364 



humboldt's cuba. 



are only occasionally seen. The water of the sea has 

 a dark green color, as in some of the lakes of Switzer- 

 land, while the sky, from the great purity of the 

 atmosphere, had from the first appearance of the 

 sun, that clear blue so much admired by landscape 

 painters in the south of Italy ; and through the pure 

 air the most distant objects stood forth to the view 

 with an extraordinary brilliancy. 



Our schooner was the only vessel in the gulf, for 

 none enter the roadstead of Batabano but smugglers, 

 or, as they are called, with greater courtesy, " the tra- 

 ders." I have mentioned before, when speaking of the 

 project of a canal through Guines, how important Ba- 

 tabano might become to the trade between Cuba and 

 Venezuela. In its present state there are barely nine 

 feet of water, as no attempt has been made to deepen 

 it. The port is at the bottom of a bay formed by 

 Punta Gorda on the east, and Punta de Salinas on the 

 west ; but the bay itself is only the concave side of 

 a great gulf, which is fourteen leagues deep from 

 north to south, closed by an innumerable number of 

 cays and banks for a distance of fifty leagues, from 

 the bay of Cortez to Cay de Piedras. 



Within this labyrinth there rises one large island 

 only, the area of which is four times greater than 

 Martinique, and whose arid hills are crowned with 

 majestic pines. This is the Isle of Pines, named the 



