THECUBAREVIEW 13 



HARDWOODS IN CUBA 



By H. O. Neville 



Some twenty years ago the traveller in Cuba, especially in the eastern Provinces, 

 could traverse for clays at a time oii horseback, practically the only means of com- 

 munication that then existed, vast forest areas, treading them on the narrow trails 

 that had been cut through them from place to place, and in many sections miles upon 

 miles would be passed over without the wayfarer's having gone from the shade into 

 the sunlight. At that time the railroads that have since penetrated the central part 

 of Santa Clara, Camagiiey and Oriente Provinces, and the North Coast Line, traversing 

 the northern parts of Santa Clara and Camagiiey Provinces, Avere not yet planned 

 beyond the dreams that perhaps were tucked away in the brains of Sir William Van 

 Home. The line from Placetas south towards Fomento was also still a matter of 

 the distant future. In the west the only railroad that is of any importance, the 

 Western, had reached only to San Juan, some forty miles away from the then out- 

 posts of the tobacco industry in Las Martinas and Remates, leaving quite a hiatus 

 between the wooded lands of Cape San Antonio and rapid means of communication 

 with the more thickly settled parts of the Island. 



These conditions naturally tended toward the conservation of the forests in all 

 the sections considered. Even at that time, in eastern Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas 

 and western Santa Clara Province, the forest areas had become small, and the valuable 

 timbers therein were becoming so scarce as to practically preclude their farther profit- 

 able exploitation ; but the demand for timber for building and industrial purposes 

 had caused the venturesome woodsmen of the Island to reach out along the northern 

 and southern coasts in an attempt to supply the needs, not only of the Island itself 

 but also of those that had sprung up for certain of our forest products from the 

 outside world. Thus, even at that early date, the coast forests of Santa Clara, 

 Camagiiey and Oriente Provinces, and those forest regions that were accessible from 

 the streams whose volume of flow during the high waters of the rainy season made 

 rafting possible had heard the somid of the woodsman's axe, and were rapidly being 

 depleted of the largest and best of their contents. The wi-iter well remembers a trip 

 made on foot through eastern Camagiiey and Oriente Provinces in early 1900, on 

 which, after leaving the wide areas of pasture lands in the centers of these Provinces, 

 then clothed with a growth of fine grasses that often reached away above his head on 

 account of the absence of cattle, destroyed in the war that had just finished, the forest 

 of the southern parts of the Provinces mentioned were entered, and his seeing on the 

 lower stretches of the Cauto River, and lying in the beds of the smaller streams that 

 were passed, hundreds of fine logs, some in the natural round condition and some, the 

 best of them, roughly hewed, waiting the first high water to be rafted to the river 

 mouth and there cut up in appropriate lengths to be taken by steamer to Europe and 

 the United States. In the same manner, it Avas a common sight at that time to find 

 piled high along the shores of the bays of eastern Cuba logs of all descriptions, though 

 cedar and mahogany predominated, awaiting the arrival of the steamers that were 

 to take them to their final destinations. At that time, cedars that would measure 

 three feet on the side, after squaring, and mahogany that would run even as high as 

 four or more feet, after squaring, were not uncommon, while the other kinds of timber 

 that were so plentiful and large were just beginning to be used, so abundant had 

 these two choice timbers been previovisly. 



Since that date, however, all has changed. The raih'oads that we have mentioned 

 have penetrated to such an extent that from the most distant corners of their tribu- 

 tory areas it has been possible to haul timber either to the coast on the north or 

 south or to the line of the railroad. Every station on these roads soon became the 

 center of a more or less important lumbering industry. First the largest and more 

 valuable trees were taken out, then the sizes next smaller, and last even the trees 

 that should have been left to increase in size under a judicious system of operation. 



