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قراءة كتاب The History of Cuba, vol. 5

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The History of Cuba, vol. 5

The History of Cuba, vol. 5

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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THE
HISTORY OF CUBA

BY
WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON
A.M., L.H.D.
Author of “A Century of Expansion,” “Four Centuries of
the Panama Canal,” “America’s Foreign Relations”
Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign
Relations in New York University


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME FIVE


colophon



NEW YORK
B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, Inc.
156 Fifth Avenue
1920

 

Copyright, 1920,
By CENTURY HISTORY CO.
——
All rights reserved

 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL
LONDON, ENGLAND.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.

 

REPUBLICA DE CUBA
——
SECRETARIA DE AGRICULTURA, COMERCIO Y TRABAJO
————

Habana, Cuba,
July 11, 1919.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

The information in this volume pertaining to Cuba and her natural resources, climate, soil, mines, forests, fisheries, agricultural products, lands, rivers, harbors, mountains, mineral zones, quarries, foreign and domestic commerce, business opportunities, etc., has been compiled under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, and has been verified by the Bureau of Information.

It is intended to acquaint the world with the truth and actual facts in regard to Cuba, and for the guidance of those who may be interested.

Respectfully,

signature

SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE
COMMERCE & LABOR.   

PREFACE

NATURE designed Cuba for greatness. That salient fact is written large and clear upon every page of the island’s history. He must lack vision who can not discern it even in the annals of political, military and social development of the Cuban nation. Although one of the earliest lands in the Western Hemisphere to be discovered and colonized, it was actually the last of all to be erected into political independence and thus to enter into an opportunity for improving fully the incomparable opulence of its natural endowment. No land ever shows of what it is capable until it is permitted to do so for its own sake and in its own name.

During the long and tedious centuries of Spanish domination, therefore, the resources of Cuba remained largely latent. That is to be said in full view of the notorious fact that the island was openly declared to be “the milch cow of Spain.” In those two facts appears perhaps the most impressive of all possible testimonies to the surpassing richness of the island. If while it was a mere colony, only partially developed and indeed with its resources only in part explored and imperfectly understood, and with the supreme incentive to enterprise denied it—if in these unfavorable circumstances, we say, it could be a source of so great revenue to Spain and in spite of thus being plundered and drained could still accumulate so considerable a competence for its own people, what must its material opulence prove to be under its own free rule, with every advantage and every encouragement for its full development according to the knowledge of Twentieth Century science?

We need not be fanciful or visionary if we believe that some important purpose was subserved in such withholding of Cuba from complete development until so late a date. Her neighbors went on ahead, developing their resources, and passing through all the political and social vicissitudes of which colonial and national experience is capable, inevitably with a great proportion of sheer loss through ill-directed experimentation. Cuba on the contrary remained held in abeyance until in the fulness of time she could profit from the experience and example of others and thus gain her development at a minimum of effort and expense and with a maximum of net profit.

The beneficent design of nature, to which we have alluded, is to be seen, moreover, in the inherent conditions of insular existence. No other great island of the world is so fortunate in its geographical placing, either strategically or climatically, nor is any other comparable with it in topography and material arrangement and composition. It lies midway between the two great continents of the Western Hemisphere, within easy reach of both across landlocked seas, where it receives the commerce of both and serves as a mart of exchange between them. Similarly it lies between the Temperate Zone and the Torrid Zone, so as to receive at its very doors the products of each and of both, the products, that is to say, of all the world. Nor is it less significant that it lies directly upon the line of commerce and travel not only between North and South but equally between East and West, on the line of passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific and between the lands which border the one and those which occupy the shores of the other. Such strategic position—the strategy of commerce—is unique and incommensurable in value.

Equally beneficent is the climatic situation of Cuba. Mathematically lying just within the tropical zone, it in fact enjoys a temperance of climate surpassing that of the temperate zone itself. It has all the geniality of the regions which lie to the south of it, so that it can produce all the fruits of the sultry tropics in profusion throughout a year-round season of growth; yet it escapes the oppressive and enervating heat which makes life in those lands burdensome to the visitor and indolent to the native. It has the comfort and the tonic properties of northern climes, yet without the trying and sometimes disastrous fluctuations and extremes which too often there prevail. As a result, Cuba can produce, if not always in fullest perfection yet with a gratifying degree of success, practically all the vegetable life of the world, from that which thrives close to the Arctic Circle to that which luxuriates upon the Equator.

In coastal contour, and thus in profusion of fine harbors, Cuba enjoys preeminence among the countries of the world. In varied contour of mountain, valley and plain, in endowment with springs and rivers, she is conspicuously fortunate. The often quoted tribute which her first discoverer paid spontaneously to her magic beauty has been repeated and confirmed uncounted times, with a deeper significance as it has been found that the beauty of this island is not merely superficial but intrinsic, and that Cuba is as hospitable to the interests and welfare of the visitor and resident as she is fair to the passing eye.

It is a grateful task to dwell in these pages upon the varied and opulent resources of the island, in all the natural conditions of the mineral, the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. We shall see that the hopes and dreams of the early conquerors, of rich mines of gold, have been far more than realized in other ways which they knew not of. The mines of what they regarded as base metals, and of metals unknown to them, are richer far than they ever hoped deposits of the “precious” metal to be, while the products of forests and plantations are immeasurably richer still. Today Cuba stands before the world a Treasure Island of incomparable worth even in her present estate, and of an assured potentiality of future opulence which dazzles the imagination.

We shall see, too, most grateful and inspiring of all, how at last

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