ITS ADTANTAGES. 
267 
Course would be in proximity witb the best cultivated lands. 
The roads are nowhere worse in the rainy season than in 
this part of the island, where the soil is of friable limestone, 
little fitted for the construction of solid roads. The transport 
of sugar from Guines to the Ilavannah, a distance of twelve 
leagues, now costs one piastre per quintal. Besides the 
a.di'antage of facilitating internal communications, the canal 
'W’ould also give great importance to the surgidero of 
Batabano, into which small vessels laden with salt provisions 
(tasajo) from Venezuela, would enter without being obliged 
to double Capo Saint Antonio. In the bad season, and in 
time of war, when corsairs are cruizing beGveen Cape 
Catoche, Tortugas, ajid Mariel, the passage from the Spanish 
main to the island of Cuba, woidd be shortened by entering, 
not at the Havannah, but at some port of the southern coast. 
The cost of construetiug the canal de Guines, was estimated 
in 1796 at one million, or 1,200,000 piastres: it is now 
thought that the expense would amount to more than one 
niilllori and a half. The productions which might annually 
pass the canal, have been estimated at 75,000 cases of sugar, 
25,000 arrobas of coffee, and 8000 bocoyes of molasses and 
rum. According to the first project, that of 1796, it was 
intended to link the canal with the small river of Guines, to 
be brought from the Ingenio de la ITolanda to Qnibican, 
three leagues south of Bejucal and Santa Bosa. This ideals 
now relinquished, the Eio de los Guines losing its waters 
towards the east in the irrigation of the savannahs of Hato 
de Guanamon. Instead of carrying the canal east of the 
Barrio del Cerro, and south of the fort of Atarcs, in the bay 
of the Ilavannah, it Avas proposed at first to make use of the 
bed of the Chorrera or Eio Armendaris, from Calabazal to the 
Husillo, and then of the Zanja Eeal, not onl^ for conveying 
the boats to the centre of the arrahales and of the city of the 
Havannah, but also for furnishing AA'ater to the fountains, 
which require to be supplied during three months of the year. 
1 visited sever.al times, with MM. Lemaur, the plains through 
which this line of navigation is intended to pass. Tlie utility 
of the project is incontestible, if in times of great drought 
a sufficient quantity of water can be brought to the point oj 
partition 
At the Havannah, as in every place where commerce and 
