290 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



from Eleuthera as far east as Turk's Island. Touching 

 at Watling's Island, the first landfall of Columbus, 

 Agassiz compared the shores of the island with the de- 

 scriptions given by Columbus, and satisfied himself that 

 the spot selected by Sir Henry Blake was the place where 

 Columbus first landed in the New World. This bit of the 

 shore, known as Columbus Bight, is situated well down 

 on the east coast of the island. 



From Turk's Island the yacht headed for Cape Maysi, 

 and then, skirting along close to the southern shore of 

 Cuba, put into Santiago for coal and supplies. 



Santiago de Cuba, 



January 25, 1893. 



" We had a most interesting trip yesterday to the iron 

 mines near here, at a place called Juragua. The most 

 important mines belong to the Pennsylvania Steel Com- 

 pany and to the Bethlehem Iron Company ; they own 

 a large territory and run their works at Steelton, Spar- 

 row Point, and Bethlehem entirely on the product 

 shipped from here, which in all amounts to about 

 500,000 tons a year. The General Manager is a Ger- 

 man, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, and the bulk of the 

 officials are of the same mixed nationality. We left here 

 early in the morning at six, just at daylight, — that 's 

 the time all trains start, and went up in what they call 

 the Director's Car, a small locomotive on four wheels 

 with seats for six. All the way to the mine, about six- 

 teen miles by rail, the geology was most interesting, and 

 I managed to do a good bit of work of seeing, by stop- 

 ping off and on. For nearly eight miles the railroad 

 runs on one of the elevated coral reefs, about twenty 

 feet above the level of the sea, and I managed at a 



