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THE CUBA REVIEW il'7/ 
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grasses, however, will destroy them, and when this is done their place is taken by the 
native grasses of Cuba, the principal one of which, Espartillo, is found covering vast 
areas of the poorer soils in the central portions of nearly all our provinces, furnishing 
grazing ground upon which cattle are grown, to be removed later to the pastures in which 
the more fattening Guinea and Para grasses abound. This Espartillo is also the grass 
most highly prized in Cuba for milk production, as the animals feeding on it tend to run 
more to milk than to fat, as is the case when grazing off the other grasses mentioned. 
Among the other requisites for a profitable and successful cattle industry in any 
country is that of a suitable climate. In few places in the world are conditions in this 
respect so favorable as those in Cuba. As is fairly well known to everyone, our temper- 
atures vary only slightly from an average of about 70 degrees during the year, the ex- 
tremes reaching a low of about 45 and a high of about 94 in the shade. Therefore, no 
trouble from cold can ever occur, and as in nearly all our pastures sufficient shade is 
left. under which the cattle can rest during the hottest part of the day, no trouble is ever 
experienced from excessive heat. Thus cattle can be left in open pasture the year round. 
Care must be taken during the summer rainy reason to remove the cattle from the low, 
too wet lands where foot trouble may result from the cattle being continually in water, 
to the higher lands adjoining, and in the dry season of the winter when the grasses begin 
to get short and scarce and water hard to obtain on the higher, better drained areas of 
the interior, it is necessary to change the cattle to the low lying more moist pastures of 
the more level areas; but aside from this, as far as climatic conditions are concerned, no 
further precautions are necessary. Good water is obtainable practically everywhere 
throughout the Island, though at certain seasons of the year, especially in the central 
portions of Camagiiey and Oriente Provinces, there is a scarcity, the streams going dry 
and the wells becoming low and even giving out in times of excessively prolonged drought. 
The topography of Cuba is such as to cause the lands of the Island to lend themselves 
excellently to a combination of agriculture and cattle raising. In Pinar del Rio Province, 
in the southern portion of Santa Clara Province, in the northern portion of Camagiiey 
Province and throughout a very large area of Oriente Province, bounding the larger and 
slightly undulating areas of agricultural land, are found very large areas of rough, broken 
country, in many places still covered with virgin forest. In others, however, this broken 
country has been invaded by the axe, so that in many places steeply rising slopes are 
seen covered to the very peak with waves of tall rank grass. Often after the forest is first 
felled, these steep slopes are planted for a number of years to bananas, perhaps to coffee, 
maybe to cacao, and at times the ground is utilized for a year or two upon which to grow 
casava, boniatos, corn and others of the native food crops, but the forests in such regions 
are always felled with the ultimate idea of the lands becoming covered with either Guinea 
or Para grass for use as pasturage. The areas of this character already found on which 
the finest of grasses are growing luxuriantly, give an indication of what could be done 
were the hundreds of thousands of acres of land of this character systematically utilized 
for the purpose of cattle growing, for in these locations not only is found a rich, virgin 
soil usually excellently drained, but also in the defiles of the hills and in the narrow flat 
valleys occurring from time to time among them, are found small but constant water 
courses providing the very finest of water for the cattle. 
The writer does not know by whom cattle were introduced into Cuba. We have 
already indicated that at the end of the War of Independence the cattle industry had 
practically disappeared, stock being found only on the well protected plantations of that 
portion of the Island most densely populated, and even in these districts only a very small 
percentage of what had existed before the War still remained. It was, therefore, one 
might say, a virgin land improved in its possibilities by the previous existence of vast 
areas in which fine grasses had taken root, which presented itself to the investigating eyes 
of the Texas and Florida cattle men, who at the end of the war were attracted by the 
possibilities of Cuba. The favorable results of cattle raising during the former years of 
peace soon became known to them, and, of course, were familiar to all the natives of the 
Island who had lived in close connection therewith. It, therefore, is not surprising that 
