CUBA, the largest of the Antilles, and most important transmarine possession of Spain, stretches in n. lat. from 19' 50' to 23° 9', and in w. long. from 74° 8' to 84° 58'. It has a length of rather more than 750 m., and an average width of 50 m., its area being about 45,700 sq. miles. It is larger than Ireland, and less than England. The surface is mountainous at the s.e. coast, where the Sierra Maestra, rising in some places to an elevation of 8,000 ft., runs from cape de Cruz to cape de Mavzi. In the central part of the islands there are rugged hilly districts between Santa Clara and Puerto Principe, and also n.w. of Trinidad. What remains of the country, although undulating, consists chiefly of well-watered plains, which everywhere support a luxuriant vegetation. Rocky reefs and muddy shallows beset about two thirds of the coast. In some localities, how ever, the sea is deep to the very shore, offering many excellent havens, and those, too, situated on the busiest thoroughfares of the western hemisphere; the chief of these being Havana, the admirable situation of which makes it the emporium of Central America. A somewhat elevated water-shed crosses the island in the direction of its length, and as the streams run at right angles to it, they are necessarily short. There is in C. no dis tinction of dry and rainy seasons, and there are showers every month. Hurricanes are less frequent than in the other West India islands, but they sometimes do occur, and cause wide-spread desolation. One which swept over C. in the middle of Oct., 1870, caused the loss of 2,000 lives. Another occurred in the end of Sept., 1873. Earth quakes are frequent. The cultivated portions of C. produce in abundance sugar, tobacco, maize, rice, yams, bananas, coffee, and all the products of the tropics; while in the dis tricts left in a state of nature are reared countless herds of cattle. Sugar is, however, the chief product of the island; and all over the western districts the traveler sees vast level or undulating tracts covered with eanc-fieids, and factories employed in crushing, boiling, and refining'the Nugar.
Since the close of the late American war, the Cuban sugar-trade has been immensely increased, and the quantity exported in good years has recently been valued at the prodigous sum of 15, or even 20 millions sterling. Fifteen per cent of this sugar goes to England, and 75 per cent to the United States. The exportation of tobacco forms still a large item of the exports from Cuba. The chief imports consist of flour, salted fish, manufactured goods, hardware, machinery.
The enormous development of Cuban commerce cannot be accounted for either by the enterprise of the inhabitants or to good government—and least of all to the latter, for the Spaniards have done nothing good C. but to make it supply Madrid with the largest possible revenue. It is due to the great demand for sugar in America, and the monopoly C. now enjoys of slave-labor.
The pop. of C., in 1872, was of whom 730,750 were whites, about 34,000 Chinese and Hindu coolies,and 605,401 blacks, or colored people of negro origin. Of
the blacks, 225,938 were free, and 379,523 were slaves. Of the whites, about 600,000 were creoles, or natives of the island; while 120,000 were " peninsulares," or natives of Spain. The slaves of pure blood alone have the strength necessary to do the hard work of the sugar estates, and the prosperity of the island is dependent on them. Although the creoles and the " peuinsulares" are of the same origin, the difference between them is most striking. They can be distinguished at a glance in the streets of Havana. The ere oles are feeble and indolent, even when they are children of parents born in Spain. The Cuban Spaniards, on the other hand, are a sturdy and energetic body of men. Recruited from the north-eastern parts of Spain, they go to C. as adventurers, chiefly to find employment as traders and mechanics, but obtain the greater share of the wealth of the island. There are upwards of 200,000 adult male creoles, and half that number of Spanish Cubans; but the latter—all men—through the large volunteer force, which they almost exclusively recruit, and the favor of the Spanish government, which distrusts the creoles, have absolute control over the government of the island, which is adminis tered in a manner scandalously unjust. They treat the creoles with a scorn and con tempt only exceeded by the hatred, mixed with fear, with which the latter regard the dominant population. Cuba for the Cubans," is the watchword of the ereoles, whose most anxious desire is to be rid of the adventurers, who have secured for themselves the best share of the wealth of the island. If they could secure this object, they believe that even with emancipation they would be in a better position than now, and accord ingly they manifest sympathy for the negroes, and join with them in opposition to the " peninsulares." C. is divided into three intendencias—the western, middle, and eastern. In the first, there were (1872) upwards of a million of inhabitants. It includes Havana with 200,000 inhabitants, Matanzas with 36,000, Cardenas with 13,000, and several other towns con nected by railways. The middle division, which extends eastward to the n.e. corner of the Great bay and the Boca de Nuevitas, has only a pop. of 75,000, 30,000 of whom live in the capital, Puerto Principe. The eastern division has 249,000 inhabitants; the capital is Santiago, with a pop. of 37,000. The chief towns of the western division arc connected by railways, and it is well settled and prosperous, the great sugar factories and tobacco plantations, which constitute the wealth of the island, lying there. The middle and eastern divisions are very partially cultivated, and, owing to civil war, are becoming much less productive than they were. Many of the land-owners of.the eastern part of the island have sold their slaves to those of the Havana district, and have mimrated to Jamaica and the United States.