A general impression prevails that practically all of the lands in Cuba are adapted to the profitable cultivation of sugar cane; that numerous large and desirably located tracts, suitable in character and sufficient in area to justify the installation of modern “centrales” or factories of normal average capacity, are still to be found, scattered throughout the island and purchasable at nominal cost when compared with their economic value; and that the annual production of sugar in Cuba can, therefore, be profitably increased to the extent even of “supplying the whole world with all the sugar it needs.” This impression is, however, erroneous and misleading. General James H. Wilson, commanding the Military Department of Matanzas and Santa Clara under the first Government of Intervention, who was esteemed an authority on the subject, reported in 1899 that it was a mistake to suppose that all Cuban lands were of the first quality, such as would grow sugar cane continuously for twenty or thirty years without replanting; that there were in fact few such estates in Cuba; that most of the land, whether red or black soil, produces cane for only twelve or fifteen years, and much of it for from three to five years only; and that, in the two provinces named, there was then little new or virgin cane land left, nearly all of first class quality having at some time been under cultivation. In this report he did not, however, take into account the extensive areas of “cienaga” or swamp lands, which would not be available for cane growing purposes until drained. Since then it has also been satisfactorily demonstrated that some of the so-called “savana” land, which has a “mulatto” or yellow soil, hitherto regarded as worthless for sugar-producing purposes, can be made to produce good crops of cane by the judicious application of fertilizers and with suitable methods of cultivation. Sufficient time has not elapsed to determine the durability of such plantations.