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Updated: May 29, 2025
From the description of Columbus, the vessels must have entered between the islands of Baril and Pacedon, and, sailing along Cayo Romano on a S.E. course, have reached in another day their old cruising ground in the neighborhood of lesser Guajava.
Cayo Rolones, or Rat Island, located near the middle of the bay, is the Government depository for powder, dynamite, and other explosives. The elevation on the right of the entrance, where stands Castle Morro, is 40 yards above the sea level, while the hill on the left is 20 yards. "La Bateria Nueva de la Estrella" is mounted with four revolving cannons.
Several of the Cayos of the island of Cuba contain fresh water; and I found this water very good in the middle of the Cayo de Piedras. When we reflect on the extreme smallness of these islands we can scarcely believe that the fresh-water wells are filled with rain-water not evaporated.
We must not confound with this limestone of Guines, sometimes porous, sometimes compact, another formation so recent that it seems to augment in our days. I allude to the calcareous agglomerates, which I saw in the islands of Cayos that border the coast between the Batabano and the bay of Xagua, principally south of the Cienega de Zapata, Cayo Buenito, Cayo Flamenco and Cayo de Piedras.
The Old Channel is narrowest opposite to Cayo Cruz and Cayo Romano; its breadth is scarcely more than five or six leagues. On this point, too, the Great Bank of Bahama takes its greatest development. Were they only twenty or thirty feet higher, an island much larger than St. Domingo would appear at the surface of the ocean.
On the morning of the 11th March we visited Cayo Flamenco. I found the latitude 21 degrees 59 minutes 39 seconds. The centre of this island is depressed and only fourteen inches above the surface of the sea. The water here is brackish while in other cayos it is quite fresh.
On the boundary of a sort of gulf between Cayo Flamenco and Cayo de Piedras we found that the temperature of the sea, at its surface, augmented suddenly from 23.5 to 25.8 degrees centigrade.
In the attempt, however, she also got on shore and was lost. On this cayo Captain Herbert remained nearly two months. At length, a sloop and schooner appeared off the spot; Captain Herbert, pulling off in his boats, boarded and took them, and returned in them with his ship's company safe to Jamaica. In 1744, the French fleet having united with that of Spain, war was declared against France.
After passing Cayo Smith, the sunken collier Merrimac, and the dismantled wreck of the Reina Mercedes, we turned abruptly to the left, opposite the Estrella battery, and entered a deep, sheltered cove, directly behind the Morro promontory and almost under the massive walls of the castle itself.
"This is an awfully funny place, and I just wish you were here to walk round with Mark and me and see it. It is on an island, and that is the reason it is named 'Key, because all the islands down here are called keys. The Spaniards call it 'Cayo Hueso, which means bone key, or bone island; but I'm sure I don't know why, for I haven't seen any bones here.
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