CHAPTER V

PROVINCE OF PINAR DEL RIO

Topographically, the Province of Pinar del Rio is perhaps the most picturesquely beautiful in the Island. Owing also to its variety of soils, mahogany red, jet black, mulatto or brown, and the grey sands of the south and west, Pinar del Rio offers marvellous opportunities for many agricultural industries. Tobacco, of which it produces over $30,000,000 worth annually, has always been the most important product of this section of Cuba.

This Province, with its area of 5,764 square miles, owing to the fact, perhaps, that it lay west of Havana, the capital, and thus outside of the line of traffic and settlement that began in the eastern end of the Island, has played historically and politically a comparatively small part in the story of the Pearl of the Antilles. Its capital, Pinar del Rio, located about one hundred and twenty-five miles west of Havana, on the Western Railroad, was founded in 1776, and claims today a population of 12,000 people.

The delightful aroma and flavor of the tobacco grown in the section of which this city is the center, and whose quality has been equaled in no other place, has rendered this province, in one way at least, famous throughout the entire civilized world.

The topography of the province is more distinctly marked than that of any other in Cuba. The greater part of the surface, including the entire southern half, together with the coast plains between the mountains and the Gulf of Mexico, is quite level. Rising almost abruptly from the flat surface, we have the western terminus of the great central chain of mountains that forms the backbone of the Island. This begins near the shores of Guadiana Bay and extends in a northeasterly direction throughout almost the entire length of the Province. The main or central ridge of the Pinar del Rio system is known as the Sierra de Los Organos, or Organ Mountains, owing probably to the fact that the sides of these mountains, in many places, form great perpendicular fluted columns, whose giant organ like shafts reach upward for hundreds of feet.

From this western terminal point the mountains rapidly widen out like an arrow head, so that between San Juan y Martinez on the south, and Malos Aguas on the north, the foot hills approach close to both coasts. On the south, however, they quickly recede towards the Capital, some twenty miles north, whence they continue throughout the northern center of the Province in a line more or less direct, leaving the southern half a great, broad level plain.

On the north coast, from the harbor of San Gayetano east, the mountains with their adjacent foothills follow more closely the shore line, until at Bahia Honda, sixty miles west of the city of Havana, they come almost down to the head of the harbor, gradually receding a little from this point east, until the chain disappears some ten miles west of the boundary line that separates Pinar del Rio from Havana.

Strange as it may seem, nature in her mysterious caprice has twice repeated the form of a shoe at separate points in the outline of the south coast of Cuba. The first, known as the Peninsula of the Zapata, with its definitely formed heel and toe, is in the Province of Santa Clara; and again a second perfect shoe; that resembles with its high heel set well forward a slightly exaggerated type of the shoe so popular with the women of Cuba and all Latin American countries, forms the extreme western terminus of the Island and is almost separated from the mainland by a chain of shallow lakes. It extends from Cape Francis on the east to Cape San Antonio, some seventy-five miles west, with an average width of only about ten miles. Just in front of the heel we have the indentation known as the Bay of Corrientes, while on the opposite side, or top of the foot, lies the quiet and protected Bay of Guadiana. The lighthouse of Cape San Antonio is located on the extreme western point. From the toe to the heel, following the arch of the foot for forty miles, runs a low range of hills that introduce the mountain system of Cuba, developing later into the great central chain that continues to the other end of the Island.

Between the City of Pinar del Rio and Vinales, the range is broken up into three parallel ridges, the central one composed of limestone, while the other are of slates, schists and sand. The highest peak, known as the Pan de Guajaibon, has an altitude that has been variously estimated from 2500 to 3,000 feet. It rises abruptly from the narrow plain of the north coast, about eight miles, southwest of the harbor of Bahia Honda, and is difficult of ascent. The various parks, plateaus and circular basins or sumideros, often of large extent, with subterranean exits, form strangely picturesque spots that burst on the traveler, mounted on his sturdy sure footed pony, unexpectedly, and if a lover of scenery he will leave with sincere regret.

One of these charming valleys, known as Vinales, lies between two prominent ridges, about twenty miles north of the City of Pinar del Rio, and is in many respects the most glorious bit of scenery in all the West Indies. A splendid macadamized automobile drive winds from the capital up along the foot hills to the crest of the ridge, whence it descends, crosses the valley, cuts through the northernmost ridge, and continues on to La Esperanza, on the north shore of the Province.

Rex Beach, the novelist, writer and traveler, looked down from his auto into the valley for the first time in 1916. Stopping the machine suddenly, he jumped to the ground and stood spellbound, looking down into that beautiful basin, over a thousand feet below. After a moment’s pause he exclaimed: “I have visited every spot of interest from northern Alaska to Panama, and traveled through many countries, but never before in my life have I met anything so picturesquely, dramatically beautiful as this valley, this dream garden that lies at our feet. There is nothing like it in the Western Hemisphere, probably not in all the world.”

The length of the basin is not over twenty miles while its width varies from three to ten. The floor is level, covered with rich waving grass, watered by a little stream, that comes meandering through the valley, dives beneath a mountain range, afterwards to reappear from a grotto-like opening on the northern side, beyond the valley, whence its waters eventually find their home in the Gulf of Mexico.

The peculiar, almost unreal, indentations of the northern ridge are silhouetted so vividly against the sky above that from the southern shore of the valley one is inclined at times to believe them fantastically formed clouds. The remarkable feature, however, of Vinales lies in the peculiar round-topped mountains that rise abruptly from the level surface below, and project themselves perpendicularly into the air, to a height varying from 1,200 to 2,000 feet.

Unique imposing formations, resulting from millions of years of tropical rains and rock erosion, are covered with dense forests of strange palms and thousands of rare plants, whose varied foliage seems to be peculiar to this isolated spot in the western central part of Pinar del Rio. These singular dome-like lomas of Vinales, looming up so unexpectedly from the valley below, are usually accessible from one side, although but very few people seem to have taken the trouble to climb to their summits. All of these mountains and foothills, composed of limestone formations, are honeycombed with caves, some of them of rare beauty.

Shortly after the founding of the Republic, a group of men composed mostly of naturalists and scientists, representing the Smithsonian and like institutions in the United States, together with several Cuban enthusiasts in the study of nature, spent several months studying the fauna and flora of the Vinales Valley. In fact they rambled and worked through most of the line of foothills that traverse Pinar del Rio between its central ridges and the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the party were specialists in tertiary fossils, others in the myriad varieties of submarine life. These latter spent considerable time studying the various species of radiata, mollusca, crustacea and allied forms of life on the inner side of the long coral barrier reef which parallels the shore of the province of Pinar del Rio, from Bahia Honda to Cape San Antonio. Many new varieties of the snail family, also, were discovered and studied.

In this connection it may be stated that a very rare variety of the palm family, the Microoyco Calocoma, commonly called the Cork Palm, found only in Pinar del Rio, seems, owing perhaps to some unfavorable change in climate or surrounding conditions, to be disappearing from earth. Not more than seventy specimens are known to exist and these are all growing in an isolated spot in the mountains back of Consolacion del Sur. Several of them have been transplanted to the grounds of the Government Experimental Station for study and care. One also has been removed to the grounds of the President’s home at El Chico. The palms are not tall, none reaching a height of more than twenty feet, with a diameter of perhaps eight inches.

This rare palm is one of those miraculous survivals of the carboniferous age that by some strange protecting influence have survived all the great seismic upheaval and geological changes wrought on the earth’s surface during the millions of years since the epoch, when this and similar varieties of carboniferous plants were the kings of the vegetable world. Their dead forms are frequently found imprinted in the coal fields of Pennsylvania and Brazil, but only in Cuba has this family of ancient palms persisted, mute survival of an antiquity that probably antedates any other living thing on earth. So slow is the growth of this remarkable plant, that only one crown of leaves appears each year. By simply counting the circles of scars left by the fallen leaves, it is clearly demonstrated that many of these remnants of a remote geological past were living in the mountains of Pinar del Rio long before Columbus dreamed of another continent. Some of them are today over a thousand years old, and may have antedated the fall of Rome, if not the birth of Christ on earth.

A strange variety of indigenous wild legumes, belonging probably to the cow-pea tribe, is found growing luxuriantly in the low sandy soil of the southwestern coast. The vine forms a splendid cover crop of which cattle are very fond, while the peas, although small, are delicious eating. Plants of the lily family are found in great quantities in some of the fresh water lagoons of this Province, the ashes of which furnish 60% of high-grade potash.

Back in the mountains of Pinar del Rio, an exploring party from the Experimental Station came across, most unexpectedly, a little group of five immense black walnut trees. No one knows whence came the seed from which they sprung, since the district has never been settled, and the black walnut is not known in any other part of the Island. It is quite probable that many, if not all, of the forest trees of a commercial value in the Gulf States, and perhaps further north, would thrive in Cuba if planted there.

There is much fine, valuable hard-wood timber in the mountain ranges of Pinar del Rio, between Vinales and Bahia Honda, but lack of facility for the removal to the coast will probably cause it to remain unmolested for some years to come.

The extreme length of Pinar del Rio, from southwest to northeast, in a straight line, is nearly two hundred miles, while its average width is fifty. The rivers and streams all have their sources in the central divide, and flow to the north and south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. None of these, of course, are available for navigation more than a few miles up from their mouths, and while serving as drainage streams during the rainy season, many of them, unfortunately, cease to flow during the dry months of February and March.

Some of them, with sources in large springs, back in the mountains, could be used very advantageously, with small expense, for irrigation purposes, thus rendering adjoining lands, especially in the tobacco and vegetable district, doubly valuable. With the control of the water supply, the profit to be made from these lands, on which three or four crops may be gathered a year, would seem almost incredible, especially if compared with the returns of similar lands in the United States.

As an illustration, in any of the rich sandy soils bordering streams like the Rio Hondo or Las Cabezas of the south coast, or the Manimani or the Mulata of the north coast, whose waters are always available for irrigation purposes, in January, February or March corn and cow peas may be planted on the same ground in the early spring. Crops from these may be gathered in late May or June, and the same land planted in carita beans, sweet potatoes or squash, that may be removed in September, leaving the field to be again planted in October with tobacco, peanuts, yuca, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, egg plants or okra, that when gathered in January and February will bring splendid returns in either the local markets of Havana, or the early spring markets of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States.

The short streams flowing from the mountain chains along the north coast are the Mariel, the Manimani, the Mulata, the San Marcos, the Guacamayo, the Caimito and Mantua, and the Rio Salado. Returning on the south coast we have the Cabeza, the Guama, Ovas, Hondo, Herradura, San Diego, Los Palacios, Bacuranabo, Sabanal and the Bayale.

The northern coast of Pinar del Rio is fortunate in having three of the finest harbors of Cuba, bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. First, the beautiful Bay of Mariel, located about 30 miles west of Havana, has a narrow, deep entrance with a lighthouse on the eastern point, and the Government Quarantine Station for foreign ships on the western side at the entrance. This Bay rapidly widens out into a large deep basin, three miles in length from north to south, with an average width of perhaps a mile, together with several prolongations towards the west, all furnishing excellent anchorage and securely protected against any possible weather.

The shores of Mariel are beautiful. Palm covered bluffs several hundred feet in height rise almost abruptly from the eastern side of the Bay. On top of this promontory or plateau is located a fine two-story building, erected in 1905 as a club house, but occupied at the present time by Cuba’s Naval Academy. The view from the crest over the surrounding country, with its tall mountains in the distance, its forest covered foothills and great valleys planted in sugar cane to the south and west, with the Gulf of Mexico lying off to the north, presents a picture of rare tropical beauty.

Between this promontory and the lighthouse a modern cement factory was built in 1917, turning out at the present time 1,000 barrels of Portland Cement per day, while near the head of the Bay, a narrow gauge railroad, bringing asphalt from back in the foothills, terminates alongside the shipping wharf.

The quaint little fishing village of Mariel is located on the shore at the southern end of the Bay. Its inhabitants, although leading rather an uneventful life, seem quite content to remain, although Havana is less than thirty miles distant over a splendid automobile drive; one of the most beautiful in Cuba. The Quarantine Station is splendidly equipped and always in readiness to take care of any ship’s crew or passengers that may be detained by orders of the authorities in Havana. Mariel, owing to its natural beauty and its proximity to Havana, is frequently visited by President Menocal in his yacht, and furnishes a delightful, cool resting place for anyone during the summer season.

Ten or twelve miles further west, we have the Bay of Cabanas, another perfectly land-locked harbor, whose deep entrance is divided by an island into two channels. These open out into a wide picturesque expanse of water, extending east and west for some ten miles or more, with an average width of two or three.

On the small island that almost obscures the mouth of the harbor from the sea, a little old Spanish fort, with its obsolete guns, up to the present unmolested, bears mute evidence to those times when visits of pirates, with the equally troublesome corsairs of France and England, were common, and provision for defense was absolutely necessary. The village of Cabanas, in order to secure better protection from the danger mentioned, is located two or three miles back from the eastern end of the harbor.

Great fields of sugar cane surround the Bay on all sides. These, of course, have been greatly extended since the European War and the increased demand for sugar. A beautiful automobile drive that branches from the main line or Pinar del Rio road, at Guanajay, passes along the crest of the ridge of hills back of the Bay of Cabanas, for over ten miles, giving at almost every turn a new view to this beautiful sheet of water. Once known to the outside world, this magnificent Bay of Cabanas would soon become a popular resort for private yachts that spend the winter season in tropical waters.

Fifteen miles further west, this same winding, hill-climbing, macadamized Government driveway, reaches another splendid harbor known as Bahia Honda, or Deep Bay. Like most of the bays of Cuba, the entrance to this, although comparatively narrow, is deep, and with two range lights maintained for the purposes of easy access day and night. This harbor extends back from the Gulf of Mexico some seven or eight miles, with an average width of three or four, furnishing good anchorage for ships of any draught.

Bahia Honda was selected by the United States Government in 1902, as a coaling station, a large body of land on the western shore being reserved for that purpose. Owing, however, to the completion of the Panama Canal later, and to the consequent advantages of having a naval station closer to the line of maritime travel, between Panama and the Atlantic Coast, Bahia Honda was surrendered to the Government of Cuba and Guantanamo became the principal United States Naval Station for the West Indies.

The harbor of Bahia Honda, dotted with islands, and with comparatively high lands extending all along its western and southern shores, offers the same advantages, not alone for an extensive commerce, but as a rendezvous for foreign yachts and pleasure craft, during the closed season or winter months of the north. The little village bearing the same name, two miles back from the Bay, is reached by a branch from the main driveway connecting Bahia Honda with Havana and intermediate cities.

The Bay of La Esperanza, one hundred miles west of Havana, is inclosed by the long chain of islands and coral reefs known as the “Colorados,” that lie some eight or ten miles off the mainland, and protect three-fourths of the shore of Pinar del Rio from the heavy waves of the Gulf of Mexico. The entrance to this and adjacent bays is through narrow breaks in the barrier reef. Its waters have an average depth of only two or three fathoms; nevertheless considerable amounts of copper ore are shipped from the mines some fifteen miles back in the mountains during all seasons of the year.

Along the western shore of the main body of this Province, we have the harbors of Dimas and Mantua. Like the Esperanza, they are comparatively shallow bays, entered through breaks in the Colorado Reefs, but still available for moderate draft vessels in all seasons of the year.

In the angle of the ankle, formed by the shoe-like extension of the Province of Pinar del Rio, we have a beautiful wide indentation of the coast known as Guardiana Bay. On the shores, some ten years ago, was located a Canadian colony, but, owing to its isolation, and lack of transportation of all kinds, it has since been practically abandoned. This settlement, like the Isle of Pines, had little to recommend it except its beautiful climate and its perfect immunity from the cares and troubles of the outside world.

Aside from wide, deep indentations from the sea, and shallow landing places at the mouths of rivers, the south coast of Pinar del Rio has nothing to offer in the shape of harbors. Nevertheless, owing to the presence of long lines of outlying keys, and to the fact that northerly winds produce only smooth water off these shores, there is considerable local traffic carried on between various places on the south coast and Batabano, whence connection with Havana is secured by rail. A large part of the charcoal used in the capital is cut from the low lying forests that cover almost the entire length of Pinar del Rio’s south coast.

Across the ankle-like connection between the mainland and the peninsula forming the western extremity of the Island a depression runs from Guardiana Bay on the west to the Bay of Cortez on the east. Numerous fresh water lagoons or inland lakes lie so close that a small amount of dredging would cut a canal from one shore to the other, and save thus over a hundred miles of travel for local coasting vessels. At the present time these lakes, with their rich growth of aquatic plants, furnish a retreat during the winter season for many varieties of wild ducks, which the game laws of Cuba are endeavoring to protect. Wild deer are also very plentiful throughout the greater part of the Province, especially in the mountainous districts and in the jungles of the south coast.

The capital, Pinar del Rio, is a modern and rather attractive little city of some 12,000 inhabitants, located on a gentle rise of ground in the western center of the Province. Immediately surrounding it is the celebrated tobacco district known as the Vuelta Abajo, or Lower Turn, so called, perhaps, owing to the fact that the coast line of this section recedes rapidly towards the south and west.

The choice lands of this locality cover a relatively small area, not over thirty miles from east to west and less than half that distance from north to south. And even within this circumscribed area, the best tobacco is grown only in little vegas, or oases, whose soil seems to contain mineral elements the character of which has never been discovered, but that nevertheless give to the plant a peculiarly delightful aroma and flavor, not known to the tobacco of any other part of the world. As a result, the price of these little vegas, so favored by Nature, is very high, often running into thousands of dollars per acre.

Pinar del Rio is connected with Havana by the Western Railway, that traverses almost the entire length of the Province, terminating at the present time at the town of Guane within thirty miles of Guardiana Bay. This railroad furnishes transportation for the great level plains, together with the fertile foot hills that occupy the southern half of the Province.

An extension of the line has been granted and contracts signed carrying it around the western terminus of the Organ Mountains, whence it will follow the line of the north shore, returning east to Havana. This line when completed will furnish transportation to the entire length of the coast lands bordering on the Gulf of Mexico.

Along the Western Road are a number of prosperous little cities or villages, with populations varying from two to eight thousand, including Artemisa, Candelaria, San Cristobal, Taco-Taco, Los Palacios, Herradura, Consolacion del Sur, Ovas, etc., all of which are located along the foothills, and in the tobacco district is known as the Partido or Semi Vuelta. Beyond Pinar del Rio, we have San Luis, Martinez and Guane, which claim to be within the charmed zone of Vuelta Abajo.

Tobacco is also grown around the little town of Vinales, nestling in the center of that valley, and in nearly all of the foothills that border the north coast; hence the tobacco industry in this end of the Island, greatly exceeds in value, that of sugar cane, which up to the beginning of the great war, was grown only in the basins of rich heavy soil surrounding the harbors of Mariel, Cabanas and Bahia Honda. There are seven ingenios or sugar mills within the limits of this province that produced together 645,000 bags of sugar in 1918.

The growing of fruits and vegetables, especially since the birth of the Republic, was introduced into Pinar del Rio as an industry by Americans, many of whom settled along the line of the Western Road, many of these, taking advantage of the rich sandy loams between the railroad line and the Organ Mountains, have built up a really important industry not before known to Cuba.

An American colony was started at Herradura, one hundred miles west of Havana in 1902. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of the little settlement gave nearly all of their capital and energy to the planting of citrus fruit groves, which as a whole, have rather disappointed their owners. This was not because the growing of citrus fruit cannot be successfully carried on in Pinar del Rio, but was in most instances owing to the fact that the areas planted were very much larger than the available help could possibly handle and care for intelligently; hence many groves, lacking this care, have lapsed into grazing lands, whence they came.

The growing of vegetables, green peppers, tomatoes, egg plants and beans, especially where farms were located near enough to streams to provide irrigation during the months of January, February and March, has proven very profitable, and within the near future will undoubtedly be still further extended.

In the early part of the 19th century, and for that matter, up to the abolition of slavery in 1878, the production of coffee in the mountainous districts of Pinar del Rio was the chief industry in the Province. Beautiful estates, the ruins of which are frequently scattered along the line of the Organ Mountains, especially in that section of the range included between San Cristobal and Bahia Honda, and splendid country homes with approaches cut from the main highways of travel up into these delightful picturesque retreats, were occupied during the summer months by prominent citizens of Havana, who found the growing of coffee both profitable and agreeable. The coffee trees still grow, although uncared for, and many thousand of pounds are still brought out of this almost forgotten district, on mule back, to be sold to the country groceries of Bahia Honda and San Cristobal, where the green beans bring twenty dollars per hundred weight.

With the introduction of colonists from the Canary Islands, Italy, and other countries who love the fresh air of the mountains, and who do not object to the isolation which naturally follows a residence in remote sections, there is every reason to believe that the coffee industry will again be resumed. The settlement of these hills and vales with families whose children can assist in the picking of berries, will make the growing of coffee a great success.

Until 1913 the mining interests of Pinar del Rio were practically ignored, in spite of the fact that several excavations or shafts, that had been worked many years before, gave evidence of the existence of copper. It was in this year that Luciano Diaz, formerly Secretary of Public Works, became interested in the district known as Matahambre. Competent mining engineers, brought from the United States, assured Mr. Diaz that his claim was valuable, and merited the investment of capital. This proved to be true, since the mine has produced high-grade copper at the rate of about five million dollars per year since the date of its opening.

Valuable deposits of manganese, too, have been recently discovered in the western end of the province, and will undoubtedly be developed in the near future. Excellent iron ore is found in the same chain, west of the capital, but owing to the difficulties of transportation, the mines have never been operated. Asphalt, asbestos and other substances used in the commercial world, are found at various points along the range, and await only intelligent direction and capital for their development.

Although Narciso Lopez, with his unfortunate followers, endeavored to arouse the people of this Province against the iniquities of Spanish rule in the year 1852, the revolution had never reached the west until the winter of 1896, when General Antonio Maceo, with his army of Cuban veterans, carried the “invasion of the Occident” to its ultimate objective. After one of the most skilfully conducted campaigns known to history, he rested for a few weeks in the little town of Mantua, within a few miles of the extreme western shore of Cuba.

The crossing of the Trocha, that had been built between the harbor of Mariel and the south coast, by this invading army, was very distasteful to General Weyler, who soon filled Pinar del Rio with well armed regiments and gave Maceo battle for more than a year. Short of ammunition, and in a section of the country where it was almost impossible for the expedition to aid him, General Maceo was compelled to keep up a running fight for many months, and in the Organ Mountains and in their various spurs toward the north coast were fought some of the most stubbornly contested engagements of the War of Independence.