210 If. T. Hill — Tertiary and later 



folded limestone, in which a distinct anticlinal structure can be 

 traced. The terrace upon which the Military Hospital at 

 Baracoa is situated is carved across the almost vertically in- 

 clined edges of the older Miocene limestones. The summit of 

 Junki instead of being coral reef is a greatly degraded pene- 

 plane. The Seboruco alone of all the levels is topographically 

 an elevated reef and this, as before stated, does not rise any- 

 where over 50 feet above the sea. 



Lack of Evidence of Subsidence. — The writer was unable to 

 discover positive evidences of subsidence after the beginning 

 of Tertiary time, or accompanying these elevations, although 

 it would be rational to think that the movements must have 

 been oscillatory. I failed to find any traces in the upland areas 

 of recent deposits which would indicate an} r extensive sub- 

 mergence. The soils are everywhere residual, and nowhere 

 did I observe any that could be attributed to transported 

 material or overplacement of marine sediment, and particular 

 care was taken to look for such evidence. Castro reports ex- 

 tensive upland alluvial deposits in the region of Puerto Prin- 

 cipe, but gives no evidence whereby we maj^ determine whether 

 they were produced by upland lacustral deposition or sub- 

 mergence of the land to sea level. Nowhere do the rivers show 

 any revival or other evidence of such subsidence, but all have 

 continuous downward cutting sections. 



Whether there has been recent subsidence immediately pre- 

 ceding the deposition of the elevated coral reef or Seboruco, 

 whereby the circular harbors were produced as Crosby alleges, 

 is also a point which I cannot accept, though difficult to deter- 

 mine. He advances in support of his position the structure of 

 the circular harbors and the great thickness of the older lime- 

 stones which he believed to be ancient reef rock. I have 

 endeavored to show that there is no evidence to support the 

 theory that the older elevated limestones were coral reefs in 

 origin, and hence it is not necessary to here discuss this testi- 

 mony further. 



Concerning the mouths of the rivers themselves, their 

 alluvial deposits and the evidence of their valleys may be inter- 

 preted to mean elevation more positively than Mr. Crosby 

 interprets them to mean subsidence, nor can I understand why 

 he calls them " half drowned." There is a singular absence of 

 fiord-like valleys or indentations or of ancient estuarine de- 

 posits around the coast of Cuba, such as ordinarily indicate 

 subsidence. In fact the rivers in nearly all cases, like the 

 Yumuri of the east, run directly to sea level through almost 

 vertical chasms cut directly across the line of terraces, and are 

 void of any terraces within their canons, showing unmistakably 

 that they have cut down to sea level across the terraces. 



