Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1898 — No Good Map of Cuba. [ARTICLE]

No Good Map of Cuba.

Any landsman who tries to buy n good map of Cuba will learn the surprising fact that no such map has ever been made, and that even its coasts are for the most part either uncharted al all or charted so carelessly and incorrectly that the captains of vessels U; approaching any except a few of the island’s most important harbors axe forced to rely almost exclusively or such information as their own eyes and sounding lines will supply. This may not seem’ like a very important matter, especially to those who are accustomed to think of Cuba as an out-of-the-way part of the world, in which many characteristics of a new and unexplored region are ever, this lack of maps and charts shows the quality of the Spanish rule as clearly as do the murders of noncombatants or the wholesale misappropriation of public funds. As countries in the new world go, Cuba is very old. The Spaniards began to explore it In 1492, and since 1511, except for a single year, they have had uninterrupted possession of It. And in four hundred years they have not had time enough to spare from the task of draining the island’s resources even to survey its coast. The idea of adding Cuba to the civilized world never occurred to them. The only thought was to establish at Havana and In a few other places great fortresses, by which the island could be, not governed, but controlled, and anything that would help general commerce was carefully left undone.—New York Times.