It is in this respect that the pre-eminent intrinsic advantages of Cuba, or rather of Spain in Cuba, are to be seen; and also, but in much less degree, those of Great Britain in Jamaica.  Cuba, though narrow throughout, is over six hundred miles long, from Cape San Antonio to Cape Maysi.  It is, in short, not so much an island as a continent, susceptible, under proper development, of great resources—­of self-sufficingness.  In area it is half as large again as Ireland, but, owing to its peculiar form, is much more than twice as long.  Marine distances, therefore, are drawn out to an extreme degree.  Its many natural harbors concentrate themselves, to a military examination, into three principal groups, whose representatives are, in the west, Havana; in the east, Santiago; while near midway of the southern shore lies Cienfuegos.  The shortest water distance separating any two of these is 335 miles, from Santiago to Cienfuegos.  To get from Cienfuegos to Havana 450 miles of water must be traversed and the western point of the island doubled; yet the two ports are distant by land only a little more than a hundred miles of fairly easy country.  Regarded, therefore, as a base of naval operations, as a source of supplies to a fleet, Cuba presents a condition wholly unique among the islands of the Caribbean and of the Gulf of Mexico; to both which it, and it alone of all the archipelago, belongs.  It is unique in its size, which should render it largely self-supporting, either by its own products, or by the accumulation of foreign necessaries which naturally obtains in a large and prosperous maritime community; and it is unique in that such supplies can be conveyed from one point to the other, according to the needs of a fleet, by interior lines, not exposed to risks of maritime capture.  The extent of the coast-line, the numerous harbors, and the many directions from which approach can be made, minimize the dangers of total blockade, to which all islands are subject.  Such conditions are in themselves advantageous, but they are especially so to a navy inferior to its adversary, for they convey the power—­subject, of course, to conditions of skill—­of shifting operations from side to side, and finding refuge and supplies in either direction.

Jamaica, being but one-tenth the size of Cuba, and one-fifth of its length, does not present the intrinsic advantages of the latter island, regarded either as a source of supplies or as a centre from which to direct effort; but when in the hands of a power supreme at sea, as at the present Great Britain is, the questions of supplies, of blockade, and of facility in direction of effort diminish in importance.  That which in the one case is a matter of life and death, becomes now only an embarrassing problem, necessitating watchfulness and precaution, but by no means insoluble.  No advantages of position can counterbalance, in the long-run, decisive inferiority in organized mobile force,—­inferiority in troops in the field,