods.

Poultry of all kinds similar to that found in the United States was common all over the Island before the war. No attention is paid to its cultivation, except in the matter of game-cocks. Cock-fighting is so wide-spread and popular that the game-cock may be well called the national bird of Cuba.

Humboldt has said that the bee is not native to Cuba and came from Europe. However that may be, the busy little worker has found there a land of flowers, and his products of honey and wax are among the reliable exports of the Island. The value of honey shipped to the United States in 1893 was $39,712, and of beeswax, $45,504. The best honey comes from the uplands and the poorest from the swamp flowers.

OF the approximately twenty-eight millions of acres in Cuba and its islands, it is estimated that from thirteen to fifteen millions of acres are covered with timber, the vastly larger portion of it yet untouched by the axe. Of this, mahogany and cedar lead in value as lumber, though, for the variety of its uses, the palm, of which there are thirty species in the Island, easily takes precedence. A notable peculiarity of tree growth in Cuba is the presence of the pine, a distinctively northern product, yet here it is found growing side by side with the mahogany; and on the Isle of Pines it is so plentiful as to have given the name to the island. The province of Pinar del Rio (River of Pines) also receives its name from the pines which are so numerous there.

Of the other palms, the guano and yarey are valuable for their fibre, from which very fine hats and baskets are made for export; the guano de cana produces the vanilla-bean parasite and makes the best roofing material; the cocoanut palm is another variety, probably better known abroad by its product than any other; the guano de costa is noted for its elastic and waterproof wood.

The United States is most familiar with Cuban cedar in the form of cigar boxes. The shipments of cedar since 1885 have exceeded 700,000 logs containing over 70,000,000 feet, valued at $4,900,000, allowing $70 per 1000 as the average price in the market. Proportionately, cedar has suffered equally with mahogany by the war, as will be seen by the following table of shipments:

The ceiba, cottonwood or silk-cotton tree, is a tree of beauty and size, and of very general growth. It bears a pod filled with beautiful white silk-cotton, used for stuffing pillows, but too short of fibre for spinning. One of the notable trees of the world that travellers tell us of is the great ceiba tree in the Plaza at Nassau, Jamaica. The rubber tree has been introduced, in addition to some native gum-producing trees, undeveloped; and though enough was done towards its cultivation to prove that it could be grown successfully, the usual fate of new industries in competition with the Spanish style of taxation proved too much for it, and the business was ruined. The sand box receives its name from the peculiar rattling of its pods as of dropping sand. The trumpet tree is so called because of its hollow trunk which produces a trumpet-like sound. The banyan tree is noticeable along the coasts, where it generally prevails. One specimen, near Marianao just outside of Havana, has hung its branches down and taken root until it covers four or five acres, and is a great curiosity to the traveller.

Rosewood is plentiful in some parts of the Island, also logwood and other dyewoods, but little or nothing has been done to develop business in this direction, and they are holding their riches for the new discoverers from the north who shall explore the Island in good time.

Next in value to the lumber trees in Cuba are fruit-bearing trees of an almost innumerable variety, some of which are universally known in the United States. With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the highest development of all kinds of tropical fruits little has as yet been done, and what has been accomplished has not been by the natives. It is said of too many of them that when they are too lazy to pick the fruit nature so lavishly bestows upon them, they simply lie down under the trees and wait for it to fall. Though all kinds of southern fruits grow luxuriantly, the most valuable commercially thus far developed are bananas, cocoanuts, lemons, oranges, limes, and pineapples, and the north-eastern uplands seem to be, by climate and soil, especially adapted to the highest development. While some degree of progress has been made in the raising of bananas and cocoanuts, very little has been done with the other fruits, and the possibilities are wonderful.

The lemon tree, with its white flower and its varicoloured fruit, is one of the prettiest trees to be found in Cuba. Its leaves are almost as fragrant as are those of our lemon verbena. The yield is continuous. Generally the fruit is of large size, though the finest lemons are rather small, juicy, thin-skinned, and of full flavour. The larger variety is thick-skinned. Little or no attention is paid to proper cultivation and no lemons are exported. The same is true of the lime, the fruit of which is very largely used, for its therapeutic qualities, in beverages of various kinds.

The pomegranate is a bush fruit of handsome appearance not unknown in American hothouses and in southern localities, and though not at its best in Cuba, it is a great favourite, taking the place there that apples take in this country. The well-known citron, with many other Cuban fruits, is waiting for the care and attention that will make it a valuable commercial product. The tamarind grows in a pod-shape on a lofty shade tree, and when ripe is of the consistency of marmalade, and quite as toothsome. It is a sweet acid, and is used in making a favourite drink in tropic countries. The tamarind can be exported. The wild or bitter orange is used for hedges, and the thick skin of the fruit makes a sweetmeat of some commercial value. The aguacate, better known to us as the alligator pear, is a vegetable fruit and is used as a salad.

Humboldt mentions the fact that in the early times the Spaniards made wine of Cuban wild grapes, but grape culture is not of any value, though some fine varieties are grown. The water-and muskmelon and cantaloup grow easily, but they need more care than they have to be equal in flavour and popularity to those raised elsewhere.

The strawberry grows everywhere and produces two crops yearly, but the natives are too lazy to give it any attention. Strawberry culture in Cuba could be successfully carried on to supply the early markets of the United States. The zapote is a fruit of brown colour similar to our apple, and is not edible until it has rotted.

Last but not least is that delightful fruit, the pineapple. There are several varieties growing wild in Cuba and cultivation greatly improves them. The fruit grows out of a bunch of great leaves, eighteen inches or two feet from the ground. Each plant bears one apple weighing from one to four or five pounds. The fruit stem matures in about eighteen months from planting, bears one apple, and will bear an apple annually after that for three or four years. The plant is raised from slips. Pineapples are chiefly grown in the Isle of Pines and Western Cuba. This latter section, however, takes the lead in all fruit-growing. Thirty-two thousand pineapples were shipped from Banes in 1894. As yet the Cuban pineapple is a weak competitor of the Bahama fruit.

THOUGH it has as poor a system of railway and waggon-road transportation as could be imagined, Cuba is by nature fitted for the very best system possible. With a length of over seven hundred miles a main stem of railway from end to end of the Island would have control of every shipping point on both coasts, by the extension of short branches to such of the harbours on either side (at the farthest not more than fifty miles away) as seem capable of development. With such a system of railways, the tributary waggon roads could be built at comparatively small cost, because at no point would long stretches of highway be necessary.

But no such transportation facilities have been developed in Cuba; and, although there are about one thousand miles of railway and some few waggon roads, they are totally inadequate, even if they were of the highest type. As a rule, they are wretchedly poor, and the Island has suffered more, industrially, from bad roads than from any other cause except Spanish domination. Under the new régime, the necessity of a railway from one end of the Island to the other is so urgent, and its value as an investment is so apparent, that capital stands waiting to complete it at the very earliest opportunity.

There are, in round numbers, one thousand miles of steam railroad in Cuba, almost all of which is standard gauge, and the most of which is owned and controlled by English and Spanish companies. There is no great central system; the lines are independent, short roads. The leading combination is the United Railways Company, with five lines out of Havana: (1) to Matanzas, fifty-five miles; (2) to Batabano, thirty-six miles; (3) to Guanajay, thirty-five miles; (4) to La Union, seventy-seven miles; (5) to Jovellanos, eighty-eight miles; a parallel line runs between Matanzas and Empalme, joining the line again at Güines. These lines are in the main well built and ballasted, having steel rails, stone culverts, and iron bridges, and they pass through rich sections of agricultural and grazing country.

The second in importance is the Western Railway, running to Pinar del Rio, 106 miles, and traversing the famous Vuelta Abajo tobacco district. The line next in importance is the Cardenas and Jucaro Railway, extending from Cardenas to Santa Clara, 110 miles, with branches to Montalvo from Jovellanos, twenty-seven miles; to Aguada from Cardenas, fifty-nine miles, to Itabo, thirteen miles; from Artemisal to Macagua, seventeen miles. These lines traverse a rich agricultural country, chiefly devoted to sugar-growing.

The Ponupo Mining and Transportation Company, which is practically the Juragua Mining Company, an organisation which has done more towards the industrial development of Eastern Cuba than all other agencies combined, proposes to assume all the responsibility and expense of building, equipping, and running a first-class road from Santiago to Manzanillo, a distance of 110 miles. Leaving Enramadas, or San Luis, the road will pass through the towns and villages of Paso del Corralillo, Palma Soriano, Arroyo Blanco, Fray Juan, Baire Abajo, Las Piedras, Jiguani, Santa Rita, San Antonio, Bayamo, Jucaibana, Barrancas, Jara, Palmas Altas, and thence to Manzanillo. At each of these points a substantial station will be built; all bridges will be of iron, and the entire construction will be on the best lines of modern railway building.

Generally speaking, these roads are fairly well built, but are in poor condition, owing to neglect growing out of the war. They are largely equipped with American locomotives and cars, usually of lighter construction than those in the United States. Indeed the passenger cars are built for summer travel, with wicker seats and plenty of ventilation. While some heavy steel rail is used, sixty to eighty pounds, there is much lighter rail put down, with the result that riding on some of the Cuban roads is nearly as painful to the passenger as is riding on the dirt roads. Fair time is made on the best roads, and the service is much better than might be expected. The stations of the railways in the cities are often creditable in architecture and conveniences, but those in the small towns and the country need to be improved.