- 10 - 
Pinar del Rio is a very pretty little town and 
the view of it from the Hotel veranda this morning 
before the sun got out of the clouds and dispelled 
the slight fog ms indeed very pretty. We soon left 
it behind, pissing through a flat plain, quite like 
the country traversed by the train yesterday, but 
slightly more rolling* At Kilometer 14 from Pinar 
del Rio we stopped at a so-called mogote. These 
mogotes are limestone remnants of a mountain chain which 
once constituted a range this side of the Sierra Vinales. 
They are very interesting faunally because here occur 
the stranded remnants of the mountain fauna. The sep- 
aration has been of sufficient length to have caused 
a differentiation to take place in certain of the 
shells found here. Some shells are said to be gen- 
erally distributed, but others, like certain of the 
TJrocbptids, have certai representatives on each mo- 
gote. This mogote is called Mogote de las Puntas; 
also del Desconso. Henderson tells me that we have 
many new things from here, and I shall have a list 
for future entry. 
The scenery as one approaches Vinales is most 
beautiful, tall mountains with rounded tops rising 
abruptly from the plain. No taylus slopes, but 
sheer steep sides covered everywhehr, excepting a 
bald spot here and there, with luxiurious vegeta- 
tion; slender palms of a number of species, and many 
other trees render this escarpment a more than pleas- 
ant sight. In a plain bounded by these ranges and 
hills nestles the town of Vinales, a peaceful village 
of about a thousand inhabitants* We lunched at 
t+\ 
about 11 A.M.and then left by carriage for the Sierra 
del Vinales. The road passed through a gap in the 
mountains, the base of which is about 500 feet wide. 
The mountains rise sheer on both sides; the gap tuns 
noith and south. The mountain ridge on the east 
rises from 800 to 1,000 feet above the plain. The 
