112 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



From Guantanamo the shore hills are not terraced, and to the east- 

 ward of Hatibonico the first shore terrace again becomes prominent. 

 From the pier to the westward of Morillo Chico the shore limestone hills 

 are again seen. They rise there to six hundred or eight hundred feet 

 perhaps, and behind and above them are seen the dioritic mountains 

 upon the flanks of which the shore limestone ranges have been depos- 

 ited and have been raised during the periods of elevation. Near Baiti- 

 queri River an isolated shore limestone hill shows plainly four terraces. 



Guantanamo (Plate XIV. Fig. 5), like Santiago de Cuba and Port 

 Escondido, is a flask-shaped harbor which has been formed by erosion 

 in the limestone during the elevation of the belt which flanks the whole 

 of the southern shore of Cuba from Cape Maysi to Cape Cruz. The 

 ■same formation is said to extend to Cape San Antonio from Cape Cruz. 

 Its limits on the south shore are not known to me, but I have followed 

 it from Cape Maysi to Cape San Antonio on the north shore. The har- 

 bors of the north shore from Baracoa to Bahia Honda, like Livisa, 

 Banes (Plate XIV. Fig. 6), Padre (Plate XIV. Fig. 7), Nuevitas, Matan- 

 zas, Havana, and others of Ji. similar character, have all been formed 

 by the erosion of their drainage area across the shore limestone hills 

 during the rising of the shore line. 



Santiago to Saboney. 



During a trip we made to the Juragua iron mines I was able to 

 examine more in detail a considerable stretch of the shore limestone 

 hills and of the elevated reef. The narrow gage railroad which runs 

 from the dock of the company in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba rises 

 rapidly upon the hills which surround the bay, and attains a height of 

 about two hundred and fifty feet. It then drops gradually to the shore, 

 and runs for a distance of about ten miles, to Saboney, along the shore 

 line, keeping all the way on the top of the first terrace, the surface of 

 the elevated reef. At the greatest height reached by the railroad behind 

 Santiago, in the cut about three kilometers from the company's wharf, 

 we found a number of fossil shells, embedded in a sort of marl formed of 

 the decomposed limestone of which all the exposures of the hills consist. 

 So much is this the character of the limestone in the vicinity of the 

 harbor of Santiago that nowhere except in some of the cuts to the east- 

 ward of the city, and after passing over the sea face of the hills, are we 

 able to obtain characteristic specimens of the limestone rock of the shore 

 hills. 



