Origin and trajectory.
Fernández de Castro (1871), as it was usual at the time, identifies this meteor as Hurricane of San Marcos". Referring to its formation and trajectory, he states the following:
...Looks like it began the day 5 at 19º of latitude in the channel that the Island of Cuba, Santo Domingo and Jamaica form, it penetrated in the afternoon of the day 7 for La Ciénaga de Zapata and it left the 8 in the morning through Matanzas... (loc. cit.).
The same author points out that the vortex made its land fall on a place not well determined in the South coast of Matanzas, in the vicinity of the Gulf of Cazones, to the West of Bay of Pigs, and crossed the Island with a mean course to the North: first to the north-northwest and later to the North and Northeast, until leaving towards the Florida Strait over the vicinity of the city of Matanzas.
Father Benito Viñes, S. J. (1909), on the other hand, fixed the landfall to the East of El Rosario's Beach, South of the current province of Havana, and he deduces the “course of the hurricane” from the “barometric variations and changes of the wind in Havana". Viñes supposed that the meteor had made a very closed recurve, with the eye crossing between the towns of Madruga and Nueva Paz and a mean course to the Northeast, until leaving to the sea West and very near the city of Matanzas.
Father Mariano Gutiérrez-Lanza, S. J., second successor of Viñes at the Observatory of Belén, stated the following on his excellent chronology:
1870. - An intense hurricane crossed the Island from South to North, with very small inclination to the Northeast, going the center by the West of Nueva Paz and Matanzas, noticing in both populations the calm of the vortex. It caused enormous havoc in the whole province of Matanzas, as well as Havana and Las Villas. It was very big the loss of lives, mainly in the city of Matanzas, where whole houses were dragged to the bay with all their residents (Gutiérrez-Lanza, 1926).