CHAPTER XVI 

 Overland from La Fe to Vinales 



Friday, May 2Qth. At daylight there was great 

 activity aboard the Barrera, the overland party 

 making ready to debark and the crew preparing 

 for a continuous journey to Esperanza. Bartsch, 

 Clapp, Rodriguez, and I were landed at La Fe 

 before 7 o'clock where we found awaiting us a 

 three-horse outfit to take us to Mendoza (Paso 

 Real), a station on the Western Railway near 

 Guane, the terminus. The journey of twenty-one 

 miles was completed in a little over three hours. 



From the Bay of Guadiana (on the north side 

 of the island) to the south coast is not over fifteen 

 miles of low-lying flat savanna. This lowland 

 area extends east almost to Mendoza, and west for 

 a shorter distance to a point where begin the ele- 

 vated coral reefs of the western extremity of Cuba. 

 This Guadiana region is obviously but a recently 

 and slightly raised shallow sea bottom, where 



reefs, if they ever existed, were smothered under 



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