Havana therefore continued confidently to pride itself upon being the repository of the dust of the Great Admiral, and his tomb in the ancient cathedral was thus recognized and revered by countless visitors. But at last, in 1899, after the independence of Cuba from Spain had been accomplished, a request was made by the Spanish Government for the transfer of the casket and its precious contents back to Spain, where historically they belonged. It was indeed pointed out that the transfer to Havana in 1796 had been intended to be only temporary, pending a fitting opportunity for a further removal to Spain. This request was granted, and the dust of the Discoverer was finally reinterred in the cathedral of Seville. [Illustration: THE HAVANA CATHEDRAL Originally the church of the Jesuits, this imposing edifice was built in 1656, though not completed until 1724, and took the place of the first cathedral in 1762. Within a tomb within its walls the remains of Columbus rested from 1796, when they were taken thither from Santo Domingo, to 1899, when they were conveyed to Spain.] CHAPTER IV Between these first merely tentative and inconclusive visits of Columbus to Cuba, in which so much was imagined and so little learned or done, and the actual occupation and settlement of the island, which were reserved for a few years later, it will be profitable to pause for a brief space, to review what science has revealed to us of not merely the pre-Columbian but indeed what we may term the archaic history of this chief member of the Antillean group. It is a history written in the rocks and soils, in the mountains and plains and rivers; in brief, the natural history of the island. This was something at which Columbus could merely have guessed, if indeed he had taken the trouble to think of it at all. He knew only that it was a fair land to look upon and promised to be a pleasant land in which to dwell; and his successors in the quest hoped to find its river beds and its mountain rocks rich with the gold which they coveted. That was all. It remained for the ampler knowledge and the more patient and painstaking research of later years to analyze the structure of the island, to discern the causes and the processes through which it had been developed into its present beautiful and opulent condition, and to learn that on the surface and just below the surface of its almost infinitely variegated face there lay the potency and the promise of wealth beyond the utmost limits of the dreams of those conquistadors of ancient Spain who were oestrus-driven by the _auri sacra fames_. Let us consider, then, the geological history of Cuba, so far as it has been ascertained; and the topography of the land as it has been revealed through a far more comprehensive survey than that of the Great Admiral's enraptured vision.