Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Wishing To Furnish In This
Work The Most Accurate Result That Can Be Obtained In The Present
State Of Our Astronomical Knowledge, I Engaged M. Bauza To Calculate
The Area.
He found, in June, 1835, the surface of the island of Cuba,
without the Isla dos Pinos, to be 3520 square sea leagues, and with
that island 3615.
From this calculation, which has been twice
repeated, it results that the island of Cuba is one-seventh less than
has hitherto been believed; that it is 32/100 larger than Hayti, or
San Domingo; that its surface equals that of Portugal, and within
one-eighth that of England without Wales; and that if the whole
archipelago of the Antilles presents as great an area as the half of
Spain, the island of Cuba alone almost equals in surface the other
Great and Small Antilles. Its greatest length, from Cape San Antonio
to Point Maysi (in a direction from west-south-west to east-north-east
and from west-north-west to east-south-east) is 227 leagues; and its
greatest breadth (in the direction north and south), from Point
Maternillo to the mouth of the Magdalena, near Peak Tarquino, is 37
leagues. The mean breadth of the island, on four-fifths of its length,
between the Havannah and Puerto Principe, is 15 leagues. In the best
cultivated part, between the Havannah and Batabano, the isthmus is
only eight sea leagues. Among the great islands of the globe, that of
Java most resembles the island of Cuba in its form and area (4170
square leagues). Cuba has a circumference of coast of 520 leagues, of
which 280 belong to the south shore, between Cape San Antonio and
Punta Maysi.
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