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Updated: June 25, 2025
Not far beyond Cerro there lies some beautiful country, reached by the same miserable road. Puentes Grandes, a small village near the falls of the Almendares River, is but two miles further north than Cerro, and adjoining this place, a couple of miles further, is a small, picturesque village called Ceiba, from the abundance of that species of tree which once flourished there.
It has the appearance of the portico of an unfinished building, but it is a finished memorial, erected in 1828. The tradition is that on this spot there stood, in 1519, an old ceiba tree under which the newly arrived settlers celebrated their first mass.
From time to time, Velanno took his place with the machete and the guarijo sat beside the boy. Never for a moment was Stuart left alone. It was a wild drive. The trail threaded its way between great Ceiba trees, looming weird and gigantic with their buttressed trunks, all knotted and entwined with hanging lianas and curiously hung with air plants dropping from the branches.
There is certainly something weird in the loneliness and solitary grandeur of the tree. Next to the palm and ceiba in beauty and picturesqueness of effect is the tamarind tree, with its deep green and delicate foliage, presenting a singular and curious aspect when thickly looped on every branch with hanging chocolate-colored pods.
'It made, says a note by one of our party, 'other huge trees look like shrubs. I am not surprised that my friend Mr. St. Luce D'Abadie, who measured the tree since my departure, found it to be one hundred and ninety-two feet in height. I was assured that there were still larger trees in the island. A certain Locust-tree and a Ceiba were mentioned.
The animal had gone towards the forest, and turning my eyes on that side, I found myself within eighty paces of a jaguar that was lying under the thick foliage of a ceiba. No tiger had ever appeared to me so large. There are accidents in life against which we may seek in vain to fortify our reason.
Just about midway between the American and Spanish lines of rifle pits stands a lordly ceiba, 125 feet high to the crown, nearly 10 feet in diameter at the trunk and spreading 50 feet each way from the polished tree shaft. Under this tree General Toral and a score of his officers awaited the Americans.
Consequently not one of those Indians closed his eyes for a moment throughout the long hours of that night; and with the first hint of approaching dawn, long before either of the occupants of the ceiba were awake, they were keenly looking about them for "sign" of the white men's presence.
A word about the route, and all four start together; not to go back along the trail towards the ceiba tree, but striking straight out for the open plain, in a direction which Gaspar conjectures to be the right one. They would willingly diverge from it to ascertain whether the poor creature clubbed by Aguara be dead or still living; and, if the latter, take him along.
We shall see the giant "ceiba" tree, and the "zamang," and the "caoba," twined by huge parasites almost as thick as their own trunks, and looking as though they embraced but to crush them; the "juvia," with its globe-shaped fruits as large as the human head; the "cow-tree," with its abundant fountains of rich milk; the "seringa," with its valuable gum the caoutchouc of commerce; the "cinchona," with its fever-killing bark; the curious "volador," with its winged seeds; the wild indigo, and the arnatto.
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