The soft white material of this limestone, through countless eons of time, has been hammered by tropical rains that gradually washed away the surface and carved their once ragged peaks into peculiar, round, dome-shaped elevations that often rise perpendicularly to a height of 1,000 feet or more above the level grass plains that form their base. Meanwhile the continual seepage of water formed great caverns within that sooner or later caved in and fell, hastening thus the gradual leveling to which all mountains are doomed as long as the world is supplied with air and water. The softening and continual crumbling away of the rock have formed a rich soil on which grows a wonderful wealth of tropical vegetation, unlike anything known to other sections of Cuba, or perhaps in the world. The valley of the Vinales, lying between the City of Pinar del Rio and the north coast, might well be called the garden of the “magotes,” since not only is it surrounded by their precipitous walls, but several of them, detached from the main chain, rise abruptly from the floor of the valley, converting it into one of the most strangely beautiful spots in the world. John D. Henderson, the naturalist, in speaking of this region, says: “The valley of the Vinales must not be compared with the Yosemite or Grand Canon, or some famed Alpine passage, for it cannot display the astounding contrasts of these, or of many well-known valleys among the higher mountains of the world. We were all of us traveled men who viewed this panorama, but all agreed that never before had we gazed on so charming a sight. There are recesses among the Rocky Mountains of Canada in which one gazes with awe and bated breath, where the very silence oppresses, and the beholder instinctively reaches out for support to guard against slipping into the awful chasm below. But the Valley of Vinales, on the contrary, seems to soothe and lull the senses. Like great birds suspended in the sky, we long to soar above it, and then alighting within some palm grove, far below, to rejoice in its atmosphere of perfect peace.” A mountain maze of high, round-topped lomas dominates almost the entire northern half of Pinar del Rio. It is the picturesque remnant of an elevated plain that at some time in the geological life of the Island was raised above the surface 1500, perhaps 2000, feet. This, through the erosion of thousands of centuries, has been carved into great land surges, without any particular alignment or system.