388 



humboldt's cuba. 



runs through a plain apparently formed by long- 

 standing water. It is covered with a beautiful 

 vegetation, to which the Miraguama, a species of 

 palm with shining leaves, which we there saw for 

 the first time, gives a peculiar character. This 

 fertile land, although of the red soil, only waits the 

 hand of man to clear and cultivate it, when it will 

 yield abundant crops. Toward the west there is a 

 picturesque view of the hills of San Juan, which 

 form a limestone chain very steep on its southern 

 side, and some 1,800 or 2,000 feet high, their naked 

 and arid summits now rounded and now forming high 

 and steep peaks. 1 



Though the temperature falls very low here 

 during the season of the northers it never snows, 

 but frost and hail only are sometimes seen in these 

 mountains, and in those of St. J ago. I have spoken 

 elsewhere of the difficulty of explaining this absence. 

 On leaving the woods a curtain of hills is seen, the 

 southern slope of which is covered with houses. 

 This is the city of Trinidad, founded by Diego 

 Velasquez in 1514, stimulated thereto by the rich 

 gold mines said to have been discovered in the little 



1 Wherever the rock is seen, I have found a compact whitish-brown 

 limestone, in part porous, and in part with smooth fracture, like the 

 Jurassic formation. — H. 



