528 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



than in Jamaica, sometimes cause will. 

 tion. 



The soil of Cuba is a marvel of richness. and a 



,11 covered with virgin forest. 



Delation of Cuba also includes tamarinds, 



palms, ferns, lianas, etc. Among the cultivated 



products are sugar, b o, rice, 



-ulriit root-, and tropical fruits. 



Among the animals are a species of taill 



r to Tuba, a great abundance of birds. 

 Of noxious animals and insects there are the 

 crocodile, scorpion, and mosquitoes. The rivers 

 and stv 11 stocked with fish, the turtle 



abounding in the .-hallows and sandy places of 

 the beach. The staple production of the island 

 is sugar. In a single year Cuba has produced 

 over 11.000,000 tons o'f this article for export. 



Tobacco ranks next to sugar as a staple. 

 Cuba produces the standard quality of cigar 

 leaf, owing to the exquisite adaptation of the 

 soil and climate to the development of the plant. 

 The normal production is 6,000,000 pounds of 

 :md 130,000,000 cigars. The mineral 

 wealth of Cuba is largely in the copper mines. 

 There are almost inexhaustible deposits of this 

 metal, part of which are found in the mountains 

 near the east end, known as the Sierra del Cobre, 

 or Copper Mountains. Here a great part of the 

 ore taken out yields sixty per cent, of pure metal. 

 Cuba has asphalt deposits rivaling those of Trini- 

 dad, for street paving. Iron ores abound. In 

 the neighborhood of Santiago there are moun- 

 tains of metal, and for a considerable period 

 the Juragua and Daiquiri companies (American) 

 shipped from 30,000 to 50,000 tons of the ore 

 per month to the United States. Oranges of ex- 

 quisite flavor grow spontaneously in all parts of 

 the island, though no attention is paid to their 

 culture or exportation. There are cocoanuts, 

 six kinds of bananas, and such fruits as guavas, 

 zapotes, anonas, guanabanas, and tamarinds. 

 There are thirty-two species of the palm tree, 

 the woods and the leaves of the majority of 

 which could be transformed into a profitable 

 article of commerce, but so far only two have 

 been utilized, the "yarey" palm, whose leaves 

 are used in the United States for the manufac- 

 ture of hats and baskets, and the "palma real" 

 (royal palm), from which durable boards are 

 made, which last much longer than those of the 

 yellow pine and are largely used in the construc- 

 tion of houses. 



There are ten railway companies in Cuba, 

 which operate upward of 1,000 miles of main 

 line, and there are also private branch lines to 

 all the important sugar estates. 



There are over 2,300 miles of telegraph line 

 in operation, all the property of the government, 

 which also owns the telephones, leasing both 

 systems to private corporations. 



Population, 1,786,207. 



Cuzco, an inland city of Peru, capital of 

 a department of the same name, and formerly 

 capital of the Empire of the Incas, about 400 

 miles southeast of Lima. According to tradi- 

 tion, this town was founded in 1043 by Manco 

 Capac, the first Inca of Peru. The grandeur 

 and magnificence of the edifices, of its fortress, 

 and of the Temple of the Sun, struck the Span- 

 iards with astonishment in 1534, when the city 



was taken by Francis Pizarro. On the hill to- 

 ward the north are yet seen the ruins of a fortress 

 built by the Incas' and which has a communi- 

 cation, by means of subterranean passages, with 

 three forts built in the walls of Cuzco All the 

 descendants of the Incas resided in a particular 

 quarter of the city. Population, 22,000. 



Czechs (cheks), the extreme western branch 

 of the great Slavonic family of races. The 

 Czechs have their headquarters in Bohemia, 

 where they arrived in the Fifth Century The 

 origin of the name is unknown. The total num- 

 ber of the Czechs is about 6,000,000, nearly all 

 of whom live in the Austrian Empire. The 

 Czechs proper, in Bohemia, number about 2,- 

 700,000. They speak a Slavonic dialect of great 

 antiquity and of high scientific cultivation. 

 The Czech language is distinguished as highly 

 inflectional. Like the Greek, it has a dual num- 

 ber, and its manifold declensions, tenses, and 

 participial formations, with their subtle shapes 

 of distinction, give the language a complex 

 grammatical structure. The alphabet consists 

 of forty-two letters. In musical value the Czech 

 comes next to Italian. 



Danube, a celebrated river of Europe, 

 originates in two small streams rising in the 

 Schwarzwald, or Black Forest, in Baden, and 

 uniting at Donaueschen. The direct distance 

 from source to mouth of the Danube is about 

 1,000 miles, and its total length, including wind- 

 ings, about 1,640 miles. The Danube is navi- 

 gable for steamers up the Regensburg (Ratis- 

 bon) nearly 1,500 miles from its mouth. 



Dardanelles (the ancient Hellespont), the 

 narrow strait between Europe and Asia, con- 

 necting the Grecian Archipelago with the Sea of 

 Marmora. The strait is about forty miles in 

 length. Its western entrance is two miles wide, 

 but at its narrowest part it is only three-quarters 

 of a mile wide; and here stood the castles of 

 the Dardanelles (Dardanus), from which the 

 strait derived its name. 



Date Line, an arbitrary line drawn on a 

 map from north to south, on the one side of 

 which it is to-day and on the other to-morrow, 

 even in places not a mile apart. When ships 

 cross this line they drop or repeat a day. The 

 international date line describes the following 

 course: Starting at the North Pole it passes 

 through Bering Strait, then slants to the west 

 to clear the Jong horn formed by the Aleutian 

 chain of islands and give them the same day as 

 the United States, to which they belong. This 

 accomplished, it returns to the 180th meridian 

 and drops south into the tropics, keeping far to 

 the east of the Japanese group and the Philip- 



Eines till it approaches the latitude of the Fiji 

 slands. As these and some of the neighboring 

 groups belong to Great Britain and do business 

 chiefly with her Australian colonies, the date 

 line here makes a sudden swerve to the east, so 

 as not to embarrass the local commerce with a 

 change of day. 



Dead Sea, The, a lake of Palestine, about 

 j twenty miles north of Jerusalem. It is called 

 I by the Arabs "Bahr Loot," or "Sea of Lot"; 

 I is about thirty-five miles long, and from ten to 

 I twelve broad, with a depth of 220 fathoms, and 

 its surface 1,381 feet below the level of the 



