FORESTS OF PORTO RICO. 



Porto Rico has a total area of 3,435 square miles (2,198,400 acres). 1 

 The main island is 3,349 square miles in extent, and the islands of 

 Vieques, Mona, Culebra, and other adjacent smaller islands within 

 its governmental jurisdiction are 51.5, 19.5, 11, and 4 square miles, 

 respectively. The territory as a whole is thus about five-sixths 

 the size of Jamaica or the island of Hawaii, seven-tenths the size of 

 Connecticut, and four times as large as Long Island. 



In general outline it is almost a geometrically regular parallelogram, 

 approximately 100 miles long and 35 miles wide. Its longest dimen- 

 sion lies east and west. The sea line is nearly straight and the coast 

 is usually low, especially on the southern side, although there are a 

 few headlands. The only protected harbors are San Juan on the 

 north coast, Guanica and Jobos on the south, and Ensenada Honda on 

 the southeast. The 

 remaining ports, such 

 as Arecibo, Mayaguez, 

 and Ponce, are scarcely 

 more than open road- 

 steads. 



PHYSIOGRAPHY AND SOILS. 



Porto Rico and the 

 other islands of the 

 Antilles and Central 

 America and northern 

 South America were 

 formerly, according to 

 geologists, a united and 

 distinct continental 

 land mass — the Antillean continent. Then came a great subsidence, 

 which left only the tops of the mountains above water. After a while 

 the ocean floor was again thrust up, the old continent reappearing. 

 The sediment of which it was composed, covered in the meantime 

 by deep-sea muds and chalks, was then folded into huge mountain 

 systems, individual peaks reaching as high as 20,000 feet above sea 

 level. Another but lesser subsidence of the Antillean continent ac- 

 complished its breaking up into the present island groups, Jamaica 

 being the first to be isolated, then Cuba, and finally Porto Rico and 

 Haiti. 



There are at the present time three main physiographic regions of 

 the island of Porto Rico — a central mountainous core of volcanic 



1 "Areas of the United States, the States and Territories," Bulletin 302, U. S. Geological Survey. This 

 area is the one officially determined upon by the U. S. Geological Survey, the General Land Office, and the 

 Bureau of the Census, and is based on computation from the L 1 . S. Coast Survey map. The detailed 

 figures concerning the areas of the smaller islands were obtained directly from the Office of the U. S. Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey. 



Fig. 1. 



Porto Rico compared in size with Connecticut and Long 

 Island, New York. 



