14 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



READY TO DRAIN THE COFFERDAM 



J\Iay 25th has now been set as the offi- 

 cial date for work of unwatering the 

 cofferdam constructed around the wrecked 

 battleship "]\Iaine."' 



The naval board, which will assume 

 charge of whatever remains may be 

 found of the sailor dead and of all the 

 movable property, will arrive in this city 

 the last day of May to await the moment 

 the ship is delivered by the army board. 



The pumps which will be used will be 

 installed on top of one of the cyHnders 

 now being covered by a boarding to pre- 

 vent the waves when the sea is rough 

 from washing over. Transformers are 

 being installed to convert the power which 

 is received from shore. 



Captain Ferguson is having a 1 arge 

 constructed for the use of visitors desir- 

 ing to view the work of unwatering the 

 cofferdam and later when the battleship 

 is exposed, will have free access to the 

 barge. They will be barred absolutely 

 from other places about the cofferdam 

 and plant. He has asked the War De- 

 partment that all remains be collected in 

 one great coffin. Of thirty so far un- 

 covered there are only skulls and larger 

 bones. None is recognizable, and it 

 would be useless to coffin them separately. 



The Navv Department will send a 

 collier to Havana to take aboard any ma- 

 terial of historic value that may be raised, 

 as well as the bones of any of the vic- 

 tims. 



charge varies according to whether the 

 subscriber has a business telephone, which 

 pays $102 a year, a professinal or office 

 telephone, which is $84, or a residence 

 telephone, which is $60. 



TELEPHONE EXTENSION IN CUBA 



W. M. Talbott, president of the Cuban 

 Telephone Company, an American con- 

 cern, with English and American capital, 

 says that the telephone business in the 

 island has jumped during the last year 

 and in that time the number of users of 

 the telephone has doubled. 



"So far we have little long distance 

 line completed," said Mr. Talbott at the 

 Wolcott. "In fact, this part of our 

 service we are just getting started. We 

 have completed our principal plant and 

 have over 6,000 telephones in operation. 



"We are now installing 1,260 miles of 

 poles through the island, which work will 

 take about two years to complete. We 

 are putting in a new local system in Cien- 

 fuegos and expect to open it in July, and 

 we intend to have the provinces of Ma- 

 tanzas and Santa Clara connected up with 

 Havana by the first of the new year. 



"The franchises for local services are 

 held under old Spanish grants on limited 

 periods. These are now expiring, and we 

 are replacing the old systems as we come 

 to the different towns. We find we can 

 make good use of the various hard woods 

 in the country for telephone poles. • We 

 give unlimited local service, and the 



RED DIRT WAS IRON ORE 



For more than fifty years Spaniards in 

 Cuba plodded over thousands of acres of 

 seemingly worthless red and yellow earth; 

 then American ingenuity revealed that this 

 hard red dirt was, in fact, some 3,000,- 

 000,000 tons of good iron ore. This story 

 of the development of the Mayari iron ore 

 deposits in Oriente Province on the north 

 coast of Cuba was told before the Amer- 

 ican Institute of Mining Engineers in Xew 

 York at a recent meeting by Jennings S. 

 Cox, Jr., general manager of the Spanish- 

 American Iron Company. 



Augers were used to make borings and 

 it was found that for an area of 50,000 

 acres these deposits of ore extended for 

 depths varying from nothing to 80 feet, 

 and averaging about IS feet. 



The "drag line scrapers" and team 

 shovels devised for this unique style of 

 iron mining were able to pick up 95 per 

 cent of the pay dirt, Mr. Cox said, down 

 to the serpentine bedrock, and dump it 

 into the cars. 



"It is believed that nowhere else in 

 the world is there a continuous deposit of 

 such magnitude," he continued. "It is 

 estimated that the cost of opening the 

 mines and equippin'^ for a production of 

 from 45,000 to 50,000 tons of nodules per 

 month, with 25,000 to 30,000 tons addi- 

 tional of crude ore, will be about $3,000,- 

 000. The value of the iron thus opened 

 up is beyond computation." 



FOR SAND AND GRAVEL TRADE 



The wooden steamer "H. A. Root," 115 

 feet long, recently cleared at Windsor, 

 Ont.. for Cuba. She has been sold to 

 H. R. Burton and others of Havana for 

 $7,500, and will be used in the sand and 

 gravel trade along the coast of Cuba. It 

 is anticipated, says the Detroit Free 

 Press, that the "Root" will revolutionize 

 the sand and gravel trade at Havana. 

 Heretofore, it is said, the sand boats at 

 that port have been unloaded by men with 

 wheelbarrows. The "Root" has a clam 

 shell for unloading and is equipped \yith 

 two eight-inch suction pumps for loading. 

 She has a carrying capacity of 212 cubic 

 yards of sand. 



The Cuban Central has asked for the 

 condemnation of sufficient land at San 

 Juan de los Yeras, Santa Clara Province, 

 to allow for the extension of branch lines 

 to Potrerillo and Cardoso. 



