182 THE JABDIfflLLOS, 



Batabano an important point of communication between the 

 island of Cuba and the coast of Venezuela. The port is 

 within a bay bounded by Punta Gorda on the east, and by 

 Punta de Salinas on the west : but this bay is itself only the 

 upper or concave end of a great gulf measuring nearly four- 

 teen leagues from south to north, and along an extent of 

 fifty leagues (between the Laguna de Cortez and the Cayo 

 de Piedras) inclosed by an incalculable number of flats and 

 chains of rocks. One great island only, of which the super- 

 ficies is more than four times the dimensions of that of 

 Martinique, with mountains crowned with majestic pines, 

 rises amidst this labyrinth. This is the island of Pinos, 

 called by Columbus El Evangelista, and by some mariners of 

 the sixteenth century, the Isla de Santa Maria. It is celebrated 

 for its mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni) which is an important 

 article of commerce. "We sailed E.S.E., taking the passage 

 of Don Cristoval, to reach the rocky island of Cayo de Piedras, 

 and to clear the archipelago, which the Spanish pilots, in 

 the early times of the conquest, designated by the names of 

 Gardens and Bowers ( Jardines y Jardinillos). The Queen's 

 Gardens, properly so called, are nearer Cape Cruz, and are 

 separated from the archipelago by an open sea thirty-five 

 leagues broad. Columbus gave them the name they bear, in 

 1494, when, on his second voyage, he struggled during fifty- 

 eight days with the winds and currents between the island 

 of Pinos and the eastern cape of Cuba. He describes the 

 islands of this archipelago as verdant, full of trees and 

 pleasant* (verdes, llenos de arboledas, y graciosos). 



* There exists great geographical confusion, even at the Havannah, in 

 reference to the ancient denominations of the Jardines del Rey and 

 Jardines de la Reyna. In the description of the island of Cuba, given in the 

 Mercuric Americano, and in the Historia Natural de la Isla de Cuba, 

 published at the Havannah by Don Antonio Lopez Gomez, the two 

 groups are placed on the southern coast of the island. Lopez says that 

 the Jardines del Rey extend from the Laguna de Cortez to Bahia de 

 Xagua ; but it is historically certain that the governor Diego Velasquez 

 gave his name to the western part of the chain of rocks of the Old Channel, 

 between Cayo Frances and Le Monillo, on the northern coast of the 

 island of Cuba. The Jardines de la Reyna, situated between Cabo Cruz 

 and the port of the Trinity, are in no manner connected with the Jardines 

 and Jardinillos of the Isla de Pinos. Between the two groups of the 

 chain of rocks are the flats (placeres) of La Paz and Xagua. 



