The Cuban Everglades plays host to a variety of valuable woods, which are found on the coral formation of the forest, including the fine Cuban mahogany and Spanish cedar. A railroad has been carried across the swamp in one place from a sugar plantation, north of the region, to port on the Caribbean Sea. Many mahogany ties were used in the construction of this, and others are being hauled out for sale. Among the other woods are jucaro, acana, rosewood, cerilla, ceiba, yana almacigo, and cecropia. Peat bog is the most extensive land formation of the swamp, if it may be called land. This is covered with water most of the year and is always soft. In the latter part of the dry season it is possible to walk over the open glades by stepping carefully and avoiding the more soggy places usually covered with cattails and rushes.
During the rainy season traveling becomes a process of floundering through, the walker often sinking into the oozy mass to the waist or deeper. Horses, of course, cannot be used. Care must be taken that the pervading sawgrass is treated gently. Attempts to thrash this plant aside are always rewarded with deep flesh cuts from the swordlike blades. Frequently the peat is ten feet deep, composed chiefly of the remains of sawgrass and mangrove leaves in various stages of decay. In many instances ninety per cent of the material is vegetable matter. This burns readily when dry. Snail shells are everywhere, often completely covering the surface. At some levels through the soil layers beds of white marl are found, usually including numerous snail shells from the size of mustard seeds to an inch or more in diameter.
Streams rising in the peat bogs flow for short distances out into the adjacent rocky areas, and then disappear into subterranean channels. These are known as sumideros. Their waters, coming up again, are supposed to account for the fresh water that boils up through the ocean like springs short distances offshore. Such ocean springs or "boils" occur off the coast of Florida also. It is said that ships formerly took on fresh water at the Devil's Punch Bowl, an ocean spring in Biscayne Bay.
The region is one of much interest to the naturalist. There is greater variety of forest within it than is found in the Florida Everglades, and along its borders are dense thickets of logwood and magnificent groves of stately royal palms. The latter, in addition to being the most beautiful palm known, is one of the most useful of trees. It produces the year round quantities of oily fruit, a favorite feed for hogs. The heart of the green top makes a delicious salad. Its enormous plumelike leaves are used for roofing and siding houses and for shading tobacco in the famous Vuelta-Abajo and Partito cigar districts.
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