Tranquilino Sandalio de Noda Martínez

Notable naturalist sage, surveyor, and Cuban writer.

He was born in the neighborhood of Puerta de la Güira, current municipality of Artemisa, province of the same name, then belonging to the Jurisdiction of Guanajay on a coffee plantation belonging to a French family.

Surveyor and agronomist. From an early age he was fond of measuring land and roads. He came to elaborate a topographic map of an extensive region west of the city of Havana (Vueltabajo), which Spanish authorities used to capture the separatist general Narciso López, in 1851.

He explored the Sierra del Rosario and the mogotes of the Sierra de los Órganos, and its cave system.

He explored and described the coasts of Pinar del Río and drew maps of almost all the estates of Vueltabajo. His education was mostly self-taught. He came to be able to read or understand several languages, including some African ones, and acquired knowledge in different sciences.

He devoted himself to the study of different agricultural crops.

In 1829, the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País awarded his Memoir on the causes that produce the alternation of crops in coffee, and elected him a Member of Merit. In 1831, it awarded his work "Memoir on the way to exterminate the bibijagua ant."

His scientific works were collected in periodical publications such as "Las Memorias de la Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País" and in "Los Anales de la Junta de Fomento." He wrote notable works on Geography, Statistics, Economics, Politics, and Historiography. Among them: "A treatise on political economy in application to the Island of Cuba," "The peasants of Vueltabajo," "Wealth and root of Cuba," "The History of Marién." He conducted studies on blind fish in the Laguna de Ariguanabo and the geography of Vueltabajo.

He elaborated the "General Project of Roads of Vueltabajo" and "Itineraries for steamships." Noda is attributed by Esteban Pichardo a decisive influence in the establishment of the spelling of the city and province of Pinar del Río, instead of "Pinal" del Río.

Among his main works is "El Atlante Cubano," on Agriculture and Agronomy. He also elaborated a mathematical, physical, and political Atlas, a Memoir on the decimal metric system and the advantages of its implementation1.

Among his literary works are travel narratives ("The excursion to Guajaibón") customs scenes and legendary folklore ("Cuban Traditions" published in 1843; "Letters to Silvia"), novels ("The Cacique of Guajaba") and poems.

He left multiple unfinished or partially lost works, among them: Siboney Dictionary, Notes on a Dictionary of African Languages, Elementary Education, New Art of Shorthand; Translations of Voltaire: La Henriade, Adelaide du Gueselin, La mort de Cesar, and the study he conducted on this author. His novel "The Cacique of Güines: Habanaguex" also remained unfinished and a Eulogy on Luis de Camoens.

He was highly praised by José Martí, writer and hero of Cuba's independence.5 In his honor the Museum of Natural History of Pinar del Río bears his name.

Source: Wikipedia