104 
Porto Rico, the following panna where by making close 
connections with the S. S. ‘ ” T reached the Island of 
Vieques at noon of January 23. Accommodations were ob- 
tained in the town of Isabel Segunda, where I made ead- 
quarters during the time I aes upon the island 
The island of Vieques li t of Porto Rico, of which it is 
apa a part, and is about nineteen miles long and from three 
five miles wide. The greater part of the island is made up of 
a soft brown eruptive rock with occasional outcroppings of a 
harder bluish rock, very similar to the formation of the Virgin 
Islands lying to the eastward. At the western end there are 
large boulders of a hard, light-gray rock, probably syenite. Some 
of the larger peninsulas projecting from the south side and all 
that portion of the eastern end of the island that is separated 
from the main body by bays and salinas, are composed of a soft 
fossiliferous limestone, as is also the small island, Cayo Puerto 
eal. Several of the short points on the northeastern shore are 
tipped with a very hard bluish limestone. The surface is very 
hilly, often steep, but seldom precipitous. Few of the hills 
attain an altitude of over five hundred feet, the highest being 
Cerro Ventana on the southwestern end, where a height of one 
thousand one hundred and twenty-five feet was recorded by the 
aneroid barometer. The summits of these hills are rocky and 
covered for the most part with trees and shrubs; the sides are 
usually of good soil and under cultivation, or used for pasturing. 
Vieques is essentially a cultivated island, having been pastured 
fora long time. The cultivation of sugar cane has recently been 
carried on very extensively, so that at the present time the western 
two thirds of the island is practically all in cane from the seacoast 
to the rocky tops of the low hills. A crop of Indian corn is 
usually grown between the rows of newly eee cane on the 
more easily worked tracts, while on the hillsides ‘cinnamon 
trees,” that may have stood in the original forest, have been 
preserved, and a crop of feavees is annually gathered from them. 
These are shipped to Porto Rico where they are distilled for the 
essential oil of bay, from which the popular toilet article bay rum 
is made. 
The.eastern portion of the island is given over to pasturage, 
