72 TlMEHRI. 
disappearances, dwelling, as occasion offers, on the wild 
magnificence or soft beauty disclosed to our contem- 
plation. 
In Cuba, as we have said, the chain traverses the 
greatest length of the land, keeping well in the centre. 
Spurs are, however, thrown off in several places, reach- 
ing to the sea in bold, rocky headlands which, coupled 
with the coral reefs and innumerable islets that are 
scattered along the coast, render but little over a third 
of the sea-board available for shipping purposes. Never- 
theless, as a general feature the country opens out from 
the mountains into fertile valleys and extensive savan- 
nahs. The former nestle, dark and narrow, between 
beetling precipices down which rush roaring catara6ts 
and raging torrents, brown with the rich soil of the 
highlands, or spread out beautiful and sunny as an exiled 
Italian's dream of home, between gently sloping lawn- 
like tracts of immense extent, the height of which is 
lost in the gradualness of their ascent. In the eastern 
part of the island, which flattens out like a great 
flange, the central mountain chain leads off into another 
range called "El Gobra," or the " Copper" mountains, in 
which the peaks attain their greatest height, reaching in 
some instances to 8,000 ft. 
The scenery amid these Cuban mountains, as may be 
supposed, is exceedingly grand. What principally 
strikes the tourist fresh from northern climes, is the 
rank luxuriance with which the vegetation spreads itself 
in every conceivable direction. Now, it is clinging with 
a tenacious grasp along the bare, frowning precipices ; 
then, it is curling and wreathing in wild, fantastic tan- 
gles around the brows of a rocky maze, from which it 
