THE CUBA REVIEW 



17 



PROVINCE OF MATANZAS. 



The garden Province of Cuba, remarkable for the fertihty of its soil, bids fair to be in the 

 near future quite as important for the extent and variety of its mineral production. 



Just to the west of the City of Matanzas, some 10 kilometres from it, an oil well 12 inches 

 in diameter has now boon driven 500 feet, with excellent showing of oil and considerable amount 

 of gas. This claim is the centre of a claim over 12,000 acres in extent which will be explored 

 by the Bess interests, formerly of the Union Oil Company of Havana. 



Further to the west and north the "Margot," and the "Vigilante" copper prospects are 

 giving excellent results; in the first mentioned claim, a fine body of excellent grade of iron 

 pyrites, with a good percentage of copper, was cut by the 100 ft. level, while some samples of 

 the outcrops assay from 6% to 17% of metallic copper. In the last-mentioned claim, some ex- 

 cellent copper ore has been shipped, with good returns to the owners and operators. 



« 



The Camp of the Matanzas Oil Co. 



All the northwestern part of the Province is scarred with old workings, some three cen- 

 turies old, of quite an extensive nature. 



One of the most recent additions to the mining industry of Matanzas, and indeed of Cuba, 

 is a mine of sulphate of lime for the manufacture of plaster of Paris. 



At Coliseo a splendid chrome mine was discovered last August and is shipping about 60 

 tons a day of chromite assaying from 43% to 58% of sexquioxide of chrome. A test pit in the 

 ore pocket 12 feet deep is reported to be still in solid chrome, while the diameter of this one 

 body is reported to exceed 100 feet. 



North of Coliseo, at San Miguel de los Bafios sulphur springs of remarkable degree of 

 saturation and fertility are a source of great interest. All around this zone some of the most 

 remarkable oil seepages have been observed by the writer. The country rock here, as in the 

 case of the oil fields of the Province of Havana, is mostly serpentine flanked, and in some cases 

 cut, by a hmestone range which in places attains a considerable altitude, for the usual reUef of 

 this zone. 



Near Cardenas the Lord Cowdray interests have done some deep drilling, but aside from 

 finding some gas, a little oil of no consequence, and many layers of dry oil, asphalt, their 

 wells which in a case attained a depth of nearly 3,000 feet, were all dry holes. 



