Still further east we have another important shipping port known as Caibarien, located on Buena Vista Bay, that unfortunately has an average depth of only 12 or 15 feet, necessitating lighterage out to the anchorage at Cayo Frances, 18 miles distant, where ships of the deepest draft find perfect protection while loading. On the north shore of the Province of Camaguey we have but one harbor of the first order, the Bay of Nuevitas, but this harbor may easily lay claim to being one of the best in the world. Its entrance is narrow, resembling a river, some six miles in length and with a rather swift running current, depending upon the flow of tide, as it passes in or out. The Bay itself is a beautiful sheet of water of circular form, with an extension of deep water reaching out towards the west some 15 miles, and connected with the Bay of Carabelas, Guajaba and Guanaja, forty or fifty miles further west. Along these quiet landlocked lagoons are located the American colonies of La Gloria, Columbia, Punta Pelota and Guanaja. There are many reasons for believing that the entrance to this harbor was the place where Columbus spent several days scraping and cleaning the bottom of his caravels, while a few of his companions made a journey into the interior, finding very agreeable natives but no indications of gold. From Nuevitas is shipped nearly all of the sugar made in the Province of Camaguey, together with a great deal of fine hardwood, cut in the Sierra de Cubitas Mountains. The north shore railroad, beginning at Caibarien some 300 kilometers distant, has its eastern terminus on Nuevitas Bay, and will, when completed, greatly increase the trade of splendid sugar and vegetable land, as well as the mining zone, rich in iron and chrome, that lies just south of the Sierras. Thirty miles further east we have the harbor of Manati, with a narrow but comparatively deep and easy entrance, which soon opens out into the usual long pouch shaped bay, on the shore of which are the sugar mills of Manati. This harbor, although not ranked among the largest, nevertheless can accommodate a large fleet of merchant ships or tramp steamers waiting for their cargoes of sugar and hardwood timber. Malageta, some ten miles east of Manati, cannot be properly ranked as a harbor of the first class, although it furnishes protection for vessels of moderate draft. Puerto Padre, 20 miles east of Manati, is another large pouch-shaped deep water harbor like nearly all those of the north coast, and owing to the location on its southern shore of two of the largest sugar mills in the world, Chaparra and Las Delicias, with a combined production of over a million bags a year, it may be justly ranked as one of the most important harbors of Oriente.