Geographical evolution of Cuba
Introduction. In Cuba there are mountains higher than any on the eastern side of North America; extensive plains as level as those of the Atlantic coast ; valleys formed at the baselevel of erosion, and deep canyons carved out by the youngest streams ; the remains of enormous beds of limestones mostly swept off the country, and coral reefs and mangrove islands extending the coastal plains into the sea ; sea-cliffs, caves and terraces of great and little elevation; drowned valleys deeper than the fiords of Norway indenting the margin of the insular mass; caverns innumerable and rivers flowing underground ; rifts through mountain ridges and rock-basins; tilted, bent and overturned strata, dislocated and faulted in modern times, so as to make youthful mountain ranges ; metamorphic rocks and rocks igneous, and these again altered to secondary products ; old baselevel plains or these modified and reaching across the island, . . .